Teachers! The pandemic and remote teaching has taught us many things. One huge take away for us was a new found love of a web based app called Pear Deck. We absolutely loved using Pear Deck for our remote students this year, and we love it even more now that we are back in the classroom full time.

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It is no secret that students love games. The more we can add games or game-like content into our classes, the more engaged students will become. Check out the steps below to help guide you on the path to gamifying your curriculum.

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For those of us still teaching online, here are some quick and easy ideas to formatively assess our students’ learning.

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One book that we highly recommend to help guide the implementation of culturally responsive teaching practices into your classroom is Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad. In the book, Dr. Muhammad provides a four part Historically Responsive Literacy Framework that “is essential for all students, especially youth of color, who traditionally have been marginalized in learning standards, school policies, and classroom practices.”

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Physical touch is a huge part of learning and creating a classroom community. I’m talking high-fives and pats on the back. Students giving each other hugs or, if they’re younger, their teachers a hug. Sharing supplies with each other, lending a helping hand, sitting knee to knee during circle time. How can students and teachers build a class community when humans rely so much on touch, yet right now, that physical touch is not allowed?

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We humans are emotional creatures at heart and our emotions can run the gamut and change with the wind. Knowing how to harness the wind and knowledge emotions can be very helpful for producing energy and learning respectively. The four knowledge emotions are surprise, interest, confusion, and awe. These emotions help students open their minds to learning.

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There is a common misconception that learning disabilities only start to appear and can be tested starting in 3rd grade at the earliest. Here is the problem with that: students with learning disabilities have differences in the structure and function of their brains. This doesn’t happen in 3rd grade. The sooner students can get help for their learning disability, the sooner the issues can be corrected allowing for students to need less specialized instruction in the upper grades. When is it time to ask for help?

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Below is a list of some of my favorite picture books for elementary school age students as well as books that I own in my own personal library. We read for thirty minutes every night before bed as part of our bedtime routine and some of these books get read multiple times a week as they are family favorites.

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I just finished reading Teaching for Deeper Learning by Jay McTighe and Harvey F. Silver. It is a teaching book on how to teach so that students thrive and learn at a deep level. Let me tell you, the title lives up to the name. Here are some of my takeaways:

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Now that everything we do with distance learning is online, most of the learning and turning in of work is done digitally. There is, however, a significant body of research to show that when texts become more complex, the brain learns and retains information better when it is on paper. So, note to self, when we go back to in person teaching post COVID, remember to bring back the paper.

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We absolutely L-O-V-E using short stories throughout the year to help guide our instruction and to keep our students engaged in their learning. Short stories have also come in handy this year with remote learning. It is pretty much impossible to teach remotely the Core novels that we love to teach. For that reason, we have relied on using even more short stories to enliven our instruction.

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