If you’re like most diligent teachers, you remain alert for visual aids to help you design lessons that will inspire your students to expand their thinking and that will invite them to use a range of ways to show what they’re learning. The verb wheel below is one that you could share with your students and [...]

Looking for a timer for use in class?  See it on the TeachIt webisite under Whizzy Things. So much better than the old-fashioned kitchen timer I’ve always used. You download or use online a timer you can set the tier for seconds, minutes, hours and choose the kind of bell, whistle or other alert or final sounds [...]

  Resources recommended by colleagues.  Enjoy!       From Nancy Patterson, associate professor, College of Education, Grand Valley State University, and coeditor of the Language Arts Journal of Michigan: “Don’t miss these lesson plans from ReadWriteThink: Exploring Reading Strategies by Creating a Soundtrack and  A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed [...]

Starting along the career path as a new teacher, one can avoid pitfalls by following the advice of veterans who have your best interests at heart.  Marsha Ratzel, in this article, “Teaching Secrets: 10 To-Dos for New Teachers,”  writes, “College commencements are in the air, and while the thoughts of some new teacher graduates are [...]

TEACHER MAN, TEACHER MS. Formerly known as “Jock Mackenzie’s Blog” – home for practical teaching ideas

Students learn in different ways.  Teaching them tools to help them organize their thinking and letting them choose the ones that work better for them gives them livelong skills that will serve them well in and out of the classroom, now and when their adults.  This website from Riverside Charter School offers a range of [...]

In this article “The Courage To Blog With Students, “Marsha Ratze, describes the benefits she and her students experienced learning together.  It begins, “When I asked my students recently how blogging in class makes a difference to them, they had lots to say. Blogging has allowed them to meet students from all over the world [...]

    Making Curriculum Pop – A resource sharing community for educators interested in  better practices and teaching with POP culture.          

I’ve found it useful to administer assessments early in the school year to learn more about my students so I can tailor what I must teach in ways the specific students that year learn best.  I’ve discovered, too, that when students recognize that they learn and show learning in different ways, they tend to be [...]

Free blogging sites recommended by Kesha L. Campbell in “New Technologies and the English Classroom” about her work with  Jefferson County High School in Fayette, Mississippi (August, 2011 edition of English Leadership Quarterly.)  “….free websites that can be used for blogging, like edublog.com, teacherlingo.com, and classchatter. com.”