Reflections on Teaching

I like to think this blog is pretty ecclectic (although this may be self-delusion on my part). I’ve gotten positive responses to a variety of different posts over the last few weeks from ones where I blogged about brain science and the education of children in poverty (wow, that sounds way too passive — how [...]

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This is a weird couple of weeks because we have parent conferences (with minimum days) backing up onto the Thanksgiving Holiday. My district is one of the few in the area that still has kids come in during Thanksgiving week, so there is this funny 2-day dog-leg of a week. The schedule is all mucked [...]

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As I’m starting new units, one of them has offered examples of both success and failure, and some lessons for me. This isn’t one of those big “ah ha’s” but one of those smaller moments of enlightenment that make up the day-to-day practice of teaching, and improving that practice.
The unit is on Astronomy which we [...]

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Between a bought with a cold and new units to set up at work, I’ve gotten behind in my posting, and for this I apologize. Lot’s of interesting things are taking place.
Self-Control Unit for upper grade
I will come back to this unit over time between other units.  The latest thing I was doing with students [...]

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This week, at Larry Ferlazzo’s prompting, I did lessons on self-control with my upper-grade students (fourth through sixth or age 9 – 12).
Lesson One: I started off by recreating the Mischel “Marshmallow” experiment. I told students that I would give them three skittles or M & Ms,  and that if they didn’t eat any of [...]

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Lots of stuff happening, and a lot has been coming together is some really nice ways. No major complaints this week.
First up, second graders continued work on their story telling unit (Sharing Stories in Open Court Reading). I started a VoiceThread where I asked students to share lessons learned from the fairytale we watched (Red [...]

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The week went well in general. I’m feeling like I have the basics down in general, but…some of my lessons have been off and need adjustment.
What worked
Sixth Graders did work setting goals. They had already written goals the prior week. This time, I had them view Wil E Coyote, The Fast and the Fury-ous, to [...]

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from eggman’s photostream on flickr
Well, this is a very overdue post. I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging in August. A bunch of posts got started but haven’t gone anywhere. It’s not like there is a dearth of subject matter for me to write about, both in terms of my own professional life, and education [...]

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