Get Students Out Of Creative Ruts Sometimes students need a little structure to force them into a more creative state of mind. Here are a few ideas for interesting writing prompts
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.
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!
Multiple Perspectives Gone Mad!! Yes, I actually gave my students this question: "How could two experts’ 👓 perspectives regarding information from this reading selection differ from one another?" yikes.
Start A Lesson With A Music Video I love collecting intriguing images and videos – things that stop me in my tracks and pique my curiosity. I always figure that if it fascinates me, students would probably be interested also. Often, these visuals work as wonderful hooks for a lesson you need to teach.
Create A Holiday Take students beyond the decorations and ask them to identify what a holiday reveals about a culture's values. Then, push them further as they develop their own holidays.
Divergent Questions (How To Ask ‘Em) How to ask Divergent Questions and ensure that your students are thinking rather than merely remembering.
From Silent Reading To Creating Art I've been continuing the idea to explore classic music during silent reaing, and incorporated Gustav Holsts' "The Planets." My students, who have an affinity for memorizing gods and goddesses, took a special interest in this idea. I figured, let's see how far their interests will take us?
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?
Enrichment Must Prompt Thinking Enrichment is not merely about doing fun things. It should never be just a project-of-the-week. It must be about getting students thinking in new and interesting ways. Here's how!
