Classroom Practices
We have complied lesson plans, articles, and additional online resources all in one place in order to help you make informed decisions about your classroom.
In this age of smart-phones and social media, understanding the student experience becomes especially difficult for educators and parents to grasp. In order to improve the student and teacher experience, educators should gain an understanding of anti-bullying spaces by defining, promoting, and requiring them in their own classrooms.
Technology can serve as an asset as well as an obstacle within a classroom setting. On the one hand, it can help reinforce curriculum for students with different learning styles. Students and teachers alike can use electronic devices to access information or photos more quickly than with a textbook.
Far too often, students and educators struggle to see eye to eye. Teachers regularly disagree on methods of disciplining their students. Controversy arises, even, with the question of whether or not teachers should apply any discipline to their students, or leave it up to the parents. One of the most common practices in dealing with misbehaving students is holding after school detention.
Learning Tools for Online Classrooms
With today’s technology, it has become possible to achieve teaching and learning from the comfort of our homes. While the value of in-classroom engagement may always hold special importance for the learning environment, teachers and students should use the technological tools available to further learning (and in some cases, replace in-class material).
No matter how far they stray from the standards of common-core curriculum, educators often find themselves wanting to add to their lesson plans halfway through a semester. Extra credit opportunities can often ease the circumstances of these situations, allowing students a chance to further enrich their schooling. However, educators have different opinions about the effectiveness of such a practice.
The debate of whether or not schools assign too much homework has been around for about as long as schools have. Over the years, experts have changed their opinions about whether schools should lower or raise the number of assignments they give, leaving teachers often confused. Recently many schools have banned homework altogether, but many other schools stand firmly against this practice.
In recent years, a number of schools have converted to the pass/fail grading system. Some highschools and colleges will require first year students to follow the system in order to give them room to transition. Many elementary and middle-schools follow it completely. Many colleges and universities offer the option to record any elective as a pass or a fail. In any case, students and teachers have mixed feelings about whether or not the method benefits student learning and provides means for a smooth transition into the real world.
In this age of the polarizing spectrum, where politics occupy everyone’s daily life, separating political from moral beliefs becomes all the more difficult. The question lies as to whether teachers are obliged to share those political beliefs with their students, or to stay silent and allow those students to make those decisions for themselves. Teachers often discover a fine line between discussing personal and professional life with their students, but where would political views be considered in reference to that line?
With new technology at its highest availability, students are looking to utilize it to their advantage, even in the classroom. Many use laptops and tablets during class in order to record notes. But this tight relationship with the digital world leaves educators split on whether or not to allow students to type out lessons in class.
Schools take up a significant portion of a student’s time. Students go to school in hopes of learning, but not everyone’s home situation is created equal. It is imperative that teachers take into account students’ day-to-day lives before making judgments on a student’s behavior. By humanizing students and understanding their circumstances, teachers allow them to reach their full learning potential. Implementing safe spaces at school invites students to feel more comfortable in the classroom and ultimately leads them onto a better path to success.
Nowadays, teachers are more closely debating how to most effectively teach a lesson when certain topics may prove disturbing for their students. Teachers need to take into account student experiences in order for their students to most effectively absorb information. When teachers are able to empathize with their students and develop their classroom structure around those individual experiences, both parties become more capable of learning from each other. Accordingly, teachers should consider utilizing trigger warnings before introducing potentially disturbing material.
Teacher Evaluations or Feedback Surveys
Every student has different learning needs, and because these needs can greatly impact the way educators teach their students, obtaining student feedback via surveys is one of the best ways to learn how to improve your teaching strategies to benefit all students. With feedback surveys, students will have the opportunity to let their voices be heard, and educators will be able to better understand how their teaching behaviors are working in their classroom. Maybe your class would be better off with more class discussions or more hands-on projects or less lecturing, but you won’t know until you ask!
PowerPoint presentations are used in many different fields due to their ability to organize and structure information, create a consistent format, and provide the audience with visuals. Educators often use this type of presentation in their classrooms in order to guide the class through a lecture. The effectiveness of PowerPoint presentations is often debated, but most agree that when created in the right way, these presentations have many benefits for students of all ages. The amount of information on each slide, the type of transition between slides, the color of the background, and the number of slides are all factors to consider when teaching with PowerPoint Presentations, and there are many resources out there that will help guide you when you begin creating your own presentation.
With today’s technology, it has become possible to achieve teaching and learning from the comfort of our homes. While the value of in-classroom engagement may always hold special importance for the learning environment, teachers and students can use the technological tools available to further learning (and in some cases, replace in-class material). The use of technology can facilitate learning for those who are ill and prevent the student from feeling obliged to attend every class and spread germs for the sake of learning. Learning can occur without putting a student’s comfort and safety into jeopardy. There are several resources that allow this to occur.
Using Online Platforms for Students with Special Needs
Students with special needs face unique challenges when learning, but there are many resources online that can be used by educators to aid their students. Whether these students are homeschooled and using these resources 24/7 or enrolled in school full-time and utilizing these resources as supplemental material, online platforms can help children with special needs gain more of an understanding on course content. Interactive games, activities, and videos may be a better alternative to handwritten homework for some students with learning disabilities. Special needs educators with students who may benefit from this type of learning should begin their search for resources with those provided below!