"When we sit down to try thinking up new ideas, it doesn't feel like we're connecting things. It feels like a strain-like you're trying to create something out of nothing. But the truth is, ideas really do come from connections." Intereresting article that can be applied to the way teachers plan AND the experiences that students have in the classroom.

How can a game help students develop mathematical habits of mind? "Then we talked about the game for a bit, and discussed the "habits of mind" they had employed to figure out the game - noticing and wondering, guessing and checking, persevering, struggling productively, learning from mistakes without worrying about making mistakes (since they knew the only way they were going to make progress was to make mistakes and learn from them), and working together. We talked about how these skills are as important as any content they learn in their school classes, and how they can use those skills to make progress on math problems they're not sure how to solve. In fact, much of the math programming we did the rest of the year employed huge doses of Noticing and Wondering and generating ideas about math situations, or scenarios (a math problem with no stated question). Anecdotal reports suggest that by the end of the year, most of the students felt pretty confident that they could generate ideas about most math situations we handed them. Big win!"

"Solving a math problem means unfolding a mystery, enjoying the pleasure of discovery. But in every geometry lesson that year, I blundered along and blurted out the secret. With a few sentences, I'd manage to ruin the puzzle, ending the feast before it began, as definitively as if I'd spat in my students' soup. Math is a story, and I was giving my kids spoilers." This post speaks directly to math, but can be applied to any content. When we provide students with the answers rather than developing lessons that let the students ask (and answer questions), we take the fun out of learning.

"I immediately tackled it and now present to you my completed Desmos Maze. As you can see, I had some fun toward the end." Awesome concept. I really like the coordinate plane maze at the end. This could be a great review activity for the SOLs.

"Too often kids have trouble with word problems. Too often they don't know what to do with two numbers let alone a bunch of numbers. They guess at division when one number is big and one is small. They add when they see two fractions. They multiply because that was how they solved the last word problem. I will also do this with my 8th graders because I suspect they will have trouble too. And this is exactly the kind of trouble we need to get into. Now rather than later. This task gets them thinking about ratios - which is like the most important math thing in all of the math things." This is a short description of how to get your students developing questions for mathematical scenarios. This would be a great activity to work on if you feel like your students are having difficulty deciphering word problems or are stumped when presented with unfamiliar mathematical scenarios.

Amazing how a remix can completely change your perception of a story. There's an English lesson here somewhere.

"In short, I'm constantly nudging students to think more deeply, but I never really challenge the dogmas of the Church of the Right Answer. I'm a good, rule-abiding cop, in a city where the rules are sometimes grossly unfair. That doesn't always satisfy me. Some days I don't want to nibble at the edges. I crave a more radical assault: a reformation, a new religion. Some days, I want a Church of Learning." For use in a faculty meeting/at a PD. This would be a great activity for IB schools when discussing how best to implement/discuss IB grades. - In HCPS/at Moody do we "worship" at the Church of the Right answer or the Church of Learning? What structures are in place at the school/county level that helped you generate your answer? - Are Moody's students and parents more likely to "worship" at the Church of the Right answer of the Church of learning? What evidence do you see to support you opinion? - What structures can we implement in individual classrooms/at a school level in order to preach the Church of Learning vs. The church of the Right answer.

"This site lets you use a Bookworm database to read Obama's State of the Union in the context of all the other State of the Union messages given by American presidents. For any word in the message, just click on the text: the word will turn red. If you want to search a two-word phrase, just highlight both words. (You can't search for phrases longer than two words)."

"Set up a surprise, such that resolution of that becomes the lesson that you intended. Anything that makes students ask the question that you plan to answer in the lesson is good, because answering questions that haven't been asked is inherently uninteresting." This article discusses how to create lessons that provoke student interest and prime them for your lesson. We all know that it is important to have a good introduction or a "hook" for a lesson, but this concept goes one step further. A hook that provides too much information leads to waning engagement. The goal is not just to get the student interested, but to make them curious and ask questions that we plan to answer on that day. Although this particular blog post and the examples within are math related, this technique can be implented in any content area.

""That's why the goal of school has to be automaticity," my dad concluded. The Sunday morning roads were empty, and we'd nearly made it home. "Take learning your times tables. You've got to know them cold so that you can go on to finding common denominators, or reasoning about algebraic functions, or whatever. You need each task to become automatic before you can move onto the next intellectual step."" Humorous, yet enlightening take on math class, which can be applied to school in general. What is more important for us to teach students so that it becomes more automatic? Should we make facts automatic? Or should we instead focus on skills and thought processes that can be quickly applied to many scenarios in a variety of contexts?

"More About Glenn Work with Glenn Presentations / Resources Social Studies Central Podcasts Writing Navigator: Supports literacy standards, makes your life easier, free"

"Students asking questions and then exploring the answers. That's something any good teacher lives for. And at the heart of it all is curiosity."

"My students are really great at describing what things look like in their writing. They are not as skilled at putting smells, tastes, sounds and feelings into words. As a result, their narratives often feel flat, one-dimensional, and unreal. In an effort to get my students expanding on their descriptions, I decided to do a sensory walk using Instagram. *Check out my blog on using Instagram for scavenger hunt activities." Seems like a neat idea for English classes to teach various writing skills

"ou can only speak and write English so how do you converse with a person in China who writes Mandarin but doesn't understand a word of English? Google Translate is no doubt a good option but it is going to be tedious for you (and your Chinese friend) to translate each and every sentence manually before sending them through any messenger." Seems cool for communication/collaboration possibilities in foreign language. Could be an interesting way to work with pen pals in another country.

"While killing time in the airport last weekend, I watched a series of Jimmy Fallon Tonight Show clips. While watching Jimmy Fallon and Bryan Cranston playing "Word Sneak," I was inspired! I decided to use this game format for a vocabulary review in my class." This sounds like an interesting method to learn/review vocabulary. As an addition to the game, you could give students a specific discussion prompt to focus their talk, and then they could "sneak" the words into this particular conversation.

"Google Books: Google Books can be a good research tool for students if they are aware of it and know how to use it. In the video below I provide a short overview of how to use Google Books for research. You can also find screenshots of the process here. "

"Like his teammate Ray Rice, the Ravens linebacker was accused of beating up his wife. But in his case, there was no video." This really makes me think about how we could use this article, plus a variety of other documents, to discuss how various forms of media affect public/individual perception, feelings, emotions, decisions, etc. This is obviously a serious topic, and shouldn't be treated lightly, but feel like it could lead into some particularly deep discussion in a high school AP class, like AP language.

"This resonates strongly. I shared a lesson with fellow teachers, and realized I had no good way to communicate what actually made the lesson powerful, and how charging in with the usual assumptions of being the explainer in chief could totally ruin it." Couldn't say it any better than this...Personally, this is one of the reasons I've tried to get video of classroom action and student reflections over the past several years for H21. We can write all we want about what makes a lesson powerful, but it's much more obvious and useful when we see it/hear it ourselves.

"Should schools be mirrors of society, or should they be places apart? With Greenfield, I come down for the latter. Schools have an opportunity to take students' minds in new directions, and they've only got 1,000 hours each year to do it.  " Interesting read. Yes, time is limited, but appropriate use of technology can help to "take students' minds in new directions," often in directions that might not be possible without the use of technology.