I have the honor of working for ten hours this summer with a colleague, Jack Czajkowski, an 8th grade science teacher at Greenfield Commonwealth Virtual School. It's an open-ended work assignment and we have been free-range on topics and discussions and working on what catches our eye, but we did work through a full draft… Continue reading Using Jamboard to Rethink Vocabulary
Category: Remote/Digital Learning
The Power of Preview
Prior to spring 2021, I didn't think of myself as someone who was a stranger to cancer. After all, my paternal grandfather had died of lymphoma when I was in high school and a good friend had lost her mother when we were both young. Recently, a colleague and friend had successfully ended a bout… Continue reading The Power of Preview
We all need a sidekick
In mid-February 2021, I took two online professional development trainings in a week. The first was the 6-hour MicroCredential Training called "Building Belonging in Virtual Environments" with the National School Reform Faculty; the second was the Math Leaders Network run by DESE, the Massachusetts State Department of Education. While different in structure and content, both… Continue reading We all need a sidekick
Templates and Revision: Energy-Saving House
If you have read any of my posts or if you follow this blog, you probably know by now that I love a good "template." You might call a template a "graphic organizer;" I think of them as templates because my goal is to provide a reproducible structure that does not give away answers, but… Continue reading Templates and Revision: Energy-Saving House
“a freely chosen task”
I'm writing the draft of this blog post in the last week of May and am planning to publish it in about three weeks, or in the last week of school for us. I've never done a virtual-school-last-day-of-school, so I'm curious to see how we close out the school year virtually, what rituals and activities… Continue reading “a freely chosen task”
Technology Alone Cannot Save the Day
Over the December break, I took a course called "Online by Design" with Dr. Eric Moore, who I had first encountered through a blog post of his, How to Design Effective Canvas Modules. The resource from his course that I found most useful was an EDUCAUSE article called "Universal Design for Learning and Digital Accessibility:… Continue reading Technology Alone Cannot Save the Day
Desmos CardSort: the intersection of math and vocabulary
I've recently written about how I've used the CardSort option in Desmos to create a vocabulary game for science, pushing the uses of Desmos beyond just math. There are plenty of electronic or online options for creating flashcards, but I like the way Desmos allows me to use the Dashboard, allows me to share with… Continue reading Desmos CardSort: the intersection of math and vocabulary
Inspirations, II
Things I'm reading, listening to, finding interesting, finding challenging... Resources for Virtual Teaching: Ditch that TextbookArticle: "For schoolchildren struggling to read, COVID-19 has been a wrecking ball"YouTube: The Danger of a Single Story (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)Memoir: Reversed: a memoir; by Lois Letchford--an inspiring storyWeb tool: "The non-profit organization WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind), based at… Continue reading Inspirations, II
Fundamental and Foundational
Sometimes, we get so busy thinking about how to make co-teaching successful that we forget that any co-teaching, or any teaching of any kind, begins with planning, or, in this case, co-planning. If teachers cannot successfully co-plan, then they cannot realistically prepare a classroom experience in which they are able to co-teach. Plenty of people… Continue reading Fundamental and Foundational
All the questions I want to ask the doctors…
.....but am afraid they might use as evidence to question my mental recovery: My brain was experiencing inflammation. Does that mean that brain juice squirted out when the surgeon cut the skull? The surgeon describes the tumor as "six centimeters," but also says that it was tubular in shape. Therefore, using a two-dimensional descriptor of… Continue reading All the questions I want to ask the doctors…
Universal Design for Learning 