School of Practice

Before there’s curriculum or calendars or lesson plans, there’s the classroom space itself, stripped of last year’s posters and anchor charts. Where should teachers begin? We’ve got the answers. In this back-to-school...

How do you lay the foundation for real community in your classroom? Teachers know (and the research supports this) that when kids feel safe and connected in school, they’re better equipped to focus on learning. The...

Do you want to build a vibrant classroom community this year, but you’re not sure where to start? Research shows it’s well worth the effort—and the first week of school is the perfect time to lay that foundation. When...

Teaching is hard (often draining) work, and educators’ instincts about what will bring relief are frequently wrong—just as they are for most people. That’s because our minds deceive us, says cognitive scientist and Yale...

What’s your take on eliminating zeros from the grade book? Does your school have a no-zeros grading policy? Even if it doesn’t, you probably have opinions about it. Setting 50% as the minimum grading threshold is a...

The end of the school year can feel like the best––and worst––of times. On the one hand, it’s a great stretch because “the routines and procedures are set,” and the kids have their sights set on summer vacation, says...

It’s a mistake to assume that good differentiation always means splitting students up into small groups, says Michael McDowell, an author, coach, and former teacher. A more effective approach, he says, is to design...

Have you ever delivered a lesson and felt your students were acing it, only to revisit the same information a week later and realize hardly any of the new content stuck? You just came up against the forgetting curve—and...

Can your students spot what’s real and what’s AI-generated on TikTok and Instagram? How about when they’re researching topics for humanities classes, gathering sources in social studies, and preparing for math...

Narrow, rigid math has “turned students off for generations,” says renowned researcher and Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boaler. Yet teachers often don’t have much choice when it comes to math curriculum—what’s...

Getting scaffolding right—amid the messy reality of teaching 30+ students at different skill levels—is one of the toughest challenges in teaching. Done well, it looks like tactical magic: teachers seamlessly know how...

Maybe you’ve seen it in your classroom: Students who zip through chapters but then can’t tell you much about what they just read. To move those kids from fluency to sense-making, you’ve got to teach them the habits of...

Have you ever been shocked when your students bomb a unit test after weeks of seemingly locked-in learning? Veteran educator Jay McTighe has the ultimate research-backed solution: formative assessment. In the best-case...

Did you know there’s a strong connection between the hand and the neural circuitry of the brain? As students learn to write letters by hand, they also learn to recognize them more fluently . This letter recognition...

It’s a tricky (but very common) classroom dilemma: How do you talk about—and normalize—learning accommodations in class without singling anyone out in front of peers? Unfortunately, many teachers aren’t trained to have...