This is a list of all Learning through Reflecting posts, grouped below by overarching topic through January 2019, with favorites in bold.
For background on when I first started my blog schedule, (Learning through Reflecting posts on Fridays), click here.
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Agency & Inquiry
See more on agency on TeacherMom page.
- 5 Ways for Leveraging Student Ownership For Improving School Communication
- On a Sustainable School Year: An Open Letter to Parents I Wish I’d Sent
- When Not Everyone is Inspired by Your Inspiration
- What Trust is Not…
- 7 Ways for Promoting More Choice Within “Compulsory Schooling”
- Do We Give Students the Opportunity to Share Their Best Selves?
- When School is a To-Do List
- What’s the Difference Between Skills & Mindsets?
- Inquiry: What Trajectory Are YOU On?
- 10 Ways for Every Student to Be On Their Own Learning Path
- Choosing Courage over Fear
- How Ownership Can Get Rid of “I Suck at…”
- Why Do They Want to Erase?
- Perpetual Motion: The Self-Driving Engine of Student Ownership
- “Taking Context Seriously” to Cultivate Student Ownership
- What About When They Don’t Choose What’s Best for Them?
- 10 Ways for Practice & Student Ownership to Co-Exist
- That Time I Failed at Inquiry: 5 Missing Elements
- An Inquiry into Inquiry Planning
- What If Not All Students Want Choice?
- Why & How to Abolish “Can I Go to the Bathroom?”
- How to Set Up Democratic Classroom Jobs
- Student Agency: 5 Steps for Beginners
- 5 Opportunities When We Let Them Teach
- Student Agency: 5 Steps for Beginners
Assessment & Feedback
- 5 Principles for Giving Inspiring Feedback
- What If? On Co-Authoring Learning Reports
- 10 End of Year Questions Every Teacher Should Ask
- 10 Meaningful Student Self-Assessments: A Pinterest Curation
- 23 Guiding Questions to Make Student-Led Conferences More Informative
- Student Led Conferences: Practical Guide & Resources
- The Simple Power of Wrap-Ups
- 3 Practical Formative Assessments
- 8 Tips for Non-Manipulative Praise
Book Lists & Book Love
See more book lists on TeacherMom page.
- 10 Books of Wishes
- Eat Pete! & 5 Other Unlikely Friendship Reads
- “Memory is Magic:” Islandborn Book Tour
- Review: Marabel & the Book of Fate (aka my first ARC book review!)
- 3 Fabulous Rhyming Books & their Powerful Impact on Learning
- 5 Favorite Children’s Books (2017 Read Alouds)
- 4 Reasons to Add The Seventh Wish to your Upper Elementary Shelves
- Do Summer Reading Program Incentives Work?
- 10 Read Alouds for Upper Elementary Grades
- 10 MORE Read Alouds for Upper Elementary
- 23 Appropriate Books to Challenge Young Readers
- Our Favorite Books of 2018
Digital Citizenship & PLN
See more on digital citizenship on TeacherMom page.
- Digital Citizenship: A Richer Perspective on #Edtech
- Media Literacy, ISTE Standards, & #FakeNews
- Top 20 Posts from 2018 that YOU Wrote
- Top 20 Posts from 2017 that YOU Wrote
- Top 20 Posts from 2016 that YOU Wrote
- New Here?
- The Power of One Young Digital Citizen
- The Power of One Digital Citizen–Again
- “I thought if I took away the iPads & phones, they’d grow up to be normal people”
- Connect Where Connection Would Previously Have Been Impossible
- The Price of Diminishing (any) Relationships? Our Humanity
- When We Love Spreadsheets Too Much: Matching the Tech to the Need
- Collaboration: #BetterTogether
- 6 Questions When Considering New Edtech
- 4 Outstanding Alternatives to Student Blogging
- 5 Best Virtual Math Manipulatives
- The Last Digital Fast Finisher You’ll Ever Need
- Unlocking Twitter’s Classroom Potential
- More Evidence of Twitter’s Professional Development Potential
- How The Digital Age is Altering Education’s Digital Landscape (hint: it’s not the gadgets)
- 10 Tips to Increase Class Blog Interest
- 10 Tips for BYOD Classrooms
- Practical Student Blogging
D.I.Y. Professional Development
- An Epiphany: Blog Posting Topic Schedule
- A Mid-Year Reflection on My Unusual #OneWord2018: Power
- I Can Never Go Back…
- I Am Driven
- Apparently, I’m Completing a “Design A Better Future” Project, Too
- We Need Design Thinking: Another More Serious Iteration of My Design Thinking Project
- Fear Vs. Passion
- On Pacing
- My #OneWord2018
- My Most-Read Posts of 2017
- Because I Stayed–Thanks to a Teacher
- How My #OneWordGoal is Going So Far
- My Top 5 Defining Teaching Moments
- Why I Told My Students I Hated Science
- Getting to the Other Side of Confidence
- I’m Finally Using the PYP Key Concepts!
- Sharing PD Learning with Students
- What Featured Images Taught me about Creativity
- The Urgency of Teaching & Practicing Curation
- 3 Ways to Organize & Maximize diyPD Time
- The Story of a Teacher Without a Classroom: 10 Lessons Learned
- When diyPD Goes Terribly Wrong–Or Does It?
- Building PLN’s: From One Beginner to Another
- Getting Creatively REAL with Students
- In My Future Classroom…
- On #diyPD
Equity & Empathy
- Let’s Preserve the Complexity of Our Icons
- 3 Timeless Lessons from The Yellow Star About Cyberbullying
- Current Events, A Controversial Read-Aloud, & Changes I Can Make to Better Promote Peace
- Ice Breakers: A Learning Moment & Follow-Up
- High/Lows: Highlighting the Human Experience
- Power of a Class Meeting
- How to Teach Empathy, & Why it Matters
Literacy
- What Happens When Programs > Books
- The Problem with our Early Reading Obsession
- When Texts Become Our Mentors — Really
- Balancing Reading Challenge with Choice
- 4 Reasons We Just Can’t Break Up with Basals (& How to Finally Move On)
- About Those Reading Minutes & Logs
- 3 Lessons from Blogging for More Authentic Literacy Teaching
- If You Give a Kid a Spelling List
- What We’re Still Not Getting About How Teaching & Learning Have Changed
- Meeting Your Students’ Authentic Reading Needs with Goodreads
- 10 Tips for Transitioning to Daily 5 & Daily 3
- What Happened When We Ditched Our Boxed Spiral Review Program (Mountain Math/Language)
- Review: Pam Allyn’s Core Ready Lesson Sets for Grades 3-5
- Resources for More Authentic Reading Comprehension Strategies
- 7 Ways to Communicate We Care About At-Home Reading–WITHOUT Reading Logs
Partnering with Parents
- Turning Around Family As Appendages of An Abstraction
- 7 Questions to Ask About Your School Fundraiser
- Creating Flexible Yet Significant Parent Volunteer Opportunities
- The Lesson I’ve Never Forgotten From a Parent’s Gentle Rebuke
- 6 Reasons the Homework Debate’s A Mess
- 10 Tips for Tough Conversations Between Home & School
- 9 Homework Assumptions to Scrutinize
Self Regulation & Expectations
- An Open Letter: To Pinterest, From a Teacher
- Owning that they can’t always control what we think they should
- On Rewards
- Instead of Keeping Them in From Recess, What If…
- Instead of Putting Fuzzies in a Jar, What If…
- Autonomy and Cell Phones in Class
- Where Love & Logic Comes into “Oppositional” Interactions with Students
- How “Use Your Resources” Shaped my Classroom
- The Price of Putting What’s Best for Teachers Over What’s Best for Students
- The Issue of Focus: Working for Student Ownership
- Sitting On the Same Side of the Table: On Student Accountability
- 10 Signs You’re Contributing to Your Own Classroom Behavior Issues
- 6 Thoughts on What’s Wrong with Compliance
- Daily First Impressions: How to Maximize the First 5 Minutes
- Our Best Intentions…
- Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation: 17 Practical Application Ideas
Self Care
- On Valuing Teacher Humanity
- TPT Debate: On Teachers’ Personal Generosity
- Revisiting Debate on Teachers’ Personal Generosity
- I Was An Interventions Kid
- Recovering from Perfectionism, For Our Students, For Ourselves
What is School?
- 10 Mixed Messages: Are you Confusing Your Students?
- Learning to Cram or Learning to Live
- 5 Reasons to Prioritize Relationships over Content
- 5 What If’s To Finish Friday Strong
- The Magic of “You Can”
- 4 Questions to Help Inventory Your Classroom Wall Space
- The Myth of the “Recipe for Success”
- 3 Tips to Help Students Rise Above the Echo Chamber
- A Teacher Flowchart on Innovative Learning
- 4 C’s Resource Round-Up
- Beginner’s Guide to Maker-ize an Elementary Classroom
- 5 Small Habits that will Transform Your Classroom
- 10 Tips to Become a 21st Century Teacher
- If Teacher PD Looked Like Popular Pinterest Pins
- What Learning to Drive Stick Shift Taught Me About Learning
- 3 Reasons We Hate Science Fair–& How to Fix It
- What Happened When I Stopped Teaching History in Chronological Order
- 5 Back-to-School Posters for Any Classroom
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