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Ed Tips

10 Tips to Engage Your Students with Science – Tip 5: Teach Them What They Want to Know.

Children are inquisitive by nature. They are constantly trying to make sense of the world around them and are eager to understand how natural processes occur. Science teachers should make use of that inquisitiveness in order to...
by Catarina Loureiro
 
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Ed Tips

Ten Tips to Engage Your Students with Science – Tip Four: Connect with Their Everyday Lives

How many times have you heard one of your students say “I’m never going to need to use this knowledge?” Many, many times, I am sure. Students often feel that the subjects approached in science classes are disconnected fro...
by Catarina Loureiro
 
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Ed Tips

6 Advanced Things to Teach in Computer Class

A while back we published 10 Free Things to Teach in Computer Class Besides Typing. It covered some basic activities and topics for teachers to use in classes where computers are available but resources are otherwise scarce. T...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

How to Test Reading Skills in Any Language – Part III: Assessment Start to Finish

This is Part III of a three-part series on developing tests for reading skills in non-major languages. Be sure to check out Part I: Decoding, Part II: Fluency and Comprehension, and How to Determine Text Difficulty in Any La...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

10 Tips to Engage Your Students with Science – Tip 3: Tools, Tools, Tools!

Science tools are essential in any scientific investigation. Without the proper equipment, both in the field and in the laboratory, scientists would have a hard time conducting successful investigations. Laboratory equipment a...
by Catarina Loureiro
 
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Ed Tips

10 Tips to Engage your Students with Science — Tip 2: Make Time for Science

Making good science takes time and so does teaching good science. When learning science, students need time to analyze, apply, reconfigure, and reflect on their investigations, just like scientists do. For this reason, setting ...
by Catarina Loureiro
 
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Ed Tips

Fun Ways to Develop a Child’s Creativity

Thinking outside of the box begins in childhood. Just give children a box of crayons and off they go creating artwork from their imagination. Adults are often amazed at how they connect things together, and we all benefit from ...
by Jana Melpolder
 
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Ed Tips

10 Tips to Engage Your Students with Science – Tip 1: Take Them Outside

Studying science is studying nature. Science tries to understand how natural processes occur, reproduce them in the laboratory, and find ways to put them to the service of humanity. Hence, contact with nature is essential for a...
by Catarina Loureiro
 
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Ed Tips

How Can We Support New Teachers?

On average, ten percent of new teachers resign within the first one to three years of teaching. To address this issue, education researchers conducted the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), the first cross-coun...
by Alice Formwalt
 
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Ed Tips

How to Test Reading Skills in Any Language – Part II: Fluency and Comprehension

This is Part II of a three-part series on developing tests for reading skills in non-major languages. Be sure to check out Part I: Decoding, Part III: Assessment Start to Finish and How to Determine Text Difficulty in Any Lan...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

10 Tips to Engage Your Students with Science

As science teachers, our duties go beyond teaching scientific concepts. We have to engage students with science, encourage critical thinking, and promote an inquiry mindset in our students. Here are ten tips to help you engage ...
by Catarina Loureiro
 
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Ed Tips
Fry_Graph

How to Determine Text Difficulty in Any Language

This article can be seen as an intermission for the series How to Test Reading Skills in Any Language. In order to choose appropriate texts for comprehension assessment, or even fully use the new data you’ve collected by...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

How to Test Reading Skills in Any Language – Part I: Decoding

This is Part I of a three-part series on developing tests for reading skills in non-major languages. Also check out Part II: Fluency and Comprehension, Part III: Assessment Start to Finish, and How to Determine Text Difficulty...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

Tips to Help a Shy Child Enjoy School

It’s that time again! Children are returning to the classroom. Going back to school can be exciting for many kids, but for some who are shy and timid, being in a classroom or new school can be daunting. Here are a few way...
by Jana Melpolder
 
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Ed Tips

Future Olympic Hopefuls Find Education Online

Young athletes all over the United States are excited and eager for the 2012 Summer Olympics to begin. Watching the sporting events on television, their hearts will fill with dreams of one day making it to the Olympics themselv...
by Jana Melpolder
 
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Ed Now

A New Online Source: Flipped Learning

Launched just this spring, the Flipped Learning Network is a website that was started to help teachers adopt a flipped learning system and ideology in their classrooms and beyond. What exactly is “flipped learning?”...
by Ling Shu
 
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Ed Tips

5 Fun Ways to Help Your Child Learn this Summer

Summer vacation is here! Now that your child is out of the classroom, you can take advantage of the different places your family will visit and people you will meet over summer break. Here are a few ideas to help your little ...
by Jana Melpolder
 
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Ed Tips

Students Connect around the World with Skype

The pen pal system just got a makeover. Recently American students in Englewood, New Jersey, connected with Chinese students from Nanjing, China, to talk to each other in both English and Mandarin. Using Skype, an online video ...
by Jana Melpolder
 
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Ed Tips

Open Textbook Catalog Provides Avenue for Reducing Student Costs

Higher education continues to get more expensive in the United States, but efforts like the Open Textbook Catalog at the University of Minnesota help organize and evaluate less expensive textbook options for professors to adopt...
by Jonathan Davidson
 
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Ed Tips

Creating a Classroom that Promotes Student Growth

The strategies go by several names – Collaborative Problem Solving, Positive Discipline, Responsive Classroom Management – but have similar outcomes.  One of the most significant beliefs put forth in these models ...
by Jessica Wheeler
 
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Ed Tips

How to Write a Great Lesson Plan, Part 2: The How

This is part 2 of our 2 part series on lesson planning. In Part 1: What & Why? we went over the first steps of lesson planning: title, audience, objectives, and materials. Now that we’ve got the foundations laid, we&...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

Classroom Management = Classroom Culture

Other than you, the only person who is more aware of your weaknesses in classroom management is the worst kid in your class. He or she knows where your blind spots are, how to distract your attention, and exactly how to push yo...
by Nathaniel Stewart
 
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Ed Tips

How to Make Reading Difficult Texts More Accessible in the Classroom

There was a time when literacy was a rare and prized skill. These days the ability to read isn’t so rare but it’s not so prized either. We use technology to distill great amounts of information down to the tiniest bite-size...
by Eric Lewis
 
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Ed Tips
featured pic

How to Write a Great Lesson Plan, Part 1: What & Why?

 So, for whatever reason, you need a lesson plan. Maybe you’re a volunteer teacher in some far-flung corner of the world trying to help young people grapple with English for the first time, maybe you’ve been hired ...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips
gbl cartoon

Gamification versus Game Based Learning in the Classroom

With warm weather approaching, we see students interest begin to drift toward playgrounds and summertime. Luckily, more and more classrooms have been employing methods, including game based learning and gamfication, to encourag...
by Amy Sevegny
 
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Ed Tips

Great Teaching: Concept Checking Questions

Anyone who’s taught a class has been there: you give the test, or say “go” after providing instructions, and stand by shocked and dismayed at how little of what you’ve painstakingly explained actually go...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

Free Trick to Boost Test Scores? Try a Dose of Failure!

Want a fool-proof way to boost test scores?  Tell your students it’s okay if they fail.  Tell them it is a natural part of learning, and that everyone fails sometimes.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but studies show i...
by Jessica Wheeler
 
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Ed Now

One Laptop Per Child Stumbles and Regains Footing through “One Education” Program

Give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Similarly, give children laptops they have laptops, but teach them to use computing effectively and they develop useful skills. One Laptop ...
by Jonathan Davidson
 
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Ed Tips
Children at a rural school in coffee country, Nicaragua

What Rights do Kids Have?

I’ve been learning about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and have been inspired to apply it to my thinking about education. Working in Nicaragua, I’ve often been frustrated that the teaching of skills or subjec...
by Sara Van Note
 
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Ed Tips

Mind Blowing Plant Math; Fantastic, Free Fibonacci!

Want to unlock the secrets of the universe in your math class? How about for free? You can’t help but get ideas for great free math and science lessons from watching these videos. Just showing the videos themselves in cla...
by Michael Jones
 
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