Introducing Universal Themes and Generalizations Generalizations, big ideas, abstractions, universal themes... they are designed to help our gifted students learn. However, what I didn't realize was that they would help me teach!
Graphic Organizers Are Not Final Products Ending with a Venn Diagram is like comparing two vacation spots… but never actually going on the vacation!
What could we do with this Wax Museum event? How one might revamp a "Wax Museum" project into something that focuses more on thinking than product.
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.
Depth and Complexity: The Icons, the Framework, and How to Actually Use Them My biggest problem when implementing Depth and Complexity? I used them in a shallow and simple way!
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.
Group Investigation: Lessons Built on Curiosity John Dewey's Group Investigation is a favorite model of instruction of mine. It's simply built on curiosity!
Sharpening Questions With some small changes, we can turn fluffy opinion questions into thought-provoking evaluation questions.
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.
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!?
