Whether your students spend the day with you in an elementary classroom, rotate through periods, or move through 80-minute blocks, the question is the same: Is every minute actually working for learning? “Bell to bell.” You’ve heard it. Maybe you’ve said it. The idea is that every minute of class time should count: no dead […]
PBL Is Right for the Brain, Gen Z, the Alpha Generation, and You! How will you engage today’s students? Problem-, project-, place-, phenomena-, profession-, and pursuit-based learning . . . you pick one of the 6 Ps of PBL; your students will thank you. Solving real-world, authentic problems is engaging and lends itself to individualized […]
If You Give a Kid a Real-World Problem If you want to engage students, offer them a real-world problem to solve! (See my blog: “If You Give a Kid a Real-World Problem.”) A compelling problem will drive them into the curriculum; they’ll have a “felt need” to learn! And in our technologically advanced world, they […]
When information lives online, application must live in the mind. That single reality changes everything about school. For centuries, teachers have been seen as repositories of information, passing along the information that students need to know. Teachers deliver lessons, students absorb content, and success often means recall. In the past, without school, you had little […]
What does engagement sound like? Allowing students to have a say in their work is not enough to build engagement. Adam Fletcher writes a great blog on engagement, including this entry: voice and engagement are not the same. In the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom (described in my books, Students Taking Charge), engagement refers to the state […]