The Power of Discovery

So, I’ve been thinking about how my students learn things–things that I’ve been trying to teach them, repeatedly. The other day we were doing some writing connected to our “This I Believe” study. (See here and here for more details.) As usual, we had talked about the assignment. Students had worked on a planning sheet. [...]

I Might be a Blogger

So, I think I might be becoming a blogger. I started a blog in January of 2010 after attending EduCon (if you’re a teacher you should go). I gave it a try for a while, but it just wasn’t happening for me. I felt like it was something I should do rather than something I [...]

Why I Love Twitter

So, I’ve been thinking about Twitter and how useful I find it. There are plenty of other educators who think this, and plenty who have no idea what to think of it. You can go read all sorts of other people’s thoughts on it, but let me give you a specific example of what I [...]

Sometimes Plans Just Work Out

So, I’ve been thinking about how impressive 5th graders are sometimes. I wrote about my new unit plan the day before yesterday; I know 2 posts in 3 days?! You can read about the whole thing here. But, the point of this post is that yesterday my students were writing “This I Believe” type pieces, [...]

5E Day, Update

So, I’ve been thinking about our class climate. In the beginning of the year I had what I called “5E Day” with my class, which was loosely based on George Couros’ Identity day. (Read about it here and about its impact here.) One of the comments to my description of the resulting class tone wondered [...]