Many educators and parents have been worrying that the interruption in school being experienced by so many students nationwide (and worldwide) as a result of COVID-19 will result in significant ”learning loss.”  That is, by not having previous learning reinforced, and by not adding new learning to their experience, students will backslide in their academic...Read More

Homework is considered to be part of the natural order of things in school.  But in the past twenty years or so there’s been an increasing amount of criticism about its function and use (see for example, Alfie Kohn’s The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing).  I too believe...Read More

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