We Are the Change We Need

Every Tuesday educators from all over the world use a Twitter tool known as a hashtag to participate in online discussions. Every Monday the moderators post a list of questions for discussion that educators vote on and the topic with the most votes becomes the topic for Tuesday. A hastag in Twitter starts with a …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/02/10/we-are-the-change-we-need/

What Does Good Teaching Look Like?

I’m looking for help from my incredible PLN. My district’s tech committee has been meeting this year and we’re looking to revamp our technology vision and mission. One thing that has come up at these tech meetings is that before we can decide what direction to take with tech we need to define how we …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/02/06/what-does-good-teaching-look-like/

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/31/uploading-photos-with-the-ipad/

Whiteboarding in Science

Even after almost convincing my 8th graders that air had no mass I still moved them forward and hope that they remember all the different gasses that make up our air and how each gas has an atomic weight, which would lead to the reasonable connection that air does have mass. It is, after all, …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/28/whiteboarding-in-science/

6th grade Water Quality

Back in mid-November I wrote about how my students were using technology as tool in reference to the addition of iPads into my classroom. I was able to purchase 12 iPads with funds from Learn & Serve America. My 6th graders have been studying the water quality of our neighborhood creek, Chimacum Creek, for over …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/28/6th-grade-water-quality/

Sometimes Science Lessons Just Go Wrong

Balanced Balloons

My Science PLC has a few concepts that we have been reviewing with our students in grades 6 – 12 for the past few years. One of those concepts was brought to us by one of our high school teachers because she noticed that her students were having difficulty with conceiving of air as having …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/22/sometimes-science-lessons-just-go-wrong/

Making a Case Against High Stakes Testing

What if you had the chance to speak to your state’s legislators and help them understand some of the finer points of why high stakes standardized testing, especially when your state doesn’t even have a handle on which test are aligned to which set of standards, just isn’t a good idea? Well, one of our …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/21/making-a-case-against-high-stakes-testing/

Lessons I’ve learned from my Student’s Blogs

This is a post that I wrote when Joe Bower, who teaches middle school aged children in Alberta, Canada, asked me if I would write a guest post on his blog (see it here – Joe has an incredible blog where he writes often about changing education for the better). I jumped at the chance …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/21/lessons-ive-learned-from-my-students-blogs/

Awards, Grades and Competition

I’ve been reading some great blogs and comments challenging some of schools most treasured traditions. Within my classroom and with the support of my principal I was able to abolish grades in an effort to support student learning. I try to foster cooperation in my classes because we are, after all, learning the same things. …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/15/awards-grades-and-competition/

Time Well Spent

Vernier LabQuests

Yesterday I was getting some materials ready for my 6th grade Science classes and I noticed how much I enjoyed doing that instead of grading. Had I spent that time reading student work to give them points or a letter grade then I would have postponed replacing the batteries in our 10 LabQuest handheld probe …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2011/01/04/time-well-spent/

Load more