Teacher to teacher

When a teacher can find innovative and creative ways to approach mundane subjects, it can truly get a student’s creative juices flowing. Wooden blocks helped build a Regents Prep program that does just that.


Students do better in school when learning engages both their minds and their hearts. This dual approach is known as service learning — a teaching method that develops students’ skills and knowledge as they apply classroom lessons to meet real community needs.

Students and voters alike have been encountering fake news since long before the 2016 election.

Structured teaching, an intervention for students with special needs, includes the physical organization of the classroom, individualized schedules, work/activity systems and visual organization of materials. There are elements of structured teaching from which all students — not just those with special needs — can benefit.
 


In my pre-K classroom, I strive to strengthen my students’ nonverbal communication skills because understanding facial expressions and gestures allows for communication to be fluid, natural and meaningful. For English language learners, these skills are just as important as listening, speaking, reading and writing English when it comes to acquiring English language skills. 


As we think about gearing up for a new school year, here are a few tips to help us navigate the busy, sometimes overwhelming job of managing a classroom.

There is a profound connection between developing good character and achieving academically. For this reason, our committee of educators launched a character education program to highlight skills that might promote good character in our students. 


I started to research metacognition in young children because I wanted my students to be aware of their own learning and thinking and take ownership over their own successes.

In a 12th-grade ELA class, I turned a research unit on disaster and apocalyptic fiction into a podcasting unit and tasked my students, 65 percent of whom were English language learners, with becoming media makers for real-world audiences.

For some reason, suffering appeals to my 6th-graders as readers. Because of this consistent interest, each spring I organize book clubs around what I refer to as “social issue” books. This year, I decided to focus exclusively on nonfiction books.