Life is constantly changing. It has been said that life is a series of transitions. As children we move from home life into school. In school we move from elementary school to middle school to high school. After high school we go into the workforce, the armed services, or attend college. We graduate, get a … Continue reading Four Keys A Coach Uses To Help You Navigate Transitions
If you spend enough time with a three-year-old child, you will at some point get into a question loop that is driven by one query: “why?.” If they ask it once, they will likely ask it a thousand times, because they are trying to make sense of the world that is still quite new to … Continue reading Developing Focus Questions That Stimulate Thinking
Assessment is an integral component of the teaching and learning process, and as such, teacher response to assessment data is critical. So how should teachers respond to assessment data? Take FIRME action! In the book Questioning for Formative Feedback: Meaningful Dialogue to Improve Learning, author Jackie Acree Walsh shares the following from the work of … Continue reading A FIRME Response to Assessment
Author and speaker John Maxwell has written a number of books about success. One of my favorites is Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes Into Stepping Stones for Success. In the book, Maxwell shares stories of a number of prominent people who experienced significant failures and then moved on from those failures in dramatic, positive ways. In … Continue reading Helping Students Fail Forward
One of my favorite activities as a child involved manipulating silly putty. It was great fun, because it was easy to reshape the rubbery mass into whatever came to mind. I also enjoyed flattening the putty out and pressing it on the Sunday comics to transfer the colorful images. The best part of it all … Continue reading The Silly Putty Brain
My household is a place where food is important (as you can probably attest by my girth). Each weekend, we plan a menu for the upcoming week. Based upon that menu, we prepare a list of grocery needs. I write the grocery list down, and many times I write the list based upon departments and … Continue reading High Yield Strategy: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
Homework is a hotly debated and often researched topic among educators. There seems to be a rather significant divide at times regarding whether or not it really makes a difference for students. Today’s writing is not intended to swim into those deep waters. Instead, today we will continue to move forward with our review of … Continue reading High Yield Strategy: Homework and Practice
As a middle school and high school choir director, I frequently walked throughout the ensemble during a rehearsal to hear individual members singing their respective parts. In that real-time setting, I was able to help correct errors in pitch, dynamic, tempo, diction, phrasing, and breathing. I am convinced that those moments of “in the moment” … Continue reading Formative Feedback for Deeper Learning
I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage, “Practice makes perfect.” While it rolls nicely off the tongue, it is not completely true. I learned this when I had to take piano lessons in college as a music major. For the 10 years prior to my matriculation into the university, I had played piano by ear … Continue reading Practice (With Feedback) Makes Improvement
Instructional feedback for students is essential to their growth, and instructional feedback has been extensively researched over the past several decades. On giant in that research field is Grant Wiggins. In his article Seven Keys to Effective Feedback (https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/seven-keys-to-effective-feedback), Wiggins shares that instructional feedback should be: Goal-referenced – Tasks must be clearly defined and goals … Continue reading Providing Students Meaningful Feedback
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