Blogs on Upper Elementary (3-5)

According to Robert Marzano's book, Classroom Instruction that Works, 80 percent of what is considered instruction involves asking questions. It makes sense then, that if we want to improve our effectiveness at teaching, of course we would start by improving our questions. I have thought a lot about this topic and I would like to share three specific actions that we can take to improve our questions. To begin with, we need to get students talking rather than the teacher talking. Second, prepare the questions when you plan the lesson. And third, scaffold the questions.

I was a college student the first time I remember hearing about Juneteenth, the annual holiday established to commemorate and celebrate the emancipation of the last African chattel slaves in the United States in the state of Texas.

This Sunday, Father's Day, would have been my father's 92nd birthday. It's a day that reminds me how important it is to show our fathers how much we appreciate them while we have them with us.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to see how well you are doing. You can also draw from some of these as an emotional intelligence-building activity with your students. It might help to refocus their future Father's Days (and yours) toward giving more enduring gifts than typical purchases.

Earlier in the year, I had our middle school Parent/Teacher conferences, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that 99 percent of my students (most of whom are Title I) have a computer in the home. However, there was absolutely no oversight of what was going on with the computer, because the only person who even knew how to turn the computer on, many parents claimed through their translators, was their student. The parents knew nothing of the box in the kid's bedroom.

An online colleague of mine, Patrick Ledesma, recently reminded me of the "door to door" law that states it is the school's responsibility to keep students safe the minute they leave their front door until they return home at the end of the day. However, this law now seems to extend to cyber safety and netiquette, making our responsibility to monitor children greater than ever because their world is now ever wider.