Let’s go beyond listing Congress’ powers and consider fairness if a school had a legislative branch.
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As a teacher, I didn't know how to ask questions well! I had basically no training. But I asked hundreds each day. Now, I'm renovating my embarrassingly bad old questions!
A Playlist That Shows A Character’s Change
Here’s how I’d take one task from my choice board and focus on making it great!
Healthy Donuts!? Framing a Math Project with a Big Idea
Instead of jumping straight to calculations, what if we framed this math concept with a big idea?
Graphic Organizers Are Not Final Products
If you looked around my classrooms, you would have spotted a huge red flag hanging on my walls. No, not a literal red flag! But a major clue that I was limiting my students’ thinking. My walls were covered in students’ graphic organizers. Graphic Organizers Are A Scaffold But now I know that graphic organizers […]
Which is longer: a Ray or a Line?
Let’s move beyond memorizing definitions and get kids grappling with the fascinating concept of infinity!
Tweaks To A Character Study
A teacher sent me a sequence of questions about the story My Father’s Dragon. Based on what you’ve read so far, what is one word you could use to describe Elmer? What from the story made you choose this word? Think of other books you’ve read. What character from another story you know is similar […]
Rewriting a Sentence With Different Coordinating Conjunctions
The first unit in our writing program was always teaching the coordinating conjunctions. It always felt goofy teaching this to 6th graders – especially a gifted magnet class. I mean… do they really not know the difference between “and” and “but”?
Making Awful Graphs
Sometimes we can learn a lot by doing something the wrong way. Here are six ways your students can purposefully design awful, misleading graphs.
Differentiating Comprehension Skills: Noting Details
By 6th grade, our reading program’s comprehension skills have become a bit basic for most of my gifted students. I’ve been working on increasing the depth and complexity of these skills. In this case, “Noting Details” has become “Explicit Vs. Implicit Details.”