Teaching
As an educator who loves to share tips for teachers both inside and outside the classroom, you can follow this page to find all my education-related posts. You will find tips, tricks, lesson plans, inspiration, and more.
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The Power of Choosing Your Words Carefully
As a teacher, it is important to use words wisely. How we say something can be just as important, or maybe more so, that what we say. For instance, having a long list of classroom rules that prohibit all sorts of behaviour and activities sends a rather negative impression. It makes your class feel restrictive…
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How and Why You Should Say Sorry
Here’s a tweet that caught my attention last week. Here’s how to apologize: 1. Look them in the eye. 2. Explain why you are sorry. 3. Acknowledge why they were hurt. 4. Tell them what you will do differently next time. https://t.co/givLVARod2 — TED Talks (@TEDTalks) February 6, 2019 It’s brilliant in its simplicity and…
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Twitter, Math, and Pizza!
This simple Twitter post got quite a bit of traction last month. It received over 72,000 likes, 30,000 retweets, and over 1.500 comments. Here’s a useful counterintuitive fact: one 18 inch pizza has more ‘pizza’ than two 12 inch pizzas pic.twitter.com/hePSpG0pJs — Fermat’s Library (@fermatslibrary) January 7, 2019 Some of the responses were informative, like…
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Quotes Come Alive with Zen Pencils
Zen Pencils – Cartoon Quotes From Inspirational Folks by Gavin Aung Than There are a lot of quotation books on the market, but none are quite like this. The creator of this book takes some of the most inspirational quotes and turns them into brilliant comic strips. The images enhance the words and hammer the…
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Other Teachers’ Ideas
Here are some great ideas I found online that you can use in your classroom. I’ve linked to the original article or blog I found the idea and attached a short description. GeoGuessr This is a game that has students exploring random places on Earth using Google Street View. They have to use the clues…
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The 10:20:30 Rule
In his book, The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything, Guy Kawasaki gives some great advice regarding presentations. His tips are meant for business men and women when giving pitches, but I think they are transferable for presentations everywhere. New product announcements from Apple seem to follow these…
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The Great Teacher Manifesto
Do you have a public declaration of your intentions as a teacher? I’m betting that you don’t. Years ago, I wrote a mission statement for my teaching. “To help every student develop to his or her full potential. To develop intellectual potential and provide opportunities for social, ethical, emotional, physical, and aesthetic development of every…
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10 Ways to Bring Out the Best in Your Students
I was inspired to write today’s Teaching Tip post from a book I read by Cynthia Tobias. You Can’t Make Me (But I Can Be Persuaded) was not written with teachers in mind. It was meant to help parents deal with strong-willed children. However, many of the tips in the book could work with all…
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4 Ideas to Truly Connect With Students
I just read You Can’t Make Me [But I Can Be Persuaded] by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias. The book is meant to help parents deal with strong-willed children but I see all sorts of applications for teachers within these pages. Tobias notes that parents often make mistakes. I know teachers sometimes say or do things they…
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Teacher Hashtags and Inspiration
The ending of The Kindergarten Teacher has been haunting me. I don’t want to spoil it for you though as I am sure there are many people who have not yet seen the film. I wrote about it last week and how it can inspire us to nurture the talent we see in our classrooms.…