Peruse a few of our favorite sources of inspiration
And be sure to let us know if you have great sites to share. Thanks!
CULT OF PEDAGOGY
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Not going to lie: Jennifer Gonzalez's Cult of Pedagogy is our favorite education site, and our favorite education podcast. She curates some outstanding ideas and strategies from great teachers, and creates great summary articles on everything from classroom management and teaching strategies to her comprehensive annual guide to educational technology. The site also features excellent guest articles, including some linked below.
Here are just a few of the standout articles available: "3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive" (by Zaretta Hammond) "Delaying the Grade: How to Get Students to Read Feedback" (by Kristy Louden) "Get Students Talking with Ongoing Conversations" "Deeper Class Discussions with the TQE Method" "Note-Taking: A Research Roundup" "Speed Up Grading with Rubric Codes" "To Learn, Students Need to Do Something" |
Highly recommended podcast: "Retrieval Practice: The Most Powerful Learning Strategy You're Not Using"
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RETRIEVAL PRACTICE
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We came by this awesome website thanks to Jennifer Gonzalez above (the podcast with cognitive scientist Poonja Agarwal, linked above, was one of our favorites, and this is Agarwal's web site). It provides a thorough explanation of the cognitive science behind retrieval practice, and has four excellent, downloadable PDF guides available for free (see the links below) that come highly recommended. Definitely worth checking out because of how relatively easy it is to implement many of these strategies.
Check out these free PDF guides: "How to Use Retrieval Practice to Improve Learning" "Interleaved Mathematics Practice" "Retrieval Practice and Transfer of Learning: Fostering Students' Application of Knowledge" "How to Use Spaced Practice to Boost Learning" |
EDUTOPIA
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Established by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, Edutopia.org is a massive site that is loaded with helpful resources and thought-pieces. The site is built around eight core strategies for innovation in education: comprehensive assessment, integrated studies, project-based learning, social and emotional learning, teacher development, and technology integration. Each of the home pages for those 8 strategies opens up access to a ton of videos and blogs on techniques, and research summaries related to that area.
Edutopia doesn't limit itself to those 8 strategies, however: you can find articles or videos on most major topics in K-12 education. |
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TEACHING CHANNEL
A sampling of recommended articles:
"Five Ways to Start Your Lessons" "Second Set Partners: A Turn Talk Strategy" "Scaffolding Text Structure for ELLs" (Grades 9-12) "Silent Tea Party: Pre-Reading for Challenging Texts" "Formative Assessment Using Use the U-P-S Strategy" (Math, grades 9-12) |
Teaching Channel has tons of ideas and ideas (many of them available with brief, helpful videos) for all the K-12 levels. It may seem a little heavy on elementary on the surface, but you can use the "Topics" feature to organize your search for relevant articles for high schoolers, and narrow down further according to subjects or educational topics (see image below)
Use the Topics feature to narrow your search.
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TEACHTHOUGHT
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Chalk full of blogs brimming with ideas, TeachThought.com is one of the strongest educational sites out there. Organized effectively by topics along the top bar (see image below), it is easy to find posts in a very wide variety of areas related to teaching and learning.
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DITCH THAT TEXTBOOK
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Matt Miller's site features a blog of teaching and learning topics and strategies, as well as a dedicated Google in the Classroom collection of tips and "how-to's." Building on ideas expressed in his book, "Ditch That Textbook" (which is available for checkout in our Professional Learning Library), Miller's site contains plenty of easy-to-implement approaches. We highlight a few below.
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