Lesson Planning Tip: How to Create an Engaging Teaching Activity
No matter what subject or grade you teach, there comes a point when the subject matter of your lesson just isn’t all that appealing. Maybe it’s a detailed, nuts-and-bolts kind of lesson that students really need to master in order to move on to the fun stuff or maybe it’s just an area of the [...]
7 Tips on How to Plan for Summer School
For some teachers, the summer break doesn’t necessarily mean a vacation from work. Many stay in the classrooms and focus on helping the students who need to enroll in summer school. If you are one of the teachers who is going to plan summer school curriculum this year, it’s important to be prepared and understand [...]
5 Things You Should do at the End of the School Year
The end of the school year is an exciting time — and not just for the students. As a teacher, you’re looking forward to three months away from the classroom, where you can focus on the year ahead and hone the new ideas that you have. In fact, you might even have a little bit of fun during your time away! But first, you need to finish what you started, and that’s why it’s important to make an extra effort during the last few weeks of the school year. Here’s five things you can do to end the year on a positive note and feel better prepared for the year to come. [...]
5 Classroom Activities that Will Help you Meet Any SLO (Yes, Really!)
If you’re a teacher, it’s no doubt very important to you that you help students meet the benchmarks for their grades and move successfully to the next. Only by deepening their understanding of math, literacy and other subjects can students successfully move on to secondary education, higher education and meaningful careers. One way in which [...]
How to Create a Lesson Plan That Any Substitute Teacher Can Follow
Getting your own planbook in order can be challenging enough. You want to craft engaging lessons that hit all the major points of your curriculum while still leaving time for fun and creativity. It can be exhausting. So once you have your long-range plans and your daily lessons in order, you definitely don’t want to [...]
Lesson Planning Tip: Plan How to End the Lesson
By the time a lesson’s end rolls around, you may be tempted to wrap up quickly and move on to the next activity or lunch. But even though you’ve already gotten through the heart of the material, it’s still crucial you wrap up the lesson with intention. That way you give students more of a [...]
13 Tips to Help Teachers Pass Their Evaluations with Flying Colors
If you’re like most teachers, you’re heavily invested in your teaching prowess, and want your district to value you for all you can do. Your evaluations are a great time to demonstrate your skills to an audience, but that means some serious prep work. Here are 13 tips to help you pass with flying colors. [...]
Build a Bridge Through Collaboration
Consider this challenge: you have two hours to build a bridge. You can use all of your background knowledge and have a variety of materials to work with. This bridge must hold substantial weight. You have no construction or engineering experience, but you have a strong background in mathematics. Perhaps you are one of those ingenious types who finds this task stimulating, or perhaps, considering the knowledge and time constraints, it’s a bit intimidating. Now, envision doing this exact same task with three other individuals with experience in engineering, construction, and design. Did the task just get a little less daunting? In the objective outlined above, as in education, the quality, scope, and overall success increases substantially with collaboration. [...]
10 Things First-Year Teachers Wish They Knew
There are more than 3.5 million teachers in the United States — and a portion of those educators are navigating their first year in the classroom. If you are about to join the group of excited yet intimidated first-year teachers in the next school year, it’s a good time to begin preparing for this upcoming [...]