One of the core features of the Modern Classrooms approach is self-paced learning. The recommended approach, and the approach I use for core mathematics instruction, is to self-pace within each unit. Everyone in a particular math group still starts and ends each unit on the same day so that there is not an increasing gap…
Queries after an American Insurrection
I spent the first period of this day with our middle school students and teachers, talking through yesterday’s deeply unsettling events at the US Capitol. At noon, I sat with Renata and a group of 2nd – 4th-grade students who wished to discuss it. Both sessions started with student questions. A younger student asked why President Trump doesn’t understand…

Multi-Age Classes
Something that is relatively unique to this school is that we have multi-age classes. While I was growing up, and while completing my teaching degree, there was always a negative tone when speaking about a “split” class, like it was a bad thing. But that causes someone to think- Why would multi-age classes be a…

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,…

Our Actions Affect Others, and Children are Not so Different from Adults
This past week, our school had to make a brief and abrupt shift to online learning for two days, and came back to in-person school on Thursday. All of my class already had some experience of remote learning, from last spring. But we did not know this class as an online community, and we found…

Off To Kindergarten!
With the current school year coming to an end, I know that parents are feeling excited and anxious about sending their soon to be kindergarteners off to school in the fall. Are they ready? Do they have the right skills? While many of us focus on the basics of letter and number recognition or reading…