Self-paced learning can be a great tool. If you’ve ever tried to implement mastery or self-paced learning in your classroom, or attempted a long-term project that is student-centered, you’ve probably tried it (or are still doing it) because, frankly…these things work. Anytime you can make your classroom more student-centered and meet the needs of more students, you’re going to increase … Read More
Why You Should Focus on Small Classroom Victories
Are you focusing on small classroom victories? Teaching can be exhausting, and it can seem like a futile endeavor at times. The amount of work that goes into a single day or unit of instruction is tremendous, without a necessary guarantee of student success. So when a unit is finished, or a hard day is done, it’s easy to look … Read More
5 Ways to Give Your Students More Freedom in Your Classroom
Let Freedom Ring in Your Classroom! When the bell rings, is it the ring of freedom or that of condemnation for your students at the start of class? Freedom is something that we hold very dear to our hearts in this country. We wave flags to celebrate it, our soldiers sacrifice their lives to protect it, and we tout it … Read More
Why You Need Standards Based Grading in Your Classroom
Let’s Make This Simple: We can pretend that because we are teachers we should have autonomous and authoritative control over everything that goes in our grade books, and that we should get to decide how we grade, what our grade books look like, and what is represented in them. As you clutch your grade book against your chest protectively, I’m … Read More
1 Simple Way to Motivate Students
Motivating students is probably one of the hardest things we do as teachers. Delivering content is meaningless without a student motivated to learn and apply it. During our workshops this is one of the most common topics that come up. While this is usually in the context of Mastery Learning the general advice I give us universally applicable to any instructional model. … Read More