Sheldon Soper 
As long as there have been literature courses taught in schools, there have been students looking for short-cuts to avoid long reading assignments. One of the most well-known of these shortcuts (right behind “rent the movie”) has been Cliffs Notes. For decades, students have sought out the infamous black and yellow paperbacks as a way … Read more
Number-sense and the ability to estimate are skills that students will need in their every-day life. Unfortunately, these skills can be some of the most challenging to teach without practical experiences. One of the best places to cultivate the ability to do quick, mental-math estimation is on a trip to the grocery store. Here is … Read more
Learning is most effective when it is both practical and relevant. Teachers and tutors can maximize their students’ real-world math abilities by creating experiences that mimic how math is used in real life. One of my favorite examples of a hands-on, concrete math practice activity is the Tollbooth Game. I still remember playing this Tollbooth … Read more
As a social studies teacher in the Common Core era, my curricular responsibilities have gradually shifted away from historical material and more towards the realm of teaching strategies for reading and creating nonfiction text. More and more, teaching the skills required to engage with social studies content has usurped the push to memorize names, dates, … Read more
Technology has made a lot of the tried-and-true educational mainstays irrelevant to today’s student: the calculator defeated the abacus and the internet put most encyclopedia salesmen out of business. These two fantastic flashcard apps may be sending the 3”x 5” index card into retirement: Read more…