Blogs on Best Practices

Organized debates are an engaging way to help students discover, explore and organize ideas during the writing process. However, neither my teacher colleagues nor students share my enthusiasm. To find out why, I asked how they felt about using debate in the classroom. Here were their responses:

Early in the school year, Mr. Spriggs asked me to sit in on a conference with his most challenging student. Jon rarely participated appropriately in class, instead drawing attention to himself by "accidentally" dropping books, suddenly having coughing spells and loudly expelling air from either end. It was considered a relative victory when his disinterest expressed itself more quietly through slouched shoulders, bored yawns and feigned sleep.

Worksheets matter! I know we hear a lot of talking points that tell us to get rid of them, but I think it's much more complicated than that. That call for "no more worksheets" comes from a place where that is all there is. By that I mean classrooms where students do nothing but worksheets. Often these worksheets are de-contextualized from relevant work, and this is where there's an opportunity to reframe and refine the traditional worksheet. There is a time and place for drill and practice or individual practice -- even in a PBL project. The key is to make it appropriate and relevant.

For Your Eyes Only

It is a little known fact that Santa has an entire division of elves who focus on educators. They are known as ELFS (Elves Love Following Schoolteachers). These ELFS spend their days tracking down educators to make sure they are being nice. When a teacher is naughty or nice, they make note of it and send it to the ELFS database for the computers to sort out. Another little known fact: Google’s algorithm for searches is based on the ELFS computer system at the North Pole.