Category Archives: Classroom

Remembering important teachers, part 2: It’s all about the food!

Here are recollections about important teachers from my friend Isabel McLean, who’s a lead instructional coach at Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia. See Isabel’s blog here. As the new school year begins, it seems the right time to reflect … Continue reading

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Remembering important teachers, part 1

As a sort of end-of-summer, getting-ready-for-school series, I asked friends to tell me about a teacher that they had sometime during their K-12 tenure that made a positive impression on them – an impression that’s lasted, for whatever reason. Here’s … Continue reading

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The last two weeks of school: Limping to the end

Back in this post, I talked about students undertaking year-end culminating performance assessments, to bind together what they learned over the course of a semester, even a year, and to present that work to an audience, preferably in a real-world … Continue reading

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Developing good question-askers

I’ve been mucking around with the Common Core State Standards and have fixated on this English/language arts standard, part of the speaking and listening standards for grades 9 and 10: SL.9-10.1c: Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that … Continue reading

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Watching Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet

A few weeks ago we watched Baz Luhrmann’s version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and it was as I remembered it: Just a hoot. So over the top, with slow motion, fast motion, quick cuts, and wonderfully explosive performances, particularly … Continue reading

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Digital resources in the classroom

I had a revelation the other day, when I was observing a 7th grade math class. The teacher broke up the class into small groups, and while one group went to work with her at her table, others went off … Continue reading

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