How do you back up your teaching and writing files? See if one of these describes you. You save your files to a thumb drive and carry it around with you. You email files to yourself for safekeeping. You subscribe to an online backup service. You backup your own files with an external hard drive. [...]
Filed under: Teaching Tips, Writing Tips | Tagged: back up files, dropbox, sync computers | Leave a Comment »
As the school year begins again, it’s time to review classroom management strategies and rev up for the incoming classes. To help you with that, I’m posting links to my most popular classroom management articles. If you’re a new teacher, they’re packed with ideas that really work. If you’ve been in the trenches for a [...]
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Does Mozart make you smart? My class of fifth graders decided to do an experiment to find out. The Mozart Effect has been recognized since 1991, when Alfred A. Tomatis first gave a name to the phenomenon. Since then it’s been researched, study results have been published in medical journals, books have been written about [...]
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Let’s face it. Most teachers are not as adept at PowerPoint presentations as they could be. How many of us have suffered through a presentation that was full of annoying sound effects, words zipping across the screen, and a confusing layout? When using PowerPoint to give a lesson, you want your audience to learn something, [...]
Filed under: Teaching Tips | Tagged: audio-visual aids, how to use PowerPoint, teaching with PowerPoint | 2 Comments »
By Ann Bowers Not long ago, the National Assessment of Educational Progress conducted a study of elementary-school reading skills. The study showed that 44% of fourth graders in the United States have low reading scores. In 2000, a report by The National Reading Panel stated that oral reading fluency is a critical part of effective [...]
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If you must teach writing, you know how nebulous and difficult it can be to define exactly what good writing entails. As a writer myself, I love to teach writing. I find that giving specific goals and focusing on one small aspect in each lesson has been highly successful. Not only do my students turn [...]
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Every teacher wants to help students master the material, not just pass the test, then forget it. Here is how to focus your teaching on mastery. When you teach to mastery, you’ll find your students are more relaxed about their learning, as well as more focused. Here’s the article: Emphasize Mastery Over Grades [...]
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Every teacher, at some point in his or her career will have to deal with parents that are over-enthusiastic about their children’s educations. These are the parents that will interrupt class, because what they have to say is more important than what you have to teach your class. They will tell you how to teach, [...]
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What are the most effective ways to teach students? Robert Marzano has dedicated his life’s work to researching and developing the best teaching practices. If you only buy one teaching book a year, this should be the one you purchase. You can read my review of it in this article, Classroom Instruction That Works. [...]
Filed under: Teaching Tips | Tagged: best classroom practices, research based instructional strategies, research based teaching strategies, robert marzano classroom instruction that works | Leave a Comment »
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