Better Teaching

Are Students Thinking or Merely Remembering?

The more I started looking, the more I realized that most of my questions asked students to remember, not actually think.

Why Non-Examples Are As Important As Examples

Providing high-quality exemplars is only half the battle. Serve up a nice and terrible non-example, and you’ll highlight just what makes that great version so great.

Narcissistic Teaching (and how to change it)

I’ve been reading my friends’ dissertations and writing up my discoveries. In this episode, I encounter the term “narcissistic pedagogy” and it rocks my world.

Brain Friendly Puzzlements

I’m reading Teaching With the Brain in Mind and realized how my weekly Puzzlements mailer has some great connections to a brain-friendly classroom! The author, Eric Jensen, writes about creating a safe classroom in which the brain can learn. Here are a few notes I’ve made. Novelty Jensen explains how the brain loves new things. […]

What We Can Learn From Super Mario’s Levels

If the designers have done their jobs, the player should always feel slightly challenged, but never overwhelmed. As teachers, we should aim for the same goal: students who are stimulated but not frustrated.

Abundance or Deficit Thinking?

It’s easy to be miserly and hold onto every resource, thinking it might be the last. But I’ve learned that what I have can grow – when I use it well. The same is true of our classroom resources.

Expectations and Scaffolds

When I see successful lessons, I’m almost always most impressed with how the teacher has set the stage for success. When I look back on my biggest failures, it was almost always a lack scaffolding that caused the problem. Expectations and scaffolds are vital to classroom success.

The Curse Of Knowledge

The Curse of Knowledge: once you know something, it’s hard to think from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know it. And the more you know, the harder it gets.

Talking Less: Two Discussion Tics

Leading discussions is hard work. To grease the wheels, I developed two weird tics: re-stating and repeating louder. Both increase dependency on me, and enable students to become passive listeners.

Non-Examples are as Important as Examples

As teachers, we use tons of examples to illustrate concepts. But an example becomes even more powerful when paired with its opposite: the non-example.