Teacher's Curriculum Institute

In today’s webinar, we discovered that engaging students in debate or whole-class discussions involves a few steps and some rich resources. Here are the guidelines we shared: 1. Challenge students to discuss controversial and complex issues in small groups. 2. Create heterogeneous groups and a suitable classroom arrangement. 3. Prepare students to answer provocative critical [...]

Nothing generates more discussion and questions than the Interactive Student Notebook. Teachers are eager for tips on how to grade them and have a life, how to create engaging assignments, and how to manage them. Here are our top tips that we shared in our webinar, The Best Ideas for Managing and Evaluating the Interactive [...]

Aaaaaaaaaa, so long July, hello August!  As a teacher, I have a love/hate relationship with August, but we must learn to work it out as we’re both here to stay. With that in mind, I happily begin thinking about how much I love my classroom.  It’s a place where my students thrive academically and socially.  [...]

Basic Training 2010_LessonB This is the second of a multi-lesson unit to start the school year.  In this lesson, students learn the features of the Interactive Student Notebook by TCI.  Two more lessons will follow soon.  The remaining lessons will be on the topics of learning styles & cooperative learning and automating classroom procedures to [...]

As teachers, we deal with so many obstacles in our daily grind that it would be impossible to list them all.  But of all of the obstacles I encounter, the most annoying would be constant or unpredictable schedule changes. As high school teachers, we live and die by the daily regiment of set bell schedules.  [...]

I’m always looking to be more efficient so I can be the most effective with my students, especially since I teach in a huge public high school where 165 students sit before me each day.  Streamlining things like taking attendance more quickly, getting students into cooperative groups faster, making activity transitions more smooth are just [...]

  Consider the launch dates for the most widely used social media sites in the past ten years.  We begin in 2001 with the launch of Wikipedia, which became a destination site for many students as they research topics.  Of course the challenges would come because of how posts can be edited by the audience [...]

Please join us in welcoming another guest blogger, Steve Innamarato.  A TCI Teacher Consultant, former moderator of our Classroom Technology discussion group, and all around tech guru, Steve will be sharing his perspective on teaching high school students in an urban district. I’ve been teaching for about 15 years now in one of the most [...]

My colleague Dawn shared great ideas and tips on how teachers can make back to school night successful. My experience with back to school night is as a parent. In fact, I went to my daughters’ back to school night on Tuesday so my experience is fresh. What I appreciate as a parent Questionnaire on [...]

This is the first in a two-part article about back to school night. I’m presenting a teacher’s perspective and Traci will respond with a parent’s perspective. We hope you get some good ideas and share your own best practices. As students are returning to school this week and next, many parents are gearing up to [...]