Why I Stopped Criticizing Common Core Math

…that celebrities and comedians like to paint a picture of students using number parts and number lines as adults, (ahem–Stephen Colbert) and I laugh right along with them…because using those…

Solving the Hand Raising Problem

…that receives a large number of responses, I’ll compile the best answers to create a helpful blog post. That way your great ideas won’t get lost in Facebook land!  …

How to Get Started with Boom Cards

…Where to Find Interactive Boom Cards I LOVE creating Boom Cards because the interactive features make it easy to design cards with clickable multiple-choice answers, fill in the blank questions,…

Fostering a Growth Mindset with Brain Bucks

…Catching ME in a mistake and being brave enough to tell me Showing persistence and a willingness to try multiple strategies Choosing a difficult assignment when there was an easier…

10 Ways to Power Up Any Lesson and Maximize Learning

…writing, written reflections, written explanations). Ask Open-Ended Questions Instead of asking multiple choice or true/false questions, ask open ended questions that require complete sentence answers. Incorporate Cooperative Learning Cooperative learning…

Teaching Kids How to Have REAL Discussions

…others. Model the three parts of a linked response described above. Next, students can create paper chain links to model how speakers often have multiple discussion threads going at the…

Exploring the Scientific Method with Toy Cars

…shared hypotheses. In groups, they discussed how the experiment should be set up. I loved hearing many of my students insist on performing multiple trials. We came back together to…