Skip to main content

Start the Year With a Priming Plan

In the Future-Powered Classroom (the next generation of the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom )students take charge of their own learning, guided by a masterful teacher who puts a bridge in place to ensure their success. That first week or two of school is your opportunity to prime your students for success in your classroom. The Priming […]

From Problem-Based Learning to Performance-Based Assessment

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 […]

The Sounds of Engagement: What Learning Looks and Feels Like

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 […]

5 Strategies for Leveraging Neurodiversity in the Classroom

In the blockbuster The Imitation Game, Alan Turing is stigmatized as arrogant and apathetic. In a classroom, children labeled with these characteristics are less likely to be authentically engaged. Their education and career opportunities become limited as a result. However, when we shift our mindsets and frame those characteristics as self-aware and passionate (for Turing, […]

Remote Teaching — But Not Like Spring!

With COVID cases on the rise, many schools are returning to remote instruction, at least through mid-January, as a “pause,” as one district put it. Last spring was a very trying time, and not a lot went well, but it’s important to realize that you have the opportunity to #DoSomethingDifferent and ROCK remote learning! My […]