Lighting the Path to Knowledge
Since April is poetry month and my buds from our We Teach So Hard podcast and I, love poems, we’ve decided to share some of our faves with you for our monthly book series, and give you some ideas that you can use right away with your students. Ever been afraid of things that go bump in the…
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It seems like everywhere we look on social media, we’re seeing article after article about teaching empathy in the classroom. One of our favorite ways to teach empathy is to do service projects with our kiddos. Nothing develops empathy, belonging, and community quite like a service project. In this episode, we discuss a myriad of reasons to try service projects…
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Project-based learning is sooooo much fun! Right? But it can be daunting, too. The preparation, the organization, the performance-based assessments- Ugh! Sometimes it feels like we’re suiting up for a football game, only to figure out that we forgot the football once we get out on the field! All kidding aside, there’s a lot that goes into a successful…
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Welcome to our last episode in our Fostering a Culturally Responsive Classroom. In this episode, we relive our tragic elementary school cooperative project experiences and pick at the group-grade scabs and scars we all carry. In a culturally responsive classroom, choice is offered to students. That doesn’t mean it’s a free for all. On the contrary, choice can be…
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This episode has got us singing our Patti LaBelle! Some sequins, a few feathers, and a blinged-out mic… “I got a new attitude!” In this 3rd episode of our 4-part series, we explore how culturally responsive practices can provide an attitudinal paradigm shift for our students. We include some tips and ideas for stretching your pedagogy so it’s inclusive and…
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In this second episode of a 4-part series on the culturally responsive classroom, we explore how we foster student motivation and engagement. We muck around in four research-based conditions that must be present for student motivation and engagement: Establishing inclusion, developing attitude, enhancing meaning, and engendering competence. We know, we know. Those are some BIG WORDS, but we promise that…
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