You Don’t Have to Like It: Explicit Teaching about Life
This may shock you, so prepare yourself. You may want to sit down. Ready? Here goes: not every student I work with is thrilled to spend 50 minutes with me after school working on the most challenging, difficult areas they have. I know! Weird, right? Who knew?
Nothing Motivates Like Success
“Come on, Philip. Don’t complete all the worksheets now or you won’t have any for homework!” How often do you have to say this to a student? Much less steal away the one remaining uncompleted worksheet to hand to [...]
Holiday Games: Do the Math!
The days are getting shorter and shorter and the weather is turning colder and colder, which can only mean one thing: you are running out of time to complete your holiday shopping. Especially if you have kids. Not to [...]
Spare the Rod: Purging the Puritan from our schools
What if we assumed that all children are good, no matter what their behavior? What if we assumed they never deserve to be punished or shamed for their actions? What if there was a way to address their negative [...]
Building a Million
I have a confession to make: I love base-ten blocks. Like, I’m a little embarrassed how excited I was to buy my first class set. And the awesome games to play with them. They are probably my very favorite [...]
What’s math got to do with it: LDA conference recording
In February, I went to the Learning Disabilities Association of America's 54th Annual National Conference in Baltimore. In addition to seeing inspiring and informative presentations, I also presented What’s math got to do with it? Math learning disabilities, dyslexia [...]
Maybe One of Us Will Die
“Do you want to do an extra, bonus maze, or save it for later?” I ask my second-grade student, whom we’ll call Rachel. “Later! Later!” Rachel chants. “Ok. We’ll do it next time,” I say as I tuck it [...]
Oui or Si? Language learning and anxiety
I recently went on vacation, so I’m once again aware of quirk I have speaking foreign languages. I can have a reasonable conversation in Spanish, but in French, even though I can plan elaborate sentences in my head, as soon [...]
Strategies to Get Reluctant Writers Writing (and comprehending better, too!)
Recently, I did another webinar for the Association of Educational Therapists. It was a great audience with insightful questions, so we ended up going over our allotted hour, and I had a wonderful time. I hope you enjoy! Related Posts [...]
Going on Vacation Alone: A Cautionary Tale about Individuation
Six o’clock this morning, my husband dropped me off at the Marin Airporter so I could go catch my plane. He hugged me long and hard and told me he was proud of me and that I was being [...]
Six No-Prep Games for Literacy
“Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.” – Plato Break is over and you promised yourself you’d prep some fun new game before you met with your students again, but time got away from [...]
The Only Zero Tolerance Policy that May Make Sense
When we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers, who would hurt the children any way they could. By pouring out their derision, upon anything we did, exposing every weakness, however, carefully hidden by the kids. [...]