Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash My students love debating, but the conversations often stall when it comes to addressing environmental solutions. The discomfort experienced in this moment can be attributed to missing opportunities for discussing and practicing climate stewardship. Navigating unfamiliar language associated with environmental problem-solving can reinforce the sense that weighing environmental solutions […]
“How do you know what you’re going to do until you do it?” The Catcher in the Rye nearly concludes on that question as Holden Caulfield embarks on an uncertain, perhaps tentatively hopeful, future. In the classroom, we could adapt his question to ask: “How will we know how this turns out until we try […]
Sometime during the first week of school this year, I taped this note to my desk: I wanted this year to be different. Not just different than the last few years of COVID School, but different than all the other years of my teaching that valued efficiency and productivity almost above all. (I love efficiency. […]
This month @mrsablund gives you an awesome community writing event to give you a spark to your writing classroom and more than a handful of ideas to use tomorrow. Special thanks this month to @writeoutconnect #writeout @writingproject
When students are asked to introduce themselves in writing, it can be difficult figuring out the best way to stage this encounter between self and stranger, writer and audience. For my seniors who are drafting college application essays, the first attempt is often characterized by tentatively offered assertions about their motives for applying, or the […]
Sodium Polyacrylate In science, my 4th graders are learning about the Law of Conservation of Matter after about a week of reviewing ideas around solids, liquids, and gases. Instead of doing the classic cornstarch and water lab, I decided to try something new this time around. If you go online, you can find packets of […]
Abigail takes us through a mentor text which has endless amount of uses. She gives you a quick guide to this perfect personification mentor and hopes you will try it out too.
One of my biggest challenges as a teacher is getting students to feel connected to history. To them, especially at the middle school age, history might as well be the Milky Way– kids are told that it’s real and that they are a part of it, but the scope of history often has such galactical […]
A Brief Podcasting Primer If you don’t already know what a podcast is, it’s basically a radio show that people can stream or download to their own devices. It’s like listening to radio a la carte in that you can pick and choose what episodes you want to listen to–and you have the power to […]
Between this post and my last, a war began. And we shouldn’t be surprised. Like the rise of Nazi Germany after WWI, the conflict in Ukraine has been building for more than twenty years. Putin and his post-Soviet ancestors have been playing a game of Hungry Hippos with the Ukraine and former Soviet satellite states […]
moving writers 