How long should we wait after asking a question? I might ask the best questions in the world, but if I don't give students even three seconds to think, those questions aren't doing their job. Here's what we know about Wait Time.
Make A *Better* Calendar! The calendar is a source of fantastic factoring problems with many social studies add-ons. Why 12 months? Why 30 (or 31 or 28) days? Why are weeks 7 days long? Why don't they fit into the months (or the year!)? Why did we do this to ourselves!?
Going Beyond “Define These Terms In Your Own Words” "Define these terms in your own words" may contain depth and complexity… but it's neither deep nor complex!
Focus on Thinking, Not the Product When I was a new teacher, you would have seen some pretty fancy products hanging in my room, but if you stopped to consider how my kids thought about the content... well, often my students just restated facts that I had already told them.
Four Types of Questions You Can Ask Asking questions is such a basic tool of teaching, yet how many of us have ever been taught to ask good questions? In this opening to a series about questioning, we'll explore how to get students asking each other questions.
Sharpening Questions With some small changes, we can turn fluffy opinion questions into thought-provoking evaluation questions.
Matching Flowers and Pollinators How to add a couple of Analyze-level tasks to this Synthesize activity.
Graphic Organizers Are Not Final Products Ending with a Venn Diagram is like comparing two vacation spots… but never actually going on the vacation!
Concept Formation: A Model for Inductive Thinking Here's are the steps for running an inductive lesson based on Hilda Taba's model of Concept Formation. Plus a sample lesson about the Nile River.
Lunar Survival Skills We're supposed to rank fifteen items according to usefulness if we were stranded on the light-side of the moon. The items range from pistols to powdered milk. Some seem useful, but are actually worthless while others seem unnecessary on earth, but are actually vital when stuck on the moon. However, the structure of the activity as a website is not optimal. Let's improve this and make it an awesome problem–solving exercise for our class.
