Formative assessment works best when students understand what their learning looks like. Here are some guidelines for making it fun, organic, relevant, and meaningful.

Via John Evans

“Michael Hauge has created a formula around the five turning points and six stages you need to write a good story. Eduardo L. Lozano created this infographic - The Six Stage Plot Structure - illustrating Hauge's formula for writing successful screenplays.”
Via Jim Lerman

“ John Hattie has developed 9 mindframes students need for learning. Now he introduces a new, 10th mindframe: "I collaborate."”

“ A look at the research that made an impact in 2015, from the benefits of well-designed classroom spaces to the neuroscience behind exercise and math ability.”

“ Teachers are always on the lookout for ways to foster questioning skills in students. First of all, let’s define our subject. At skillsyouneed.com the topic of questioning is covered succinctly in this article. It asks us to consider why we question things. So why do we? We question to gather information. It helps us learn. We communicate and understand others through questioning. It helps us explore the world we live in. We also test acquired knowledge with good questioning skills. They are skills that serve us in school and in everything beyond it. Curiosity and questioning are what keep us interested and engaged in life.”
Via John Evans

“ Download and Print at 12×18. Free for classroom, educational inspiration, and person use. Sharing approved. Selling denied.”
Via John Evans

Will classes in curiosity, problem-solving and creative thinking soon be on the curriculum? Our latest report thinks it should.

Via Nik Peachey

Learning is a complex cognitive phenomena that has been and is still the central theme of a wide variety of scientific studies. The overarching question ‘how we learn what we learn’ intrigued scientists across different disciplines and generated tons of literature on the topic. Informative insights coming out of these studies have not only demystified the workings of human cognition but have also shaped pedagogy and teaching methodology in unprecedented ways (e.g. multiple intelligence theory and learning styles). In this month's Books for Teachers, we are sharing with you five popular books on the topic of learning. You may want to bookmark and save them to read in your upcoming vacation. Enjoy

Via John Evans

“ Here is a great list of useful videos for helping you in your continuing quest of teaching Media Fluency to your digital students.”
Via Ana Cristina Pratas, Jim Lerman, Mark E. Deschaine, PhD

“ While project-based learning has existed for decades, design thinking has recently entered the education lexicon, even though its history can be traced back to Herbert A. Simon's 1969 book The Sciences of the Artificial. So why the resurgence of these ideas? Lately, I have heard teachers and school leaders express a common frustration: "We are _______ years into a _______ initiative, and nothing seems to have changed." Despite redesigning learning spaces, adding technology, or even flipping instruction, they still struggle to innovate or positively change the classroom experience. Imagine innovation as a three-legged stool. Many schools have changed the environment leg, but not the other two legs: the behaviors and beliefs of the teachers, administrators, and students. Consider this conundrum: much of what we know about teaching comes from 16+ years of observation as students. In no other profession do you spend that much time watching the previous generation before being told to change everything once you take control. Without the framework or scaffolding for that change, it's truly unreasonable to tell educators, "OK, start innovating."”
Via John Evans

“ Innovate is a verb. It’s easy to talk about, far harder to do. Yet, it’s the DOING that matters most. The daily grind in the details of the ebb and flow of progress forward, bit by bit. It’s in the tiny microscopic changes we make that are often hard to detect until we zoom out, after a bit of time, and see the forward motion. There is this panic of “Oh my gosh every school needs a makerspace” when our schools are FILLED with the resources we have to make. Inside our kids and each other. When we move, things happen.”
Via John Evans