Step into any classroom for any age at any time of day, and teachers are likely to report that transitions between activities are when they lose the most instructional time with their students. Luckily, you can read a lot more about how to run effective transitions in...
Conferring Tool #2: Evernote!
Welcome back, guest poster Shelby! Please continue to wow us with your conferring genius: There’s another great option for conferring using a Together Teacher favorite: Evernote. We’ve featured Evernote on our blog a few times and it is really...
Conferring Tool #1: Confer!
And now, a guest post from our Together Teacher Coordinator, Shelby: When I taught K-2 guided reading and writing, I was constantly looking for a better way to keep track of my conference notes. I tried binders with tabs, clipboards, notebooks… and everything else...
Make the Most of Your Week Lesson #5: Faster and Smarter
Make the Most of Your Week Lesson #5: Faster and Smarter There are many definitions of efficiency out there, but we like this one best: “accomplishment of or ability to accomplish a job with a minimum expenditure of time and effort.” Of course, there are many, many...
Making the Most of your Week Lesson #3: Using Small Pockets of Time
Are you like me? Do you sometimes find yourself completely wasting small 15 – 20 minute chunks of time? Of course, sometimes they should be wasted (see our hot chocolate post from the start of 2013). But for the most part, my orientation is to try my hardest to use...
Google: Going the Extra Mile
I recently connected with Ann Bevan H., a middle school leader at a great school in Chestnut Hill, MA. She let me in on how her school takes Google usage to a whole new level. What Beaver Country Day School thinks is so cool about technology is the way it is used to...
Overheard: Allocating Time to Plan
I recently delivered a Together Teacher professional development workshop to a great high school in Harlem. Afterwards, I spent time with the principal, Lisa F., discussing ways we could make sure the new habits would really stick. Lisa pondered for a bit, and then...
Good Organization = Good Data = Good Instruction
This post is about one of my favorite classrooms, Jenny C.’s Kindergarten in Brooklyn. I’ve known Jenny for over five years. She’s featured in my book, and she’s the type of teacher I hope my own daughter has in a few years. Full disclosure: Jenny’s classroom has...
Systems Tweaking: Returning Graded Work
I like to remind people that it may be hard to get HOURS back in your day, but it is much easier to get back minutes—both yours and your students’. Tess H., a middle school teacher in Philadelphia, recently shared how her systems for returning student work have...
Happy 2013! Schedule a Hot Chocolate Break!
Let’s be honest. . . Sometimes all of this planning, scheduling, sorting, filing, and more planning just gets EXHAUSTING. We know why we do it: It makes us better teachers, and hopefully gives us more free time and less work to take home. But still, it’s tiring. There...