“A good beginning makes a good ending” goes the old English proverb. And likewise: “Work well begun is work half done.” The most effective teachers don’t take student engagement for granted. Yet in our work in classrooms, we see that not enough attention is paid to good beginnings; this lack
To stack the cards in favor of students leading small group discussions, stay with me as I recount a recent visit to an eighth grade class: Students sat in rows. They had just finished reading “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury. At first, students appeared excited about Bradbury’s story. Sitting in the middle of a
Both knowledge and paint have no use until applied. I’ve always liked this adage, perhaps because as a teacher and a parent, I see firsthand that knowledge… is not enough. Application is everything or to use the trendy term du jour, transfer, is the hallmark
Most of us have experienced the content-area literacy movement through across-the-discipline strategies, often identified by acronyms or clever titles such as “Chunking the Text.” Secondary teachers, however, soon became strategy-fatigued, overwhelmed with what many perceived as a singular strategy to turn them into teachers of