Quiz: Identify Your Ed Tech Intelligence

How does your ed tech prowess stack up with your fellow teachers? Take the Ed Tech Intelligence quiz to find out!

1. Where do you get your news?
a. Newspaper and radio
b. Online
c. Following CNN on facebook and twitter

Take the Quiz!

Paying Students for Grades: Are we cheapening education?

Is merit pay for students common sense or a disaster waiting to happen?

Teachers have always sought out new and effective ways to motivate students, but now business leaders are getting involved. With private funding, schools across the country are testing a new strategy: paying students for good grades and higher test scores.

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Create An Inviting Classroom Library

It's wrong to assume that books and other reading materials are available to all children in the United States. Moreover, differences in access to books cause gaps in reading achievement.

Now let's explore ways to make the classroom library not an "add on" to curriculum or a luxury item for independent reading but an embedded literacy strategy, one that promotes independent reading.

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Special Education: Success Story with ADD And ADHD

In our rapidly moving culture, special education students, diagnosed with ADD or ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are an ever-increasing challenge for teachers. Having taught in some capacity for nearly 40 years and being a parent of an active little boy, I have studied these conditions with immediate personal interest.

Here are my tried and true teaching strategies to garner success with ADHD and ADD students demonstrated through this fossil activity.

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School Fight!

Fights are a reality at my school.

As much as we say, and I believe, that it is a safe place for students to learn and teachers to work, it’s never that surprising about once a month to hear the stampede of teenager feet, making a Beatle-mania run to the latest skirmish. What does surprise me were the featured combatants.

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Top 12 Ways Teachers Can Rock Summer Break

With almost half of summer behind us, it feels like these sunny school-free days are passing us by. Let’s make the most of this last leg of summer without blowing out the budget.

Here are my top 12 ways to rock your summer break on a budget!

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Classroom Chuckles with Teacher Toons

As a teacher-of-the-year and cartoonist, Ramon Ramirez uses classroom challenges and teachers lounge fodder as inspiration for his art.

Ramon's Teacher Toons spreads laughter outside his Texas high school to fellow humor-seeking educators around the country, including the nearly 1,000 fans on facebook. Ramon gave TeachHUB the inside scoop on how humor and positivity are the keys to his classroom success.

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Quiz: Is teaching the right career for you?

Is teaching the right career for you?

A flood of wannabe teachers are rushing to the Ed-arena now that the business world is in the gutter. Do you/they have what it takes? Take the TeachHUB quiz and find out.

If you answer yes to these questions, teaching may be the career for you: Take the quiz

The Teacher Spillover Effect

Great teaching is contagious, according to a new study.

A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research has shown that adding an accomplished teacher to a teaching team or department has a strong beneficial effect on student achievement. Many have reported this as “old news”, since most teachers could tell you that good teachers help students to do better work.

What is the Teacher Spillover Effect & how will it change our schools?

Discover the Power of Wordless Books for All Ages

Wordless picture books have been around for well over 60 years. Almost every learning objective in the language arts curriculum of every grade level can be taught or enhanced using them. However, wordless books are most often associated with emergent readers, typically preschool and kindergarten aged students.

When I moved from the kindergarten classroom to fourth grade, I thought I would leave them behind but boy was I wrong! Here are a few of my favorite wordless books for all ages.

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50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

Many critics of Twitter believe that the 140-character microblog offered by the ubiquitous social network can do little for the education industry. They are wrong.

K-12 teachers have taken advantage of Twitter’s format to keep their classes engaged and up-to-date on the latest technologies. The following projects provide you and your students with 50 ways to incorporate Twitter into important and lasting lessons.

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Top 12 Ways to Bring the Real World into Your Classroom

Younger children love the "make believe" of pretending to be grown up. Teens who are less interested in school may respond to a dose of “real life” reality. No matter how old your students are, here are a few ways to bring the real world to your classroom this school year:

Invite Guest Speakers
Bring in a guest speaker who works in a field connected to what you’re studying. An English teacher may get new levels of effort if her students realize that writing essays can prepare them to be a journalist that reviews videos games or interviews famous people. And math teachers who constantly get asked, “Why do I need to know this?” may benefit from introducing an architect, computer programmer, or scientist who uses math on a regular basis.

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Race Car in Time Square Video Writing Prompts

K-2: Design Your Own Race Car What colors would it be? What number would you choose? What pictures or symbols would you use to decorate it?

3-5: I Feel The Need, the Need for Speed To work on a pit stop crew, you have to be really fast. If you could pick one thing to be able to do really quickly, what would it be and why?

Watch video, read 6-12 prompts or view previous video writing prompts now!

Adapt ELL Lessons in 3 Simple Steps

With the increasing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in regular education classrooms, it is important to balance practicing a new skill or new knowledge with differentiated assignments to fit ELL students’ readiness.

When students range in their stages of second language acquisition, their practice and classroom assignments can and should look different.

Differentiating lessons doesn’t have to be a hassle. Here are 3 simple steps to adapt lessons for your ELL students!

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Get to Know Animoto

How many of your emails and handouts have gone unread and unremembered? Probably more than you’d like to admit.

Well, I’ve got a new resource for you that will make every message memorable. Say hello to animoto.

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Good Bye to Grade Levels?

Kansas City schools are taking differentiated instruction to a whole new level – little red school house style.

KC schools will focus on more personalized and individual learning than classroom-style instruction. Students will be grouped by ability and move up once they've mastered the skill.

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Original Outdoor Activities for Summer School Teachers

Keeping kids’ attention is hard enough during summer school, but what do you do on those days when the weather is perfect and no one – including you – wants to be inside?

Happily, there are plenty of ways to enjoy the beauties of summer and teach valuable skills at the same time.

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The Art of the Chart

As I think about making my classroom rock next year, I have to confront the graveyard of a classroom I left behind this summer.

One thing I noticed is that some of classroom charts are looking...well...sad. Sad, unused and shabby. At one time they stood as beautifully color-coordinated monuments to our learning, but now, now my friends, they have become simply wallpaper.

Here is my list of strategies to amp up my charts as the school year kicks off this fall! Read More

Private School Myths Busted

To some, private schools represent “the enemy,” the hated place where vouchers send the money that public schools needs, and they’re taking over. But what’s the truth about private schools?

According to the Council for American Private Education (CAPE), private schools make up 25% of all schools in the country, enrolling 11% of all U.S. PK-12 students. To fully understand the current state of American education, we need to find the truth amongst the most common myths about private schools:

Compare myths to reality

How Can We Make Schools Safe?

With each new headline, it seems like no school is safe.

Chicago: An honor roll student from Fenger High School, Derrion Albert, was brutal beaten to death by four classmates on his way home from school. The incident received international attention after a YouTube video of the beating was released.

Texas: A special ed teacher known for using music therapy in the classroom was stabbed to death by a student at John Tyler High School outside of Dallas.

South Florida: An “altercation” between two male students led to the stabbing death of one student. This took place between first and second period classes at Coral Gables High School.

How can we prevent more violence from pervading youth culture – in schools and out?
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