Blogs on Student Engagement

For schools, what is our pearl of great price? Last week, I had the opportunity to learn at the feet of a great man, Jeffrey R. Holland. He was the president of BYU while I attended there, so I also feel some sort of connection. Actually, I was translating from English to Spanish for about a thousand people in the audience. And even though I was busy translating, a few things stuck in my mind during the process; I suppose you could call that learning.

The idea of New Year's Resolutions is very appealing but their success rate is low. Cognitive psychologists know why: Resolutions tend to be too big (like losing 20 pounds), too vague (like getting more sleep), very hard to control (like having less stress), or something the person is ambivalent about (like becoming a healthier eater).

Penny Kittle

Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing is a compelling and seminal work on the practicalities of teaching writing to high school English students from New Hampshire teacher and literacy/instructional coach Penny Kittle. You can also watch the speech she gave when that book earned her the 2009 NCTE Britton Award. I've used the book and accompanying DVD for three years now, and my English education pre-service teachers have called the unequivocally helpful text "warm, inspiring and intelligent," "100 % heart," and hailed the author as "a writer's teacher of writing."

I know that, in my project-based learning classroom, students did presentations all the time for a variety of purposes. One of the key components of a PBL project is the 21st-century skill of presentation or communication. We know that this presentation can take on any number of shapes, from something formal to a podcast or even a poster session. I always struggled with getting quality presentations from my students. I used a variety of teaching techniques and examples, but there is one that I know can really help improve presentation skills: Ignite!