It may be more important than ever to give our students opportunities to learn about the environment, ways to protect it, and the effects of climate change that we are already seeing every day. Extreme weather events are happening all the time, and according to a recent study, we only have 9 years to stop the catastrophic results of climate change. The more our students know about the...
When we shift from a traditional approach to an inquiry approach in our classrooms, we also must shift how we assess and grade our students. It doesn’t necessarily mean the tools and strategies we have used in the past will completely change, but we will have to make a paradigm shift to support student ownership of learning. The first ten years of my career, I would like to believe...
In the seventh part of our Complex Books, In Context series, I’m “zooming out” on Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, written by Carol Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Floyd Cooper. In this post, I am using Unspeakable as an example of an anchor text for an inquiry unit for secondary students that explores social justice themes. (Consider this your daily reminder that picture books...
Before I started facilitating regular maker experiences in my classroom, I had quite a few reasons in mind for not pursuing this type of instruction. I didn’t think I had the right space set up. I didn’t think I taught the right subject (I was a reading teacher at the time), and I didn’t have the funds for what I thought were the right materials. I also didn’t know what it “should”...