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 [...]

    The holiday season, for many, extends from November through February.  Families will be celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa and the New Year. Writing about holidays is a wonderful way to share cultures in words, pictures, and music.  Yes, holidays also can be an emotionally difficult time for your students.  So, being sensitive to these [...]

With or without using technology, book reports don’t have to be same old, same old, same old thing.   See the NY Times Learning Network for alternative ways to engage students in reading, then writing and talking about books. Remember to include non-fiction titles on your lists of suggested books.

Frank Baker writes about using documentaries in the classroom, “This page is for teachers who may already use documentaries in instruction, or those who wish to begin using them in the classroom. Like all media, documentary producers have a point-of-view and it is up to the audience (our students) to be able to decipher it, deconstruct [...]

Bridging cultural gaps through poetry is one of the goals for teachers around the world.  This website for the The Global Poetry Project  can help you get connected and also can provide an audience for your student writers.

You probably know that students should be improving their digital literacy, but may not be sure which tasks will help them develop and hone those skills.  This Digital Bloom’s Visual chart describes tasks that can lead to increased digital literacy and can be useful to you as you  plan lessons.  I’d also recommend showing the [...]

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 [...]

This book report assignment, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? is a novel way to invite students to write a narrative essay based on two different books or literary works. I first used it with seventh graders as a way to learn more about them at the beginning of the school year when they were asked [...]