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If a school were to alter their approach for teaching boys, a priority would have to be placed on hands-on experiences, constructing knowledge at their pace, and not placing such a premium on assignment deadlines or the printed and written word.

Another idea is to allow students to dictate their writing using voice recognition software. This circumvents the oft-cited complaint of boys that they hate the physical act of putting words on paper. This deficit is supported by research that shows boys develop more slowly than girls in fine motor skills, a critical skill for writing.

we need to rebuild schools and make them more accommodating for how boys learn.

Teachers are, by nature, protective of their practice and their space. In this way, even before I enter a teacher's room, I must establish the requisite rapport to garner the invitation. From there, the teacher picks the class, the day, and the time. Then she gives me a sense of what she's doing, has just finished, or will be doing soon. Finally, I show up and get to work.

Ultimately, I had no idea if anyone would invite me in. Moreover, I didn't know if the lessons would work once I was invited. What I learned, however, is that only the former matters. Like an educational grandparent, if I show up and the lesson bombs, I get to leave and let the teacher move on without me. But the fact that teachers are willing to give up control of their rooms -- to an administrator -- without so much as a hint about what will happen when I get there, well, that's how I know the flashes are working.

For all but one, I admit to having only a Google-search-based knowledge of the content, yet teachers keep inviting me in

handwriting appears to focus classroom attention and boost learning in a way that typing notes on a keyboard does not, new studies suggest.

Students who took handwritten notes generally outperformed students who typed their notes via computer, researchers at Princeton University and the University of California at Los Angeles found.

Compared with those who type their notes, people who write them out in longhand appear to learn better, retain information longer, and more readily grasp new ideas

What were the bright spots of the project? Have you asked students for feedback? What will they remember most about their learning experience? What seemed hardest for them? Were they engaged all the way through? If not, can you pinpoint when and why their interest waned? Were you able to scaffold the experience so that all learners could be successful? What would you change if you were to do this project again?

What's the right line between teacher direction and student freedom? Is it OK for students to swerve toward new questions -- unanticipated by the teacher -- that grab their curiosity? How open is too open?

This formula -- the introduction of a thinking routine to stimulate observations and questions at the beginning of each new topic, the formulation of an inquiry-based investigation from those observations and questions, and the subsequent rounds of writing, critique, and rewriting -- essentially became the working formula for the rest of the school year.

ProfHacker has written quite a bit about the app and their post “GoogleDocs and Collaboration in the Classroom” is chock-full of links to various tips and useful ideas. Getting Smart’s “6 Powerful Google Docs Features to Support the Collaborative Writing Process” provides an excellent step-by-step guide to using Google Docs especially for collaborative writing. And for a basic overview of Google Docs’ features and potential uses, you can browse through this slideshow:

I have asked my Basic English Skills students to keep a daily journal (which can be on anything they wish to write about and functions to help them build their writing muscles) in Google Docs, which they’ve only shared with me. Besides alleviating any anxiety students might have felt about making their journals public, Google Docs allows me to easily monitor new entries (whenever a Doc is edited, the title turns bold) and to verify when students are completing their entries (by using the revision history feature).

I decided to have the students write in teams of three, with one team member serving as lead editor each week. The lead editor is in charge of each week’s blog post, which includes coming up with a focus question and locating 2-3 sources to help them answer their question, which they share with their team before the week’s first class meeting (I have had the teams indicate each week’s lead editor in a spreadsheet in Google Docs so that I am aware of which students are in charge each week). But it gets really interesting when the teams come together in the week’s first class meeting. The lead editor creates a Google Doc, which they share with their team and me, and type in their focus question and a brief summary of how they plan to answer it. What follows is a 30-40 minute session in which the team discusses the question, the lead editor’s sources, and their plan for answering the question completely in writing in the Google Doc, observing a strict rule of silence (I adapted this activity from Lawrence Weinstein’s “Silent Dialogue” activity in Writing Doesn’t Have to Be Lonely).

From the students, integration demands creativity, problem-solving, perseverance, collaboration and the ability to work through the rigorous demands of multiple ideas and concepts woven together to create a final product. Integration is not simply combining two or more contents together

By weaving the arts into and through our content in naturally aligned ways, we are providing relevance to student learning, and giving them an opportunity to connect their world to our classrooms

The keys to using Arts Integration successfully are: Collaboration between arts and classroom teachers to find naturally-aligned objectives Using an arts area in which the classroom teacher is comfortable (for many, this starts with visual arts) Creating a lesson that truly teaches to both standards Assessing both areas equitably

“The real message is because attention is under siege more than it has ever been in human history, we have more distractions than ever before, we have to be more focused on cultivating the skills of attention,”

If young students don’t build up the neural circuitry that focused attention requires, they could have problems controlling their emotions and being empathetic.

“The circuitry for paying attention is identical for the circuits for managing distressing emotion,”

A few years ago, however, we had a rare opportunity to explore such relationships when the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Bentonville, Ark. Through a large-scale, random-assignment study of school tours to the museum, we were able to determine that strong causal relationships do in fact exist between arts education and a range of desirable outcomes.

Students who, by lottery, were selected to visit the museum on a field trip demonstrated stronger critical thinking skills, displayed higher levels of social tolerance, exhibited greater historical empathy and developed a taste for art museums and cultural institutions.

Students in the treatment group were 18 percent more likely to attend the exhibit than students in the control group.

The brain can get by on less energy when you overlearn a task

Decades of research have shown that superior performance requires practicing beyond the point of mastery.

Whenever we learn to make a new movement, Ahmed explains, we form and then update an internal model—a “sensorimotor map”—which our nervous system uses to predict our muscles’ motions and the resistance they will encounter. As that internal model is refined over time, we’re able to cut down on unnecessary movements and eliminate wasted energy.

There are a few things in this world that will help you be an effective teacher. There’s hard work, loving what you do, and an attention to detail.

These ideas are broad and simple but useful.

This idea of applying gaming mechanics to non-game situations is known as gamification. What defines a game is having a goal or objective

What we learn from games is that adding narrative, storyline, a theme, or fun graphics to our lessons and activities can help students be more engaged.

Speak Up 2013 flipped learning findings include: One out of six math and science teachers are implementing a flipped learning model using videos that they have created or sourced online.         16 percent of teachers say they are regularly creating videos of their lessons or lectures to students to watch.    45 percent of librarians and media specialists are regularly creating videos and similar rich media as part of their professional practice.  37 percent of librarians are helping to build teacher capacity by supporting teachers’ skills in using and creating  video and rich media for classroom use. While, almost one-fifth of current teachers have “learning how to flip my classroom” on their wish list for professional development this year,  41 percent of administrators say pre-service teachers should learn how to set up a flipped learning class model before getting a teaching credential. 66 percent of principals said pre-service teachers should learn how to create and use videos and other digital media within their teacher preparation programs.   75 percent of middle and high school students agree that flipped learning would be a good way for them to learn, with 32 percent of those students strongly agreeing with that idea.

If you're a teacher and not an instructional leader, you can initiate this important conversation, too.

make sure you acknowledge his or her specific strengths so that he or she can build on them

now is the time to give them complete ownership over their development so that it's meaningful for them and they're inspired to do it.