Every lesson plan begins with a beginning.  Unfortunately, in all too many classrooms this beginning sounds something like this:  ”Now class, turn to page 428 of your textbook.” There’s nothing there to grab students (quite the reverse:  many kids will disengage from the class at that point). Every teacher needs to have a kit bag...Read More

Getting students’ attention in the classroom is one of the things that teachers have to do intermittently throughout the school day:  at the start of a class, at the end of an activity where students are working in groups, and at other times besides.  Some teachers are very good at this, commanding student attention through...Read More

One of the neatest features of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is that it helps us understand ourselves better.  Since the theory is based on nouns (words, numbers, pictures, music, people, nature) rather than on verbs (e.g. judging, perceiving, seeing, hearing, achieving, investigating), it can be related to our personal lives more easily and...Read More

A school teacher was on his way to a new teaching appointment in a far-away land, and he’d been traveling on foot all the way, and was getting quite exhausted from his journey, when unexpectedly he came to a river that he had to cross.  As there was no bridge in sight, he hired a...Read More

Anyone who has been in American education for more than a generation understands that educational trends come in waves.  Progressive education gives way to back to basics which yields to open education which in term is supplanted by cultural literacy, high stakes testing and standards-based instruction.  And so it goes. Somewhere in there, around about...Read More