In recent years, educators have used the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) model to describe the ideal trajectory of teachers as learners with new technology. The very same general pattern can be found in Judith Sandholtz's research from the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow project in the 1980s and the five-phase model…

The traditional method of teaching math--showing students how to do a procedure, then assigning problems that require them to use that exact procedure--leads to adults who don't know how to approach problems that don't look like those in their math book. Seeley describes an alternative teaching method (upside-down teaching) in which teachers give…

The best way to teach students to write well-crafted essays, Gallagher claims, is to consider how people learn to do anything unfamiliar. They carefully examine someone who knows how to do that thing and then emulate that person's actions. Just so, if teachers want students to write persuasive arguments, interesting explanatory pieces, and…

"Writing is a core skill for living, not just for school," writes high school English teacher Penny Kittle. Although it's important to teach students the conventions of grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, teachers don't need to approach this task "like scolds, red pens in hand, stamping out sin, and punishing…

Dueck recounts how, as a high school history teacher, he began to allow students to retake all or part of their end-of-unit tests. Influenced by the work of Rick Stiggins, Dueck prepared students for tests better by focusing on three questions Stiggins says students should be able to answer for themselves: Where am I going in this unit?, Where am…

Fourth grade is a pivotal year, in which students commonly face increased academic demands. According to Anderson, teachers can help students make a smooth transition to 4th grade by introducing these new challenges in ways that are in line with 4th graders' common developmental characteristics: incredible energy and emotion, industriousness and…

In 2008-09, Colegio Ingles had a watershed year in terms of teachers learning to enhance one another's skills. Beneath a deceptively congenial surface, teachers at this Mexican preK-9th grade school were avoiding professional confrontations and rarely observed one another's classes or shared teaching solutions and innovations. That same year, the…

In this wide-ranging interview with Educational Leadership, Stanford University Professor of Education Linda Darling-Hammond discusses the kind of preparation and support new teachers need to survive their critical first years in the classroom. Among her central recommendations are more intensive mentoring that lasts through the first year of…

New technology-enabled assessments offer the potential to understand more than just whether a student answered a test question right or wrong. Using multiple forms of media that enable both visual and graphical representations, these assessments present complex, multistep problems for students to solve and collect detailed information about an…

In this interview, teaching models are rejected for their formulaic, inflexible approach to inculcating cognitive skills. Instead, teachers need to understand the logic of their subject matter and should master a set of pedagogical skills to use as necessary. Includes one reference. (MLH)

Various approaches to supervision can be grouped into three models categorized as nondirective, collaborative, and directive. Supervisors should recognize stages of professional development and treat teachers as individuals. (Author/MLF)

Robertson discusses the "perceived dichotomy" that permeates science teaching: teachers can either stress inquiry learning with lots of hands-on experiences or stress content knowledge and swap hands-on inquiry for direct instruction. Although a curriculum of unstructured hands-on science activities leads to shallow content knowledge, it is…

Responds to Robert Slavin's criticism of the Hunter model by listing recent research projects validating this teaching strategy. Defends the Hunter model as an effort to change teaching decisions based on tradition and folklore to theory based on judgments and wisdom. (MLH)

Simulation is suggested as a method for students to learn to empathize and develop inquiry skills. (Author)

The educational needs of the curriculum specialist are discussed. (CK)