One experienced school administrator shares two common misconceptions about teaching and learning that he once thought were the gold standards, then reflects on how adaptive leaders must continuously learn themselves, shifting their practices when and where it is necessary to provide the best education for students.

Many students enter upper grades unprepared to make decisions and take charge of their work, especially with writing assignments and organizing their thinking in any written piece. With good intention, many teachers make lots of decisions for students on organization and development a piece of writing. Gallagher and Kittle share how they let…

Yekaterina McKenney offers a plea to writing teachers: Don't emphasize the conventions of writing, the regurgitation of facts, and correct spelling and grammar over the generation of ideas and the creativity of storytelling. She offers up fresh ideas and suggestions about how to make writing meaningful and personal for student writers--from…

High school teachers Gallagher and Kittle describe a 9-week unit on writing a narrative they created (and taught at their respective schools) that gave students many chances to practice different elements of writing a story. Their unit "spiraled" students back to key skills at each step, giving extended writing practice often lacking in…

Most teachers try to avoid having students experience uncertainty in their schoolwork. But if we want to prepare students to tackle complex problems (and the uncertainty that accompanies such problems), we must give them learning experiences that involve feeling unsure and sometimes even confused. Beghetto presents five strategies that help…

Part of helping students learn to read critically and with comprehension is guiding them to use writing to help think through the content and clarify what they understand--or don't. Looking at students' writing also helps teachers see how much learners are really understanding in their reading and where exactly any learner is struggling. After…

"The only important thing about feedback is what students do with it," declares Dylan Wiliam in this article. The standard school procedure (in which a teacher looks at a piece of student work and writes something on it, and the student later looks at what the teacher has written) does not necessarily increase student learning. Teachers…

Although students do need hands-on experiences to master key skills in science, technology, and engineering, Cummins asserts, K-12 teachers should also help students understand key STEM concepts by reading, writing, and talking about the work of professional scientists and engineers. Cummins lists high-quality texts that help young people…

Having used sustained silent reading (SSR) to motivate reluctant readers in secondary level classes, Steve Gardiner uses the writing equivalent of SSR with secondary students who he wants to motivate and strengthen as authors. He describes the masterpiece assignment he devised and uses with students. Students work all school year on an extended…

Like teachers in many countries with a national curriculum and standardized testing, South Korean teachers find it challenging to include in their curriculums knowledge students will need in the future that doesn't fall within the purview of tested areas. The arts education, character education, environmental education, geography, and education…

A program to improve student ability to perform intellectually demanding tasks might reasonably focus on four types of objectives: abilities, methods, knowledge, and attitudes. (Author/MLF)

The effective ways of representing knowledge given the students and its use by teachers in departing the meaningful tasks are emphasized. An approach embodying five key principles like understanding big ideas, allotting tough assignments, thinking at high levels, problem solving and decision making ability are discussed.

Because students are highly motivated to read texts online rather than in traditional form, McNabb argues, schools should encourage students to use the Internet for academic and pleasure reading. However, hypertext has unique features that make comprehension monitoring while reading challenging. Strategies that work for reading passages of printed…