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"Some nights, it's like you can't get your brain to shut up long enough for you to fall asleep. You're mentally reviewing the day you just completed while also previewing the day ahead; sometimes, your mind may even reach way back into the archives and pull up something embarrassing you did back in high school. So fun! Racing thoughts can be a sign of a serious mental health condition like anxiety. But these nights also happen to everyone from time to time -- and once we're too old for bedtime stories, it's not always clear what to do. There's no one solution that will work for everybody, of course, so instead, we've rounded up suggestions from eight sleep experts. At the very least, it's something to read next time you can't sleep"

"Helping children visualize math is critical to their success in the subject. I recently observed a 5th grade class starting a lesson on area and perimeter. I turned to a girl who was in my class four years earlier and reminded her that she knew the topic. "Yes I do!" she said excitedly. "The perimeter is where you sit along the outside of the rug in morning meeting, and area is the inside of the rug, where the squares are. That's from 1st grade," she said confidently, circling her fingers in the air to represent her thinking. Visual cues, like this one I use with my six- and seven-year-old students, stick and show that envisioning math helps children learn in lasting ways. We teachers can do more to give students internal ways to see the structure of mathematics-to understand types of units and what it means to move between them, and to pull apart and combine numbers. But math instruction is changing. At my school, in the early grades, we encourage children to use their fingers, something that feels so natural to them, to better understand numbers and the numbering system. We might talk about how a "high five" involves using a whole hand, which is really a unit made up of five fingers; while a thumbs-up involves just one segment of that five-part unit. We then go on to using things like beads on a string and, later, place-value disks, which are like poker chips, to help children see and work with numbers, units, and place value."

"It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that libraries are important. I'm going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things."

TubeQuizard - YouTube based grammar and vocab quizzes https://t.co/MpLY7z1Dbi #elt #esl #tesol #tefl #eal #ell… https://t.co/cxbUGN2jTc RT @NikPeachey: TubeQuizard - YouTube based grammar and vocab quizzes https://t.co/MpLY7z1Dbi #elt #esl #tesol #tefl #eal #ell…

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"Towards the end of last school year, one of my students came up with one of my favorite design challenges:  Make a creature that does something.  That's it.  This prompt wins for simplicity and the designs that people come up with for it are always amazing. "

"Stories are an entertaining way to introduce or reinforce computer science concepts and help students to understand abstract concepts in a more concrete way. Do you read picture books, chapter books, or short stories to your students in computer science classes? I do. The easiest way to get started is with books that are specifically written to teach CS concepts."

This year is the fiftieth birthday of Harvard's Project Zero, a research project designed to explore the nature of thinking and learning and from this suggest pedagogies which align with what we know about the mind. For its birthday celebration Project Zero shared insights from its five decades of research with presentations from Howard Gardner, David Perkins, Shari Tasman, Steve Seidel and Daniel Wilson. The presentations revealed the changing nature of the work of Project Zero from its early days and focus on arts education to its current position as a research organisation with broad interests across education but with a focus on thinking, understanding and the workings of the mind.

"More and more we communicate through video. And I'll bet you know the feeling when you record that very effective screencast or tutorial, and it just doesn't feel ready for primetime. Post-production is what makes your media feel professional and done. But not everyone has access to, or the chops to use, a robust video editor like Final Cut Pro or Adobe After Effects. And not everyone wants to spend the arduous time it sometimes takes to make a video product feel professionally spiffy. Typito is a relatively new video editing tool designed to be your time-saving, affordable, post-production friend.  It allows even rookie editors to create a little magic on top of the videos they shoot or collect."

"If your school doesn't teach a course about personal economics, there are many online sites that address the topic as mini-lessons. Some are narrative; others games. Here are fifteen I like. See if one suits you (check here for updates on links):"

This week I joined with teachers, students, researchers and policy writers at Melbourne University to discuss student voice. This conference was hosted by Social Education Victoria and made possible by the conference partners, The University of Melbourne, Education and Training Victoria, Foundation for Young Australians and Connect. Over three days, participants engaged in rigorous dialogue about the significance of student voice and what is required to ensure its benefits are maximised for all.