“Bittersweet,” says the Reading Core Specialist as she sorts cards into zip lock bags. This is how her end of year teacher reflection has been going. And it’s not just her. Beginnings are scary, and endings are sad. I know this, and I know you’ve got to stay in the middle. But at the end …
This week was DIBELS sweeps. This ought to be an easy task, but it also leads to DIBELS testing reflections: Musing over all the lessons of the year, and all the worries about testing and the future. First of all, there’s the tension about the scores. Before testing starts, sometimes teachers are on edge. They …
This last week I have been working to bring the first graders back to their safe-feeling routines while working in the new classroom. They’re unfocused in their new surroundings. There are perhaps few concepts in teaching more difficult than how school children kids need continuity and routine. The students simply can’t really get their intellectual …
February Teaching Blues are a thing. How to fight back? Perhaps a quick course in self-reflection about the techne’ of teaching? I’ve seen more than one email addressed to teachers this week that talks about the “February Blues” or the blah of February or some other description of the fact that there are days in …
February Teaching Blues and the “Techne” of Teaching Read More »
Hi teacher friends, how is it going with supporting struggling students in your classroom and at your school? Most of you and your fellow teachers are discussing struggling students in groups during PD, and no doubt you’ve heard the meeting called “MTSS.” Perhaps you’ve heard teachers debating whether MTSS is working. Maybe you even wonder …
At our school, the day before yesterday was the day of the data. The day the principal came out and told us the news. How much the students had gained. And how many hadn’t gained. Some, he said, had somehow gone backward. We weren’t doing as well at the year before. He didn’t want to …
Differentiated Instruction or DI, is an academic term which simply means having classroom lessons from which all students can learn, regardless of their current knowledge base. DI is a new idea, having originated around the turn of the 21st century. It contradicts the idea of traditional American instruction, in which it was considered enough …
