Teaching is a job that never ends, and as a result, it starts to take over every aspect of a teacher’s life. This is bad. You get stressed, which leads to unhealthy behavior, which leads to more stress, and so on! But healthy, happy students need a healthy, happy teacher.
Year: 2015
First Level: 3 Final Ideas
A final wrap up of the First Level series, three ideas from the archives that fit perfectly with setting up a long term goal in the first weeks of school.
First Level: Non-Academic Goals
Do you know what your kids’ goals are beyond grades? Take a few minutes to delve into their lives outside of the classroom.
First Levels: Sentence Starters
As silly as it may sound, providing sentence stems or “fill in the blanks” can give your kids the scaffold they need to achieve a higher level of success.
First Levels: Classroom Layout
One “first level” teachers must carefully prepare is the physical classroom layout.
Advice On Planning From Super Mario’s Creator
“When we’re doing an action game… we begin making level one once everything else is completed.” – Shigeru Miyamoto
7 Ways To Add Complexity
Adjusting a task’s complexity to match a student’s skill is key to success in the classroom, but how can you change the level of complexity?
Small Groups Aren’t Just For Struggling Students
Small groups can both add and reduce complexity to a task. I know that I always let my advanced students just “work on their own.” But think about the power of bringing your five top kids together (even for ten minutes a week) and pushing them a little.
Bad Behavior or Lack of Complexity?
Differentiation means being aware of both a student’s skill and the complexity of a task. And it’s easier to adjust a task in the short term than to change a student’s skill.
Complexity Is A Good Thing
Differentiation is all about balancing the complexity of a task with the skill of the learner.