A teacher’s planning period is sacred (or it should be), but it never feels like enough time to complete the 62,000 tasks a teacher needs to do each day. This is why teachers so often work nights or the weekends. Let’s talk about some ways to improve the efficiency of this time. Note: No school is the same, you may have one 90 minute planning period or two 45 minute planning ...
Strategies for Teaching Math Concepts
Let's discuss strategies for teaching math concepts using the CRA framework. Remember that the CRA framework has proven to help students grasp difficult math concepts. If you are scratching your head asking yourself, “What is the CRA framework?” be sure to go back and read this post. What is the CRA? I like this definition best. “The CRA is a three-stage learning process where ...
Concrete Representational Abstract Sequence
The CRA framework is an instructional strategy that stands for concrete, representational, and abstract; it is critical to helping students move through their learning of math concepts. To fully understand the idea behind CRA, or concrete representational abstract, think about a small child learning to count. They may learn counting to 10 by memorizing a song. Then, these ...
Higher Level Thinking with Bloom’s Taxonomy
Higher level thinking is a goal for many teachers. Students retain knowledge when they have thought deeply about it. And in order to get our students to think at a deeper level, we have to be asking questions that require them to access those parts of the brain. Encouraging higher level thinking is so interconnected to your classroom culture, the rigor of your content, and then ...
Unpacking Math Standards When Lesson Planning
Unpacking math standards helps teachers build the foundation for what content they are teaching to students. Subsequently, unpacking math standards provides a framework to create actionable lessons. Essentially, unpacking math standards helps us answer these two questions: What are students learning?How will they learn it? This is part 1 of our Instructional Design series. Come ...
Turn Worksheets into Easy Math Activities
Easy math activities - is this an oxymoron? It doesn't have to be. You don’t have to be a teacher long to see that a worksheet full of problems does not incite the excitement and enthusiasm of many of your students. However, try any of these easy math activities, and you will experience unprecedented levels of excitement from your class. Now that I am a parent, I see this ...
4 Test Review Tips for Teachers
The end of the semester is upon us. Let’s talk about some best practices for test review. First and foremost, I support best teaching practices, which involve monitoring your students throughout the year, consistently spiraling skills, and striving for high mastery. USE DATA TO REVIEW STRATEGICALLY Look at collective student data and determine the weak spots. What ...
Essential Math Manipulatives
Math manipulatives are some of the best ways to introduce a new mathematical concept and are the foundation of the C-R-A. They help to form a solid mathematical foundation as students move from concrete understanding to representational to abstract. By providing the opportunity to concretely work with the manipulatives, students are able to develop a conceptual understanding rather ...
Should Teachers Assign Homework?
Should teachers assign homework? Should you assign homework to your students? The answer to that question is dependent on a variety of factors, so let’s dive in. LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCAST | SPOTIFY What is the purpose of homework? What is your purpose behind assigning homework? Here is a quick brainstorm of how you might answer this question: The next question to ask ...
Organizing a Substitute Binder
Preparing for a substitute used to be so easy! Ha - I am joking, of course. We had no idea how easy it used to be. Now with COVID, quarantining, and technology, it is pretty complicated. Schools have a variety of procedures regarding substitutes, and I also know that you might be lucky to even have a substitute. There are schools out there that rely on teacher’s planning periods ...