Jepike777 has asked about Frontier Words. I'm a true believer in Frontier Words for vocabulary study, so I am very happy to talk about them.The typical method of studying vocabulary is to take a list of words, often words associated with some test or a list of important words such as the Dolch list or the Fry list, and to practice them in a variety of ways, often using flashcards or memorization for quizzes.Students tend to do pretty badly at this. Instead, think of the student's vocabulary a... Read Full Story

Tigers are beautiful, dangerous, and readily capture the imagination. Enjoy a study of tigers with an easy room set up and plenty of cross-curricular connections.Get your room ready with tiger print letters: Go with orange or black background paper and a suitable motto:"Our Class is GRRRREAT!""We're Tigers for Math!"Add some leafy plants, real or paper, to simulate a jungle for your tigers.Read about some literary tigers:William Blake's "The Tyger" and beautifully read on YouTube."Tiger! Tig... Read Full Story

I'm going to write more on this later, but just a quick link for today:"Taming the Paper Tiger: a Unit on Paper and the Environment." Read Full Story

I'm taking an online class this summer. We do assignments from the book, turn them in and get a grade as well as a quick note if we have an error, and we have discussions.There are a couple of really lively, engaged people in the discussions. If I were the instructor, I would consider paying them to take my course every term. Apart from these two, who keep the conversations going, the comments are mostly, "I'm stuck! I'm stressed! I'm confused!"There are lots of questions I'd ask if it were a... Read Full Story

Summer is such a great time for reading! Not only reading thrillers in a hammock or on the beach, but also for catching up on reading skills in the classroom. You can really take the time for extensive reading.And while you're doing that extensive reading, build in some vocabulary study with popcorn words.Popcorn words are those unfamiliar words that pop up in reading. There they are, forcing themselves on your attention, so it's natural to study them a bit, and easy to add them to your stude... Read Full Story

"Retrofuture" refers to earlier ideas about what our current time would be like. Now that we've hit the 21st century, we have lots to choose from -- people making predictions in the 1900s often chose the 21st century to write or draw or make movies about.Here's a relaxed lesson plan for those finishing out the school year when it's 85 and sunny outside.Have your students explore the following retrofuture resources:RetrofutureRetrofuture space travel artPaleo-futureRetro... Read Full Story

My summer writing class is making a Squidoo lens. Maybe your class would like to do the same.A Squidoo lens is, in the words of Squidoo, an "organized directory" of resources on a particular topic. We're doing 21st Century Skills, but you can choose any topic at all: the subject of your current unit or classroom theme, the main topic of the class for a grand end-of-year wrap-up, your students' favorite book, or perhaps a small sub-topic that's giving your students some t... Read Full Story

I taught my first online class last semester. I expected it to go well. I work online, I collaborate with people from all over the world online, I accept and grade papers by email all the time -- why shouldn't it work well? I worked hard on my course and was responsive to my students and did my best, and I expected the online class to work just as well as a physical world class.But it really didn't. I taught a face to face and an online section of the same class at the same time. My o... Read Full Story

I'm working with Ana Lomba's series of fairytales in English and Spanish, though these books are also available in French -- and you could try these ideas with other bilingual storybooks as well. Spread these ideas out over the length of a week, or the length of the unit.Listen to the story all the way through in each language. If possible, have a native speaker of each language read the story, or use recordings (Ana Lomba's books have recordings for both languages).Have students ... Read Full Story

I've often had to give people directions over the phone. However you feel about cell phones otherwise, it is great to have one when you get lost. Often, there comes a point in the conversation at which you can tell how the person came to be lost."It sounds like you're on College. Go east on Joyce Boulevard --""Should I turn right or left?""Well, that depends on which way you're headed right now. Are you going north or south?"A silence ensues... Read Full Story