Whether you are a brand new teacher or a veteran educator, the beginning of the school year can be overwhelming and stressful. It can be hard to figure out where to start. You want to start teaching routines and expectations on day 1 but how? Enter The First 10 Days! I’ll show you how to use The First 10 Days to get your year started on the right foot! Planning Guides This is an example of one of the planning guides included in The First 10 Days. I like this planning guide because it is one week at a time, planned out by day. There are lots of other options available! The first place you’re going to want to start...
Joe Smith Special to Black Press Media While digital marketing has risen to extraordinary levels of use within advertising campaigns, print is still a highly effective medium for helping businesses reach their customers. Neuroscientists who focus on the brain and its impact on cognitive functions have been conducting studies for a number of years on the effects of digital reading versus print. They have found a number of interesting facts that when applied to the world of marketing point towards the need to use a variety of mediums to ensure messages are being received. In an article by Kerry Benson on BrainFacts.org, Lauren Singer Trakham, who studies reading comprehension, said “We read digital text more quickly, so we think we...
Good listeners become good readers. This summer, I'm diving into LETRS training on the Science of Reading. If you've been around my corner of cyber space for a bit, you know I was introduced to the Science of Reading a few years ago through RISE training in my home state. It was mind-blowing. Like a where-has-this-been-all-of-my-life kind of PD. And I just wanted more. So, I'm digging into LETRS. And it's intense. And so, so good. As I process it, I'll be blogging about some nuggets of wisdom I've learned along the way. So... let's talk about talking. What is oral language? Why should I care about it as a primary teacher? Isn't that the speech path's job? What can...
Stop us if you’ve heard this before: virtual reality (VR) is going to change the world! Since the early days of VR, technologists heralded it as the next major computing platform that captured our imaginations for its ability to substitute our physical reality and our sensory experiences. Little did we know that it would take a pandemic to help usher VR front and center as the next major computing platform. Some technology pundits claim that the upcoming war between Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft will make the “battles we saw over smartphones seem like a minor skirmish.” As massive investments pour into the VR field, improvements to hardware and software are inevitable. They will only help improve the way we...
I have always wanted to be a teacher. And while I’ve taught religious school for several years now, this past year was my first as a full-time classroom teacher. It took a pandemic for me to realize that to be a teacher is to be a hero. Being a teacher is something our society needs; it is a form of civic duty. What’s more, over the course of this difficult year, I realized that I not only wanted to be a teacher, but I wanted to be a teacher right now — at this very moment in history, during a pandemic. I think back to the first day of school in September, as I looked out on my 11-student cohort of...
