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!
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.
Beware “Real World Problems” Why I stopped looking for “real world” problems and started aiming for “interesting.” The real world is often tedious and annoying. Interesting never is!
Thinking Hats and Lunar Survival Skills How Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats helped me solve a problem with my favorite group discussion task.
Why I don’t include “Explain Why” in Questions I used to think that adding "explain why" to the end of a question somehow made it higher-level. But now I see two problems in asking students to "explain their thinking".
The Original Puzzlement: A Zoetrope As teachers, I spend a ton of time searching for inspiration to enliven my lessons. But sometimes, inspiration hits as soon as you leave the desk and books behind. Friday my wife and I took a trip to Disneyland and saw this unbelievable (literally, it seems like magic) intersection of art & technology.
Evaluate with Academic Tournaments The bracketed tournament isn't just for college basketball. Set up a tournament to determine best president, state, element, or literary character and challenge your students to make interesting judgements.
Synthesize: Make A Change, Explain The Effect I love the term "Synthesize" from the classic Bloom's Taxonomy, but it can be hard to know exactly what it looks like. My favorite "Synthesize Recipe" is to ask students to make a change to existing content and then explain the effects of that change to me.
An Academic Twist on Valentines Want to have some February fun? Let's merge the idea of "going together like milk and cookies" with curriculum to create Academic Valentine's Day cards!
Ask Them Which Is Better Moving from analysis to evaluation sure makes things more fun. Why? Check out these examples. Which would you rather answer?
