As a kid, I got all the way to the top of Cub Scouts, but I never became a Boy Scout. I quit before I made the jump. Here’s why.
Tagged WithGroups
Practical Tips For Pre-Assessments
I get a lot of questions about the practical details of running pre-assessments and setting up multiple groups in a classroom. I brainstormed a big ol’ list of tips I learned from my own experiments and those of my colleagues.
Smart Kids and the Curse of the Kidney Table
What happens when a student never gets called over to work with the teacher?
Talking Less: Shocking Stats On What Students Can Hear
When you’re up speaking in front of a group, it’s so easy to assume that they’re hanging on your every word. The reality is we are incapable of hearing as fast as people speak. We can’t hear everything someone says, let alone remember, let alone understand.
Fuzzy Problems
Fuzzy Problems are, quite simply, the types of problems we face in our regular lives. Issues that have no best answer and no single path to a solution. Problems that are missing information and require best guesses. They’re the kinds of problems we want our students to grapple with.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Imagine that we all share a common resource, but no one is really in charge. How do we maintain order without an authority? This is a fantastically fuzzy situation for students to dig into.
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.
Communicating Work In Math
Many told me that showing work is important as a way of communicating to an audience. But, whether we realize it or not, the only audience many students are performing for is a test scanner. So let’s give students the chance to actually communicate in math.
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!
Cooperative Exploration In Math With Clues
I’m beginning to teach the dreaded geometry unit featuring complementary, supplementary, adjacent, and vertical angles. Historically a confusing topic, this year is going to be different. I’m going to use a new tactic: cooperative reasoning with a set of “clues.”