Finding Better Ways to Measure Learning: Liz Beck’s Story
We’re rolling out a new community called Better Measures for Learning (BM4L), and we hope you’ll join us. The community is a free space for educators who want to rethink what, how, and why they teach and grade. If that sounds like a pretty big set of questions, it’s...
Not Frontloading. Is That Even Possible?
When it comes to planning Project Based Learning (PBL), one of the things we hear a lot is that teachers want to “frontload” content material before doing a project. By frontloading, we simply mean the common practice of a teacher explaining or “covering” content...
The Real True Actual Reason My Lesson Plan Failed 😉
Our crew has been thinking and writing about lesson plans and planning, and in the midst of being terribly serious (which we totally ARE, ha), we also laugh and poke fun at ourselves. Because it’s a teacher’s life, right? You grind your teeth, and you also laugh so...
When Lesson Plans Flop in the Classroom
I'm willing to bet that if you’ve ever been a teacher for more than, say…a week, then you’ve seen a lesson plan fail spectacularly. One of my personal favorite lesson plan failures involves my apparent inability to count two-digit numbers: I tried to put the kids in...
Cold-Calling is Awkward and Amazing
I started cold-calling at the recommendation of a teacher down the hall. He was a Chemistry teacher who used popsicle sticks to guarantee equity in calling on students in his classroom, and it seemed like an awesome idea to me. One immediate roadblock I encountered...
New RootEd Cohort Beginning Soon, Apply Now
Calling all teachers in Western North Carolina! Prepare your students and communities for the challenges of tomorrow by engaging them in solving the challenges of today, right in their backyard. Apply by September 15th, 2021 to join our 3rd annual RootEd in Western...
What Makes a Great Lesson Plan?
In our last article, we explored who a lesson plan is for. Now it’s time to look at what makes a lesson plan well worth all the time and energy it takes to create one that really makes a difference in the classroom. There are plenty of lesson planning templates out...
Who is a Lesson Plan (Document) FOR, Anyway?
One of the things we talked about in our Top 6 Myths About Lesson Plans and Lesson Planning blog post was the difference between a lesson plan and a lesson plan document. This post focuses specifically on the lesson plan document, and more specifically on who that...
Top 6 Myths About Lesson Plans & Lesson Planning
You should hear some of us Constructive Learning Design people when we start talking about lesson plans over a drink or a zoom call. We get passionate. A lot of people do. Why? Because we want to design powerful learning experiences for our students, we want to...