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I am an English teacher, so my ears perk up when writers talk about their process. I've found the advice handy for lesson planning, too. That's because both writing and planning deal with craft. In writing, you want your audience to be absorbed. You want them to care about your characters.

Daily collaborative planning time at Mesquite Elementary enables teachers to plan differentiated instruction to address the progress of each student. Credit: Zachary Fink Tips for downloading: PDF files can be viewed on a wide variety of platforms -- both as a browser plug-in or a stand-alone application -- with Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program.

Joshua Block Humanities teacher at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia Over the summer, I offered to help some friends convert their dining room light fixture into a ceiling fan. Once the electricity was off, the old fixture was down, and I'd opened the large cardboard box, my goal was clear and pressing.

by Terry Heick Recently, I've been thinking of the universal truths in teaching. Students should be first. Don't always start planning with a standard. Questions matter more than answers. Trust is a currency of a human classroom. So I thought I'd gather twelve of them to start with.

Do you ever feel stuck in a rut while planning your language classes? Perhaps you spend a lot of time lecturing at the white board, use the same activities with different vocabulary for every unit, or rely on teaching students grammar because that's how you were taught.

In response to my very controversial blog 'Six useless things foreign language teachers do' many of my readers have asked me to point out the 'good' things about a language lesson, rather than criticize the 'bad' ones. I am not going to respond by listing the obvious features of a good lesson which scores...