Teacher to teacher

When I became a New York City public school teacher three years ago, I was shocked to discover our high school didn’t have a newspaper. So this past January, I turned my 11th-grade ELA class into the school’s newsroom.

Do you want to help your students explore their interests and extend their learning beyond a scripted curriculum? Consider trying inquiry-based investigations in your early childhood classroom.

In my 3rd-grade classroom, my students use thinking maps — which are not graphic organizers! — to represent their ideas. Each type of thinking map connects a basic cognitive skill with a visual representation.


To help my students grow as writers and community members, I teach the art of letter writing to my 2nd-graders.

Life in a classroom can be chaotic, stressful and unpredictable. I try to set up clear expectations for my pre-K students about how to handle stressful moments.

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.