Enthusiastic students blurting out the answers is a common issue in classrooms. This teacher has come up with a way to manage it—and give everyone a chance to think and respond together. 🧠

#60SecondStrategies #ElementaryTeacher #EduSky

Why Students Give Up on a Task—and What Teachers Can Do About It Students often start working on a task, but disengage if it gets difficult. You can use these three tips to encourage them to persist.

Persistence isn’t a personality trait—something students either have or don’t.

Instead, @cathleenbeachbd.bsky.social writes, it’s a skill, and you can help students build it up over time. ⛰️

#EduSky

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.” —Albert Einstein

When the Teacher-Student Relationship Breaks Down These strategies will help teachers reset boundaries and repair relationships if classroom dynamics have become dysfunctional.

“What do you do if the teacher–student relationship is basically dysfunctional?”

Educator @mattpitman.com.au responds to a real question from the Edutopia community—and lays out strategies that can help teachers reset boundaries and repair relationships.

#EduSky #ClassroomManagement

Designing the Ideal Classroom Space A thoughtfully designed classroom—and lesson—should always take into account the known limits of the student brain, says developmental psychologist Karrie Godwin.

What happens when classrooms—or lessons—are designed with the brain in mind? 🧠 We spoke with an expert in developmental psychology to find out.

#EdResearch #EduSky #ClassroomDesign

How to Use Hexagonal Thinking in Any Content Area This engaging activity supports students in organizing their thoughts in a multidimensional way, helping to cement their understanding.

For a free, downloadable template to help you get started with this activity, check out the full article here: edut.to/4t5SIMv

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Hexagonal webs can be used as an alternative assessment throughout a unit. Or you can have students start a small web at the beginning of a unit and add to it as learning progresses. 🕸️

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Ask students to explain the relationships they identified. What matters most is their ability to defend their rationale. 💬

This activity takes the pressure off for students who fear not “getting it right,” since there is no single right way to connect the terms.

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Next, have students cut out the hexagons and glue them on another piece of paper, placing them to show connections ↩️

The result is a web of terms that represent a concept. Usually, no two webs are the same—each student creates a display of their own understanding of a topic.

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First, hand out a page with hexagons printed on it and have students write terms in the hexagons. ✏️

If they need help getting started, provide a bank of relevant terms for your current unit. Emerging readers and English learners can fill the hexagons with images.

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How to Use Hexagonal Thinking in Any Content Area This engaging activity supports students in organizing their thoughts in a multidimensional way, helping to cement their understanding.

In a world of instant answers, hexagonal thinking supports deep learning. 🧠

It also builds students’ problem-solving, resilience, focus, and communication skills.

This hexagonal web activity—which works across grade levels and subjects—can help you get started:

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Using Student-Created Stop-Motion Movies to Explore Math Making simple movies provides early elementary students with chances for rich mathematical discussions.

Stop-motion movies might seem like a great way to introduce math concepts, but should you really have your second-graders make the movies themselves?

Yes, yes you should. 🎥

#MathSky #ITeachMath #EduSky

What Works For Me! “Lesson-planning hack: Plan from Tuesday to Monday so you aren’t scrambling Sunday night. ‘New’ weeks start on Tuesday, which gives you Monday to finish prepping for the week!” —Nicholas Emmanuele, Teacher

Have you tried a new approach to lesson planning this year? We'd love to hear all about it! 🌟

#WhatWorksForMe #EduSky

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Using Supreme Court Cases in Middle School Social Studies Students can use evidence-based reasoning to evaluate the law while building their ability to collaborate and communicate effectively.

Exploring Supreme Court cases can help students develop their critical thinking, analysis, and argument skills, says educator Samantha Ellison.

Here are her tips for introducing cases and guiding students through a moot court! 🧑‍⚖️

#EduSy #sschat #ITeachSocialStudies

“Some would say administrators should visit classrooms, because that is how they can provide ‘Instructional Leadership.’ That may be true. But I think they should be in classrooms, so they always remember how challenging the work of teaching is.” —Danny Steele, Principal

— @steelethoughts.bsky.social

How to Tell When Someone Is Ready for an Administrative Role Recognizing, encouraging, and mentoring educators who demonstrate strong management skills is an important task for a principal.

“It’s hard to know your own potential, and not everybody is confident in their abilities,” Principal Randy Dalton tells Edutopia. “You need to point that out.”

Here are some ways school leaders can recognize and nurture aspiring administrators. ⬇️

#SchoolLeaders #Principals #EduSky

Building Students’ Number Sense in Elementary Math To get an internal sense of how numbers relate to each other, students can practice working with number lines.

Want to help students build a sense of how numbers relate to each other? Use number lines! ✖️🌟

Here’s a step-by-step guide from math and literacy specialist Laura Berman.

#ElementaryTeacher #MathSky #ITeachMath

Reducing Homework by Ensuring That More of the Learning Happens in Class For a high school physics teacher, assigning less homework meant comprehensively revamping assessments and how each class session was set up.

“Ultimately, this shift is about placing the heaviest cognitive lift where support exists while protecting the time students need to live full lives outside of school,” says director of STEM education Eric A. Walters. “When we honor that balance, learning doesn’t shrink—it deepens.” 🧠

#EduSky

How to Scaffold Learning and Maintain Rigor A myriad of tools and strategies that support learning and student agency are also essential to maintaining rigor.

“Rigor doesn’t mean more work, and it doesn’t mean figuring it out on your own without support. It should mean achievement at a level just outside of a student’s ability to do things unaided,” writes educator James Fester.

#EduSky

3 Learning Myths It’s Time to Bust Ditching these misconceptions about how the brain learns best—and following what the research really says—can help teachers better support students’ development.

Tests don’t just assess memory—tests actively change memory. 📝🧠

We dig in to why testing often gets a bad rap, and bust 2 other common myths about learning.

#EduSky

10 Powerful Community-Building Ideas Strategies for ensuring that students in every grade feel like they’re part of the classroom community.

Build classroom community all year long! 🤝 Try these activities for elementary, middle, *and* high school.

#EduSky

Practicing Sight Words With the Help of Ice Cream Cones Early elementary teachers can use this activity to involve students and their families in an engaging literacy routine.

Kindergarten teacher Lucia Cruz came up with a highly motivating literacy routine involving a bulletin board, ice cream cones, and laminated sets of sight words. 🍦

14 years later, the routine is still used by her school today! Here’s how it works.

#literacy #EduSky #ElementaryTeacher

”Sometimes the best learning happens in the midst of what looks like chaos. Don't be afraid to get messy.” —Leah Ross Henry, Educator

Using Fun Songs to Transition Between Activities in Preschool. A list of songs appears with play icons: “Mahna Mahna (The Muppet Show),” “Lisztomania (Hollywood Symphony),” “Shining Star (Earth, Wind, and Fire),” “Linus and Lucy (Vince Guaraldi Trio),” and “Take 5 (New York Jazz Lounge).” At the bottom, text reads, “Read the article to learn how educator Corrie Littlejohn-Pope uses these songs!”

🎶 Your new pre-K playlist! https://edut.to/4tqofbT

Making Space for Students’ Home Languages in the Classroom Teachers don’t need to speak students’ home languages to use them as a resource for learning and creating a sense of belonging.

Help students use their home language as a tool to access English language content! Here’s how to use translanguaging in the classroom. 💬

#MLL #ELL #MultilingualLearners

5 Ways to Teach Embodied Phonics These strategies help connect movements to phonics instruction, giving kids another way to absorb the crucial information.

5 practical, hands-on strategies teachers can use to add movement to your phonics instruction! 👋

#literacy #EduSky #phonics

Bouncing Back After a Class Is Interrupted You just found out every student in the band will miss two days of school. Or there’s a fire drill and now one section is behind. What to do?

You just found out every student in the band will miss two days of school. Or there’s a fire drill and now one section is behind. What to do?

@crystalfrommert.bsky.social shares tips. ⬇️

#EduSky

Embrace the Blank Page Research supports regularly asking students to recall information from memory, and to do that you don’t need a worksheet—just a plain piece of paper works great.

Trying to incorporate more retrieval practice into your lessons, but sometimes struggle to plan the activities?

Here’s a simple solution: Embrace the blank page! ✏️

#EduSky

“If students don’t collaborate well, that’s your clue to do it more often, not less. But structure it. Teach them how to create norms, find consensus, and move on after a disagreement.” —Heather Wolpert-Gawron, Teacher

What’s one way you structure collaboration in your classroom?

#EduSky