Making the Most of These Days

Creating lessons for the last few weeks of school that [continue] to engage students bent on celebrating the joys of summer [is] no easy task. A teacher really has to bring his or her A-game.

On the Verge of Wrapping It Up

Yes, unless you teach in a year-round school, that part of the academic year when you start looking at ways to wrap it up is here (or coming very soon).

This Is Your Brain on Awesome, Part 2

I introduced you to the first five of Louis Cozolino’s “Nine Things Educators Need to Know About the Brain.” An article excerpted from Cozolino’s book, The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom, appeared at the Greater Good blog. Here are the remaining four insights from Cozolino…

Why Not Talk About Homework?

The debate that never ends: homework. How much is too much? Is it even necessary? Is it effective? Does it cause you too much grief? Have you ever unintentionally used it as a punishment? Does your school or district have a policy that requires you to assign homework?

Logophiles Anonymous

[Were] it not for the gentle prodding of this editor’s editor, my blog posts would be rife with multisyllabic words that might have some among you running either to the dictionary or simply away from the Upper Grades Exchange. So you can imagine how much I enjoyed teaching middle school vocabulary classes! (Ask me sometime about the one occasion when I told my eighth graders it was time for them to go masticate in the cafeteria.)

What Traits Must a Teacher Have?

I’d like to hear from you. Would you provide one, two, or three of the top traits you think every teacher should have? Let’s compile a list and see if we can create the Nearly Perfect Teacher!

Dr. Seuss in the Upper Grades

We’re just a few days away from Dr. Seuss’s birthday, March 2, and how are we to mark this special day in English literature when the good doctor is too often thought of as a “wee kiddies” author? Get your upper grades students into the spirit of Seuss not as readers, but as writers!

Surviving Math No-Man’s-Land

This is why I like the new Fold & Go: Math books from The Mailbox, even as a hardened lover-of-words and disliker-of-math. These new books help educators meet Common Core State Standards, which should be immensely helpful. Plus they contain 36 already-laminated booklets that make the journey to math understanding one that is student driven.

February Writing Prompts

To give you a bit of breathing room and ease the stress on your lesson planning, here are some writing prompts from The Mailbox for February.

An Extended Fish Analogy

Let’s say you catch a fish. We’ll designate this particular fish as being a westslope cutthroat trout… but it really doesn’t matter what kind of fish you’re seeing in your head. You’ve caught it. It’s a mature fish. It’s spent a good deal of its life in the water. Now, suddenly, it is out of water.