Note: I expanded the arguments in the article below and provided practical teaching applications into a full chapter of my book These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on the Work that Matters Most. When you buy a copy, you directly support my work as a thinker and writer. -DSJR Argument, my dear colleague, […]
Instruction
Tech for Tech’s Sake Isn’t Good in Our Classrooms
One of my students this fall — we’ll call her Rachel — has a problem with technology. Whenever she’s on a Chromebook, it’s as if her fingers take on a mind of their own. She’s almost never on task when I come around to see the thesis statement she’s supposed to be typing into PollEverywhere, […]
The Positive Parent Phone Call
Armed with the following, it’s possible that a three-minute phone call can make your year with a given student. You just need: a specific thing/event/anecdote that you appreciate about the student in question; the right “bent” — humility, appreciation — for working well with parents (a whole post on that here); and a working phone […]
“Worksheets Are the Worst”
It’s common enough to hear a well-meaning teacher use language like this: Worksheets are the worst. There should be zero worksheets allowed in schools. Only bad teachers use worksheets. In one sense, I get it. When a class period becomes nothing more than a teacher distributing worksheet after worksheet to keep kids busy, that class […]
Fast Feedback is Effective Feedback: Here’s How to Do Better
If we want our kids to become good at things, we need to give them feedback. It’s not grades that make a student become a better writer or speaker or knowledge-builder — it’s feedback. (I do work in a system where we use grades, by the way — I don’t spend much time thinking or […]