Do You Write with Your Students?
Blogger Rebecca Alber shares how writing and reading with your students can make a difference. "Books will soon be obsolete in the schools. Our school system will be completely changed in 10 years."...
View ArticleFive Quick Classroom Management Tips for Novice Teachers
Blogger Rebecca Alber presents five management strategies new teachers can begin using immediately in their classrooms. I made a good number of blunders my first year teaching that still make me...
View ArticleSix Engaging End-of-Year Projects
Blogger Rebecca Alber suggests six projects to engage students the last few weeks of school. I don't know about your students, but so many of mine, coupled with Senioritis, were DONE after state...
View ArticleTeaching Students to Stand Up and Speak Out
Blogger Rebecca Alber encourages teachers to include social justice lessons and activities in their curriculum. If a student dropped to the linoleum floor hungry and ill, as a classroom community, we...
View ArticleBackwards Planning Takes Thinking Ahead
Blogger and teacher education instructor Rebecca Alber compares backwards lesson planning to prepping for a vacation. Start with the end, a veteran teacher told me my first year teaching. In my young,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Back to School: Preparing for Day One
Blogger Rebecca Alber outlines six tips for helping teachers have a successful first day of school. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathycassidy/3546955643/I've had first days in the classroom that were...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tools for Teaching: Managing a Large Class Size
With some class sizes close to 40 students, blogger Rebecca Alber offers strategies for keeping large numbers of kids engaged and managed. http://www.flickr.com/photos/librariesrock/7145386745Do you...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Favorite Formative Assessment: The Exit Slip
Blogger Rebecca Alber highlights a few alternative uses for the formative assessment known as the exit slip. http://www.flickr.com/photos/shareski/4689537628/ When we think about all the different...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Instructional Pacing: How Do Your Lessons Flow?
Blogger Rebecca Alber offers teachers valuable tips for instructional pacing. http://www.flickr.com/photos/88394234@N04/8139271342/sizes/m/in/photostream/ Pacing a lesson so its nearly seamless takes...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deeper Learning: A Collaborative Classroom Is Key
Blogger Rebecca Alber provides tips for scaffolding collaboration in the classroom. http://www.flickr.com/photos/motomichi/2230414971/What's ideal when it comes to collaboration in our classrooms?...
View ArticleDeeper Learning: Defining Twenty-First Century Literacy
Blogger Rebecca Alber explores the changing definition of literacy in this new century. Only a decade and a few years in, how can we fully describe the twenty-first century learner? So far, this we do...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Are Happiness and Learning Connected?
Blogger Rebecca Alber proposes that when students feel safe, valued and harmonious in the classroom, they are more apt to learn. http://www.flickr.com/photos/northcascadesnationalpark/7497505664/We've...
View ArticleTools for Teaching: Ditching The Deficit Model
Blogger and education professor Rebecca Alber proposes five activities for gaining knowledge about your students' strengths, interests, and hidden talents. Children are more than one test, once a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tools for Teaching: Developing Active Readers
Blogger and education professor Rebecca Alber shares five strategies teachers can use with students of all ages to improve their comprehension and critical reading skills....
View ArticleTools for Teaching: How to Transform Direct Instruction
Blogger Rebecca Alber encourages teachers to transform their direct instruction into more student-centered learning activities. Summer is the time to look over those unit plans. As you reflect and...
View ArticleSay What? 5 Ways to Get Students to Listen
Edutopia blogger Rebecca Alber offers up 5 classroom strategies for helping students become better listeners. Ah, listening, the neglected literacy skill. I know when I was a high school English...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Common Core in Action: Writing for an Audience
Edutopia blogger Rebecca Alber provides meaningful writing tasks for all grade levels that are aligned to the Common Core. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cybrarian77/6284697322What is new and different...
View Article5 Powerful Questions Teachers Can Ask Students
To inspire more inquiry in the classroom, blogger Rebecca Alber offers up five questions to routinely ask students. My first year teaching a literacy coach came to observe my classroom. After the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Common Core in Action: Why Collaboration and Communication Matter
Edutopia blogger Rebecca Alber shares discussion strategies aligned to the Common Core that will engage secondary students in more meaningful talk....
View ArticleDoing It Differently: Tips for Teaching Vocabulary
Rebecca Alber offers tips for teaching vocabulary that include letting students select the words, putting away dictionaries, and creating time for talk and play with new terms. (Updated 01/2014) Every...
View Article6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use with Your Students
Blogger Rebecca Alber shares scaffolding strategies to use in your lessons. (Updated 01/2014) What's the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? It would be saying to students something like, "Read this...
View ArticleTeaching Students Not Standards
Edutopia blogger Rebecca Alber warns of the four pitfalls of educational standards, providing actions teachers and school leaders can take to avoid them. There's a lot that I like about the Common...
View Article5 Ways to Give Your Students More Voice and Choice
Edutopia blogger Rebecca Alber offers up five ways to inspire more student-centered learning in your classroom. The idea of co-constructing knowledge with students can be a scary thing for many of us...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Young Writers Embrace Magical Realism (Remembering Gabriel García Márquez)
Edutopia blogger Rebecca Alber reflects on a powerful lesson where mentor text inspired her students to write like they had not written before....
View Article5 Ways to Say Goodbye to Your Graduating Students
Edutopia blogger Rebecca Alber offers five classroom end-of-the-year activities for engaging your graduating students. I remember the first batch of seniors I said goodbye to. I was a brand new...
View Article