Practical Math Practice: The Grocery Store Game

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

Practical Math Practice: The Tollbooth Game

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

Strengthening Reading Skills Using Current Events

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

Fantastic Flashcard Apps

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…

The Gamification of Education

Today’s kids are more plugged in than ever before. For many, adolescent life is increasingly centered around electronic devices, the internet, and video games. As parents, educators, and tutors, it is not only important to acknowledge this trend but to also take advantage of it as a way to connect with students and enhance the … Read more