Group items tagged

"Another idea in our Skills and Strategies series, the Four-Corners technique can be used by any teacher on any level with any material - it's all in how you craft it. Below, you'll find a description of the strategy and several suggestions for putting it together with Times content. Have you tried Four Corners, or something like it? How did it go? Let us know in the comments."

"At the time of this writing, we are in the second year of a sixth-grade project-based learning program in a public school setting. In our two years of working to implement PBL, we have fielded a multitude of questions ranging from positive support to queries about the efficacy of policies that we feel best support PBL (grading for mastery, group work, etc.). Our experiences have taught us that district administration can fill three distinct roles to help streamline the PBL implementation process, which we'll discuss in this post."

"Many students face the same strange situation when learning to read. There are plenty of hours allotted for reading instruction-far more than for writing, science, art, or even math-yet a child can go through an entire day without holding an actual book in her hands."

"3. Atop the Mountain, Into the Sea On the board, I draw a picture of a mountain overlooking the sea. A lone figure stands perched atop the mountain's summit and another swims among the waves below."

"A recent New Yorker article entitled "Groupthink" takes a fascinating look at the concept of brainstorming. According to author Jonah Lehrer, brainstorming was introduced in the late 1940s as a creativity-inducing practice by advertising guru Alex Osborn in his book Your Creative Power. The book was a surprise bestseller, and Osborn's ideas about brainstorming, according to Lehrer, became "the most widely used creativity technique in the world." Whether in business, politics, entertainment, or education, group-thinking was and still is regarded as the ultimate path to ingenuity and productivity."

"Grade Essays Faster - "Impossible!" you say? Look, we can't grade the essays for you, but we can reduce the repetitive, inefficient manual labor involved - and in doing so we open up a new world of invaluable student data. Welcome to the future."

"As seventh grade students at Mt. Ararat Middle School finish reading a memoir by a former Afghan refugee, they had an opportunity to delve deeper into the narrative Friday by communicating electronically with one of the key characters via Skype. Using Skype, an online videoconferencing tool, the students conversed with Alyce Litz, who plays a prominent role in the book "The Other Side Of The Sky: A Memoir" by Farah Ahmedi. The book was previously published in 2005 as "The Story Of My Life, An Afghan Girl On The Other Side Of The Sky."