Education Articles for Teachers & Educators

Getting the most from peer reviews in your classroom? Stretch your investment through Growth Mindset in 4 steps—or use these free resources—to boost the benefit for you and your students.

How might some of your students benefit if they could mentally solve math problems quicker and with more confidence, all while clearly explaining their thinking and strategies? It all starts in the first ten minutes of your math lesson with a Number Talk! This article will show you how you can implement Number Talks with your students in as little as five steps, as well as provide example routines and problems that are ready to be used in your next math lesson.

When you want your students to engage in lively discussion, choosing the right format makes all the difference. Use Round Table Circles, a powerful tool that will keep your students engaged.

Grouping students during the practice phase of your lesson can have many benefits. Students often like to talk and interact with their peers, and this gives them an excellent opportunity to practice what they are learning. However, many questions can arise when it comes to grouping your students. How should you group them? How can you implement grouping quickly and effectively, so you aren’t wasting class time?

Every teacher struggles from time to time with the art of closing a lesson effectively. We all know the importance of wrapping up the lesson, linking it to prior knowledge, and building anticipation for the next lesson. Ideally, that daily wrap-up should include some quick from of assessment or check for understanding that you can use to inform your instruction for the next day. One quick and effective way to do just that is through the use of an exit ticket.

After reading this article, readers will understand the three critical steps of backwards design in lesson planning, as well as the rationale behind it. They will be able to work through those three steps in order to plan a lesson or series of lessons for any upcoming unit.

Many people often think that a formal assessment is a sufficient way to check their students’ understanding. While these assessments are certainly useful to determine your students’ level of content mastery at the end of a unit, checking for understanding is something that should happen regularly throughout a lesson.

If you are fortunate enough to work in a co-teaching situation, we encourage you to try station teaching and/or alternative teaching as instructional models. Station teaching is perfect for when you want to implement a variety of learning activities, and alternative teaching is an excellent method of differentiating instruction for two groups working at different academic levels.

Have you heard of inquiry-based learning, but weren't really sure what it entailed? Have you tried to implement it in your classroom, but not sure if you’re hitting the mark? Read on to find out the difference between true inquiry and flawed inquiry.

The key to success for all students is easier than you might think! Designing a differentiated classroom is one of the most impactful ways to progress the learning of each and every child. Today’s classroom is more diverse than ever before which is why it is crucial for educators to implement differentiation strategies that address each child’s readiness, interests, and learning profile. Learn how you can simply and effectively help your students on their road to success through differentiation in your classroom.

Identifying and writing the letters of the alphabet is a foundational step in every learner’s literacy knowledge. There are countless ways to practice these skills and it can be challenging to know which ones are most effective and engaging. We’ve explored hundreds of strategies and decided on our top 4 favorite ones. These engaging activities will give your young learners plenty of opportunities to grow their alphabet knowledge and practice identifying, writing, and using letters in a variety of ways.

Keep in mind as you read, we have also provided a number of great free resources below to help you teach your students the alphabet.  We will discuss each resource in this article, so please take a look at these tools as you read!  So, here we go!

It is now independent practice time for your lesson, and to an outside observer it appears that students are silent, working hard, and grappling with task at hand.  All looks well, but how do know that students are actually mastering the material they are working on and will be ready for your planned exit ticket or mini assessment?

This is where Active Monitoring comes in.  One of the major responsibilities of a teacher during independent work is to actively gather real-time, objective-aligned data that will enable direct action when student misconceptions are identified. A more focused, strategic example of Active Monitoring, Aggressive Monitoring, can be highly effective in catching student misunderstandings and ensuring student mastery prior to the actually assessment.  In this article, we will provide a detailed overview of how to use Aggressive Monitoring in your classroom.