All Blog Posts Tagged 'student' (46)

Today is a day to celebrate and pay tribute to this musical genius. Teachers, students, lovers of music, everyone, can take a journey back in time and meet Tchaikovsky in a way that will captivate all.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky led a somewhat troubled life, despite achieving immense success.  He was undoubtedly one of the greatest composers of the Romantic Period.  Why…

"I call everyone 'Darling' because I can't remember their names."

-Zsa Zsa Gabor



A few years ago, my fledgling kid brother walked into his first class at Central Michigan University. It was in one of those stadium-sized lecture halls—you know the kind: a wall of vertical-sliding chalkboards and a battalion of green, first-year…

How many times have you said something about public speaking or your reluctance to give speeches and had someone come right back with the threadbare cliché about how “one study” found that “the average person fears public speaking more than death?”

Who conducted this study, exactly?

Regardless of whether or not this “study”/cliché can be…

In the forward of William Parrett and Kathleen Budge’s recent book, Turning High-Poverty Schools Into High-Performing Schools, Michael Copland describes standing in front of the faculty in an after-school meeting to discuss data regarding…

Socrative is an awesome tool used in Education to gain a better understanding of what our students have learned or are learning during a lesson by getting.  In this post about socrative we see how it can be used assess writing in the classroom.

My favorite URL shorteners.  These are used to take those long annoying URLs and shrink them down to a managable size.  This tutorial will demonstrate the difference between Google URL shortener, CiteBite, and TinyURl.  These all have their unique uses for the educator.  Click the link to learn more.

PBS Learning Resources is an excellent site for teachers and students to find educational films as well as other media types such as sound, images, and lesson plans.  This site has a couple thousand videos for you to see.  These videos are all free.  Click the link to learn more.

Early in my teaching career, I learned that if I can manage classroom movements, I can manage behavior. If I can manage behavior, students learn better.

An earlier post discussed the importance of quick and easy transitions between activities. David Ginsburg discusses smooth transitions in terms of …

It's never too early in the year to begin thinking about Parent Night.

The thought of talking for an hour to a group of adults seems daunting. Even with children, I try to speak no more than five minutes before directing them to an activity that synthesizes what was shared.

I have parents and students do the talking. Here are some suggestions if you want to get parents and students more active in the process:

1. Have parents active from the…

A week ago my knowledge of the education system of Finland was, to be honest,  almost non-existent.   I knew that they were consistently ranked number one of all “Western” countries in PISA testing but had no idea how they did it.  Then, last weekend, I attended a keynote address by Professor Teemu Leinonen, Professor of New Media Design and Learning at the Media Lab of…

As a teacher, I can increase graduation rates of my students by increasing engagement in learning, especially when it applies to at-risk learners (Archambault, 19). So, as a brand new online teacher, I felt it was within my education, training, and scope to attempt to increase engagement in my online classroom.



Yesterday I contacted 34 disengaged students with a personalized letter inviting them to come back to the online classroom and turn in an assignment. Within 24 hours, 10 of…

Did your mama talk to you about sexting, cyberbullying, and watching what you post on Facebook? Parents today have a whole new set of challenges and issues, raised by technology at school and home. Learn how you can help parents understand the real issues, fears and challenges and support them in being great parents in a 2.0 world. Resources for schools and families will be shared, and the core presentation is based on presentations at school PTA meetings, Wired Safety, and Wired…

It’s really easy to get started blogging – here’s two different ways to get up and running with a quality blog site quickly.

With the start of the new school year many teachers, administrators, and students will be thinking about finally starting that blog they’ve been considering. I promised in last week’s…