Curriculum

NaNoWriMo

In the middle school writing rotation, fiction writing came up on my unit map this year. While I have a curriculum that I regularly use to teach writing, I had a crazy idea- what if my students participated in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? NaNoWriMo is traditionally an adult-led tradition where people worldwide commit…

Science

One of the most compelling pedagogical concepts I’ve ever come across is very simple: Don’t teach a vocabulary word until students already know the concept it describes. Let the experience you create be not, “Okay, there’s this word, and apparently it means X,” but, “Oh! That’s the word for that!” During the fall term, In science class,…

How To Use Equality In The Classroom

In January, my classroom had a very nuanced reflection on the difference between equality and equity. We came to a shared understanding that equality means that no one should be treated differently because of who they are, and equity means that “everyone gets what they need to be successful in school and in their community.”…

Approaching A Topic From Multiple Angles

Right now, each student in our small 4th-grade class is making a map of a different continent. We’ve been making maps since the second week of school, starting small (mapping our classroom) and expanding our focus month by month.  We’ve learned about maps, and now maps are our first step toward understanding continents and cultures…