Group items tagged

Be Willing to Try New Things

In order to improve your teaching, you’ll have to change your behaviors in the classroom.

Maximize 21st Century Tools

Twitter is one of my favorite places to gather information on education trends.

Start off by following educators with similar interests and organizations that share ideas you can use in your classroom. You can search by hashtags like #mlearning or #STEM to find tweets in an area you are interested in learning more about.

If you become overwhelmed because the volume is getting just too big, divide them into lists to make navigating your Twitter feed a little easier. This way, you have one spot dedicated to colleagues in your school or local community, another for people you've heard speak at a conference, and a space just for following along with current events. My go-to list is titled "ADEs and EdTech Leaders," which I created to list some of my favorite tweeters.

But, teachers can’t wait for districts to research, plan, and fund professional development days. As a result, grassroots efforts by teachers are gaining traction as the digital world enables them to connect and learn in new ways.  Teachers can no longer wait for their one or two days of professional development, they want their PD streaming. 

Teachers are always thinking about teaching, but now their focus is on learning…their learning.

Teacher accountability issues have brought teacher learning into hyper focus.

Nine studies show teachers that receive substantial professional development increase their students’ scores by 21 percentile points.

Great PD can often come with a great price tag to match. The cost of a conference can be hundreds of dollars, not to mention the travel costs. While some conferences will cover your meals, you still have to figure in the price of exploring, parking at the airport, and those exhibit hall deals you can’t pass up. If you get sticker shock, it’s time to think about ways to fund your adventures.

Education grants exist for nearly everything.

People often tweet things they have read and approved and hence the high likelihood of finding relevant materials in Twitter search than Google search.

Hashtags are great for creating a community around a topic.

This is my favourite web tool I use to organize and check my Twitter feeds. Using this app you can create columns for specific hashtags and each time you log in to Tweetdeck you will see the latest tweets shared using that hashtag. This way you can always stay on top of what is being shared in educational twitter chats.

Tips After the class ends, review your plan and how it worked in actuality. What will you do differently next time? Preview new material with the students and give them their study goals a week or two in advance. Be prepared to divert from the lesson plan. Plan how to guide the class's attention back to you when it wanders. Remember to match what you are teaching with your state or local school district standards. If lesson plans aren't your thing, consider the Dogme teaching method. It involves no textbooks and allows the students to take control.[1] Be clear that you will expect them to respond to questions in class by a certain date.

Sample Lesson Plans

Step 2 (Assessment) -- Though this might seem out of order, you should plan your assessment next.

There is no such thing as a “Special Education Lesson Plan.”  General education teachers and special education teachers must develop lesson plans based on state and district standards.