If you want to read some more established education blogs, go to Edutopia.  Edutopia.org is the website created by the George Lucas Education Foundation to “spread the word about ideal, interactive learning environments and enable others to adapt these successes locally.”  The first time I went to this website, I found it a little overwhelming [...]

Cora, Here’s the quote I was thinking of from an article by the guy who will probably be Japan’s next prime minister:

“All great historical ideas started as a utopian dream and ended with reality. Whether a particular idea remains as a utopian dream or becomes a reality depends on the number of people [...]

Watch the eyes of your students and you’ll be able to tell if their eyes have glazed over.  If you notice that most of your students are looking out the window, it is time to change it up a bit.  Do or say something a little silly and you will get their attention back.  For [...]

Have you seen Air New Zealand’s in-flight safety video?  Look for the “Bare Essentials of Safety” on YouTube.  In the video, the pilot and cabin staff are wearing nothing but body paint.  It is so realistic that you hardly take your eyes off the screen as you try to figure out if the clothes are [...]

Bill just sent me this link to an article entitled Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes.  It’s written for college professors, but the thoughts could just as easily apply to teachers of younger students.   I would sum it up to say that what you teach has to have a purpose, be organized and be relevant to [...]

Sorry guys.  Ask your wife or girlfriend!  Don’t you find it hard to throw away those wonderful sturdy little boxes?  Here are some fun things to do if you have enough boxes for all of your students.  You can find all sizes and kinds of boxes on the internet.
For advanced vocabulary:  Print vocabulary words.   Put [...]

Experienced teachers have many ways of getting students’ attention.  Raising your hand for silence is probably used more often that anything else, but there are many other things you can do.  You might try a new attention grabber from this list written by Leah Davies. M.Ed.  I once tried #19, which is to use the [...]

Alejandro Lleros, a professor at the University of Illinois, has found that “a person’s ability to solve a problem can be influenced by how he or she moves.”  By moving your body, you can change the direction of your thoughts and come up with new ideas.  He even suggests that movement can change your mood.  [...]

Here’s a math memory trick my son remembered. When teaching greater than or less than, teach students that the crocodile eats the greater number. Thus the open end (the mouth) is always pointing to the higher number.  3<5  Three is less than five. The crocodile eats the five. 5>3 Five [...]

If you work with juniors or seniors, you might want to check out a website called YOUniversityTV.   It has virtual tours of about 400 colleges and universitites.   Even teachers of younger students might be able to use this site.  There’s a great interactive map that highlights each state as you run the cursor over it.  That [...]