Disclaimer: I know bell ringers and exit tickets aren’t for everyone. I started my teaching career not using them and now they are part of my middle school and on-level high school routine (for time reasons I don’t use them in APUSH). My first year teaching I wasn’t […]
My classroom is a primary source heavy classroom. Sometimes we read through sources and analyze them together, sometimes my kids do it in small groups or pairs, at other times it’s an individual effort, and sometimes I even break the readings up and girls complete different tasks for […]
After years of thinking about it, this summer I finally bought a set of classroom white boards (my largest class is 22 this year so it wasn’t cost prohibitive). Instead of wasting paper and prep time on my end, this year a lot of my quick warm up […]
So it’s a bit more than a month into the school year and too many of our middle schoolers (admittedly mostly 7th and 8th graders, not as many 6th graders) have already been saying: –this is too hard –why do we have to learn this –I can’t read/write […]
It’s always interesting to hear what is and is not taught in various high school history classrooms around the country. One teacher might spend 3 weeks on Civil Rights, another only 1 week. One might discuss the Cambodian Genocide and another might not. I know it is a […]
I’ve always heard mixed reviews over the years about the value, or lack thereof, in showing videos in class. Teachers (and parents even!) have said it’s a cop-out, it’s the teacher being lazy, or even that it’s a sign of the teacher not knowing enough about the topic […]
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I like to keep myself and my students on our toes by not getting into an activities rut. Today I’m sharing 3 of my favorite ways to review a topic. You can read about some of my other go-to “get students engaged” strategies and […]
I tend to treat the first day back after Christmas break like the first day of school. For one thing, if I’m teaching semester long classes, I will I have whole new groups of students so for them it really IS their first day with me and we […]
Every year without fail, by the second week of school I’m referring to my students as “my kids” to my friends and family. It almost happens without my realizing it, because to me it’s totally natural. I never really gave much thought to it, then I started seeing […]
Let’s be real, not every teacher loves every part of the content area they teach, at least not that I’ve seen, and certainly not me. So then the question is, how do you put on the excited face for a topic you’re less than thrilled about and keep […]
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