Making Curriculum Matter to Students
By Erin Nerlino February 1, 2023 Why do I need to know this?” “When will I ever need this again?” As a high school teacher, I regularly hear these questions from students. Sometimes their frequency makes them easy to dismiss as complaints, but buried within them are two important questions for teachers: (1) Does each […]
Students Can Learn by Explaining, Studies Say
By Sarah D. Sparks May 31, 2013 | Includes updates and/or revisions. Washington Children are quick to ask “why?” and “how?” when it comes to new things, but research suggests elementary and preschool students learn more when teachers turn the questions back on them. In a symposium at the annual Association for Psychological Science research […]
Starting Strong
Establishing the “what” and the “why” in the first 10–15 minutes pays high dividends. My high school biology teacher had a sign taped to her desk that read “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.” After becoming a teacher, I realized that when it came to lessons, failure to […]