TheApple

After you teach a lesson, what kind of mental checklist do you use to see if your lesson was successful or not? Here are some things that I look for while I reflect on the lessons I have taught: · Did I have all the necessary materials and information? · Did I introduce the topic so that the students wanted to ...

Are Your Students Struggling to Memorize the Math Facts? Number lines, charts, fingers, and counters will delay memorization of the math facts. If you are looking for a way to help children learn math facts, but just don't know where to start, read on. As an educator who taught children with learning disabilities, I have always stressed mastery of the addition, ...

I had a great conversation with a blogging ‘colleague’ of mine the other day about the complexities of online communication. The conversation started after we both were confused/concerned about comments made or posts written about us or things we had written - we started direct messaging on twitter to see how best to interpret the situations and get outside opinion on ...

When I was growing up my dad had a constant supply of gravel around our house because he was always using one of his tractors to move the gravel around to fill up potholes that would form on the many gravel drives around the lumberyard. From time to time my friends and I would climb the huge pile of white and ...

Among the most-longstanding and intransigent issues in the field, the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education programs has its roots in a long history of educational segregation and discrimination. Although national estimates of disproportionality have been consistent over time, state and heal estimates may show varying patterns of disproportionality. A number of factors may contribute to disproportionality, including test ...

IDAHO-Deborah Whitaker doesn’t spoonfeed math to her first- graders. Rather than tell them 1+1=2, she takes them on a math journey, explaining the concepts of addition. She shows that numbers are symbols for real things in life, like the number of legs on a cow. If she’s successful, her students understand not only how to add, but when, why and what ...

Technology is on the brink of transforming education, argue Clayton M. Christensen of Harvard Business School and Michael B. Horn of Innosight Institute, authors of Disrupting Class, in Education Next. So far, the $60 billion investment in education technology has been used to support the status quo, they write. _Computers do not deliver instruction. The teacher is still at the center ...

Everything a Teacher Needs to Know Before School Starts. As summer quickly comes to a close, preparation for being back in the classroom begins to mount. And what you do in the first week of school can truly set the tone for the rest of the year. Use this elaborate guide, exclusive to TheApple—with tips, strategies, even lesson plans—to help you ...

Great lessons for educators can be found in the most unlikely of places. One such example can be found on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, in a reoccurring segment called "The Word". In "The Word," host Stephen Colbert uses one word or phrase as a jumping off point for his unique editorial commentary. Now, some might dismiss "The Word" on it's ...

I believe that a student getting an education should have three goals: work, learn, and enjoy. These should be the same three goals of their teachers, and the educational institution they attend. While I think that these three goals remain at the core of the beliefs upon which everything in education is built upon, as I talk with the graduating seniors ...

h4. 1. What is “adequate yearly progress”? How does measuring it help to improve schools? No Child Left Behind requires each state to define adequate yearly progress (AYP) for school districts and schools, within the parameters set by NCLB. In defining AYP, each state sets the minimum levels of improvement—measurable in terms of student performance—that school districts and schools must achieve ...

Because our professional duties are geared to changing lives, we teachers tend to think about what we do with a greater intensity than other professionals. We scribble comments on lesson plans, stick bits of paper in our teacher’s editions to mark any changes we want to make before we teach that lesson again, and scrawl hasty reminders and notes to ...

Located on a 12 acre island, the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States and is a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886, designated as a National Monument in 1924 and restored for her centennial ...

Do you catch yourself staring out the window? Are you forgetful? Restless? Suffering from more than a touch of spring fever? If you feel this way, just imagine how your students feel! The end of the school year is a time when teachers and students tend to squander the brief class time they have left in a variety of ways. Teachers ...

The Wilderness Classroom Organization (WCO) is a non-profit organization that strives to engage, excite, and motivate students and teachers using an interactive, technology-based learning model that draws upon people’s innate curiosity and desire for exploration. Essentially, this is a program set up to “electronically” bring young people on virtual expeditions all over the world. We bring our educational content—photos, journals, videos, ...

Julia- I’ve got a lot of divorced parents in my class. How do I go about conferences? Do I do them separately or invite both sets to one conference? It’s probably a silly question, and I don’t want to ask the teachers in my grade until I get a better idea what other schools do. Thanks a bunch- Angie h4. Dear ...

It is always interesting how people see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. We all latch onto particular issues or ideas, believing that was the intent of a speech, a news story, or a television program. Some would say that the measure of a truly good advocacy speech is the speaker allows all audiences to ...

h4. 1. Why is teacher quality such an important issue? A major objective of No Child Left Behind is to ensure that all students, regardless of race, ethnicity or income, have the best teachers possible. A well-prepared teacher is vitally important to a child’s education. In fact, research demonstrates the clear correlation between student academic achievement and teacher quality.9Studies also show ...

One of TheApple’s members, John Slattery of Santa Fe, NM, touched our community with his post of how he helped get 50 laptops donated to children in third world countries. This story warms the heart and reminds us that simple actions can have profound effects. You may have heard of the fabled "$100 laptop" that's been generating buzz for several ...

If teachers go above and beyond the call of duty, and their students' achievement benefits from it, should those teachers be rewarded? What if teachers seek out additional training to improve their craft? What if teachers commit to increasing curricular rigor ... and their students demonstrate improvement? Is there ever a time when superstar teachers should be rewarded? Does it matter ...