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The Instructional Practice Guide includes coaching and lesson planning tools to help teachers and those who support teachers to make the Key Shifts in instructional practice required by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).   In order for teachers, colleagues, and instructional leaders to have meaningful and productive conversations about instructional goals and outcomes, there must be shared expectations regarding lesson planning and observation. These tools provide common criteria framed around the Key Shifts required by the CCSS that can be used to facilitate conversations between teachers and coaches about aligning content and instruction. By using these tools to reflect on practice, clear connections can be made between Common Core-aligned lesson planning and classroom instruction--conversations which can supplement information from other established observation protocols that focus on planning and preparation,  classroom management and environment, and professional responsibilities. 

Thus, many teachers are integrating technology with instruction especially since young adolescents are frequent computer users and find technology very engaging

teachers and students feel strongly that technology is an essential learning component because it assists with engagement, makes education relevant to students' lives, and serves as an inspiring force (p. 31).

"Additionally, learning experiences are greatly enhanced when all students have the technology to access rich content, communicate with others, write for authentic audiences, and collaborate with other learners next door or across the globe"

The 2014 Gates Foundation report, Teachers Know Best: What Educators Want from Digital Instructional Tools, indicates that teachers want tools “supporting student collaboration and providing interactive experiences”. These types of tools are fun and engaging, and they support 21st century skills like collaboration, communication, and creativity. Learning this compelled me to write the article, “20 Fun Free Tools for Interactive Classroom Collaboration”, which has been in the top 10 most popular posts on the site since I published it in May. We followed that in July with “5 More Cool Tools to Take Classroom Collaboration to a New Level”, another popular post. So there you have over two dozen fun free interactive collaboration tools to consider using in your classes this year!

Teaching for Understanding

Differentiated Instruction

Literacy Instruction

Imagine a world where resources were limited to what was found in the classroom or the school closet known as the "Curriculum Materials Room." Picture a world where students wrote letters with pen and paper to communicate with other students and adults outside of the building. Due to postage costs, the teacher either sent the letters in bulk or paid for stamps out of his or her own pocket. Can you recall a time when student interests like skateboarding or video were never used as part of learning curriculum because the tools needed were either too expensive or not yet conceptualized? Do you remember a time when non-traditional learners struggled, and absenteeism meant a high likelihood of students doing poorly in school, and possibly having to retake the course?

To begin with, I don’t lecture. My students don’t take notes, at least not in the traditional sense, and we don’t read a novel and simply answer the questions.

It also means my students don’t acquire knowledge just for the sake of acquiring it. They need to do something with it — that’s where “project-based” comes into play.

Finally, technology is embedded into the structure of all we do. It’s part of how we research, how we capture information, and how we display our learning. It’s never an accessory tacked on at the end.

EDpuzzle is a neat tool that allows you to add your voice and text questions to educational videos.

sign videos to studen

ck their progres

Open Educational Resources Open Educational Resources (OER) are the teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.