Educational Articles
Instructional Practice
Are You Scaffolding or Rescuing? by Terry Thompson
The academic consequences of giving too much support to students.
5 Ways to Make Class Discussions More Exciting by Dr. Richard Curwin
How to make classroom discussion more successful.
Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites by Marcia L. Tate, Ed. D.
This article gives a nice overview of 20 strategies "that engage the brain" and explains why they are effective for student understanding and learning.
Rigorous Learning: Bridging Students From our Classrooms to Successful Lives by W.R. Daggett & S.A. Gendron
An article that explains the important impact rigorous learning has on our students' lives beyond the classroom and defines for teachers how to make learning rigorous. This article emphasizes rigor, relevance, and engagement in lessons taught.
Math
Relational Thinking: What’s the Difference? by Ian Whitacre, Robert C. Schoen, Zachary Champagne, and Andrea Goddard
Instructional activities designed to encourage relational thinking in primary-grades classrooms can give students advantages when they reason about subtraction.
Orchestrating Discussions by Margaret S. Smith, Elizabeth K. Hughes, Randi A. Engle, Mary Kay Stein
Proposing a model for effectively using student responses in whole-class discussions. It has the potential to make teaching with high-level tasks more manageable for teachers and increase the likelihood that the demands of high-level tasks will be maintained during instruction.
Invented Strategies by Carroll, William M. and Porter, Denise
Describes teaching strategies in which children are encouraged to develop computational procedures that are meaningful to them. Authors state that classroom observation reveals most primary students to be capable of developing their own accurate solution procedures for multi-digit addition and subtraction as well as for simple multiplication and division. These procedures are called invented algorithms. Teaching techniques are included.
13 Rules That Expire by Karen S. Karp, Sarah B. Bush, and Barbara J. Dougherty
Overgeneralizing commonly accepted strategies, using imprecise vocabulary, and relying on tips and tricks that do not promote conceptual mathematical understanding can lead to misunderstanding later in students' math careers. In this article, the authors present thirteen pervasive mathematics rules that "expire." With the implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice, the authors conclude that now is an ideal time to highlight common instructional practices that teachers can tweak to better prepare students and allow them to have smoother transitions from grade to grade. The purpose of this article is to outline common rules and vocabulary that teachers share and elementary school students tend to overgeneralize--tips and tricks that do not promote conceptual understanding, rules that "expire" later in students' mathematics careers, or vocabulary that is not precise.
When the Answer is the Question by Vanessa M. Battreal, Vanessa Brewster, and Juli K. Dixon
After teaching the concept of division with remainders for many years, Vanessa Battreal, Vanessa Brewster, and Juli Dixon noticed that interpreting remainders in contextualized problems is particularly challenging for elementary school students. To effectively interpret remainders, students must attend to problem context and consider carefully what the remainder represents (Van de Walle, Karp, and Bay-Williams 2013). In this article, Battreal, Brewster, and Dixon describe a strategy as a response to the observed dilemma involving issues with interpreting the remainder that engages students in problem posing. Their response was to pose problems that helped their students focus on problem context to successfully interpret remainders in division word problems.
Asking Effective Questions by Capacity Building Series
Provoking student thinking/deepening conceptual understanding in the mathematics classroom
Reading
Small Group Reading Instruction: Lessons From the Field by Tara Wilson, Diana Nabors, Helen Berg, Cindy Simpson, and Kay Timme
Why are small groups more effective when children learn to read? Find out why, and how to implement best strategies for teaching beginning readers in this practical article that is based on current research.
Improving Reading in the Primary Grades by Nell K. Duke and Meghan K. Block
The authors in this article discuss several instructional approaches identified as effective in improving word-reading skill, vocabulary and conceptual knowledge, comprehension strategies, and reading outside of school; they discuss advances in interventions for struggling readers, and in whole-school literacy reform.
The Art of the Reading Workshop by Wendy Towle
The author explains the workshop-based approach to reading instruction that provides a framework for teachers to meet the needs of all readers.
Sweeping Round Robin Reading Out of the Classroom by Katherine Hilden and Jennifer Jones
An article detailing the reasons why Round Robin reading is not an effective reading practice within the classroom.
Writing
What Works in Writing Instruction: Research and Practices by Deborah Dean
Through teacher-friendly language and classroom examples, Deborah Dean takes a close look at research-based practices that have proved to be effective and interpreting the principles behind them.
Best Practices in Teaching Writing by Charles Whitaker, Ph.D.
A list of teaching practices that are well recognized in the profession as being effective in helping students develop as writers.
A list of eight best practices that describe the goals and learning environment of successful writing teachers.
Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers by Steve Graham
This practice guide provides four recommendations for improving elementary students' writing. Each recommendation includes implementation steps and solutions for common roadblocks. The recommendations also summarize and rate supporting evidence. This guide is geared toward teachers, literacy coaches, and other educators who want to improve the writing of their elementary students.
A Semi-Painless Way to Improve Student Writing by Gordan Clanton
A college teacher describes his approach to student subject-area writing, which includes assignment of several short papers to be written according to carefully prescribed guidelines), clear grading criteria, high expectations, availability for individual conferences, rewards for improvement, encouragement of writing for other courses, and using lectures to model organization and presentation of material. Although this is a college professor, the principles behind his approach absolutely apply to all grade levels.