Today, I have a reading comprehension sort of question. One of the bigger shifts in language arts courtesy of the Common Core state standards is the move away from fiction texts toward more focus on nonfiction texts. As a lover of the expository essay (and as someone who wishes he could write a whole lot…
Data Driven Decision Making
Math at the Core
Okay, class, raise your hand if you’re implementing Common Core State Standards for Math this school year. Hmmmm, that’s an impressive show of hands. (I assume.) Here at The Mailbox, we’ve been keeping a close eye on the similarities and changes coming to the upper grades courtesy of Common Core. We’re aligning our upper grades…
More on Teachers, Students, and Technology
Sometime back in the 16th century, a Saxon nobleman was heard to declare, “The future is digital!” A few years later, in 2011, The Mailbox responded with our first mobile app, Holidays and Seasonal Celebrations. In 2012, still hearing the clarion call of that prescient aristocrat, we added Kids in the Kitchen and Seasonal Songs….
What’s Your Learning Style?
When do you stop learning? At the end of the day, when you’ve left your classroom and set aside the last papers to be graded, are you done learning? Or maybe you consider yourself an autodidact—a self-taught person forever searching out new things to learn, new things to know, new concepts to understand, new philosophies…
My Idea for Rating Teacher Effectiveness
Gathered around the teachers’ dining table, you could feel the anxiety some of us had. To others, the impending event was like water off a duck’s back. It was time for classroom observations. The first time the principal told me she was coming to observe my classroom was almost enough to keep me awake nights….
Singing the Common Core Blues?
Was I destined to end up working for The Mailbox? That’s hard to say. Destiny is a difficult subject. Are teachers destined to always have to create their own supplemental materials? If I lingered around my blog for a few minutes, I bet I’d be able to make out many grumblings. With the emergence of…
Teachers Expect the Unexpected
That’s right, my first major assignment of the day today was killing a rather sizable spider stalking a coworker. Let’s not debate whether the spider could have been captured and released into the wild. I believe this big creepy-crawly had been born in captivity, as it were, a lifelong resident of the nooks and crannies…
Easing Parent Concerns Over Common Core
Last night I attended my youngest son’s first-grade open house. It was held in the school’s media center (what we used to call a library), not in the classrooms, and served as more of an explanation about the differences between kindergarten and first grade than a meet-and-greet. The open house introduced me to a first-grade…
What Would a Teacher Do?
Sometimes I can go on a tear and have something that I want to write about here at the Exchange just about every single day. Then we have a stretch like this recent one, where I go missing for a week and a half. What’s brought me back is another number. The number is 15,800,000,000….
857 Is 857 Too Many
One topic that elementary school teachers don’t have to contend with is dropouts. Either a child is getting to school or she isn’t. By and large, the same goes for middle school. Elementary and middle school students are not legally allowed to make their own decisions about their schooling. Parents and guardians do that. I…