Edutopia

Daily Activities That Support Students’ Creative Mindset Teachers can provide learning experiences that guide high school students to become comfortable with uncertainty and risk-taking.

When creativity becomes a daily habit:

⭐ Students ask more original questions.
⭐ They approach challenges with flexibility.
⭐ They notice opportunities for improvement & problem-solving.

Here are 3 simple ways to support learners’ creative mindset each day.

#EduSky

Question from Youki Terada, Edutopia Senior Editor: Teaching can be counterintuitive. For example, if you want your students to “do better,” you can just give easier tests. But we know that doesn’t work in the long term. What other things about teaching are surprising, counterintuitive, or do most people misunderstand?

Edutopia’s @youkiterada.bsky.social wants to know: What things about teaching are surprising or counterintuitive?

What Worries Me About Teachers’ Use of AI A high school teacher reflects on how adult choices around AI use—particularly their approaches to transparency and focus on efficiency—can affect classroom culture.

As always, here's @marcusluther.bsky.social with a truly excellent piece on @edutopia.org! In education, we talk about the time about teachers modeling learning and behavioral habits for kids. Marcus applies that same idea here to our AI use.

www.edutopia.org/article/teac...

What to Do When Students Reject Their Accommodations When students who need supports refuse to use them, the cause is generally not lack of motivation—it’s the sense of stigma attached to accepting help.

By addressing stigma and emotional safety, teachers can more effectively support students that refuse to use their accommodations.

Educator Clementina Jose explains how to apply these 5 strategies in your classroom. 👇

#SpecialEducation #SEL #EduSky

Jason Reynolds on What Fires the Imagination of Young Readers The best-selling author on why "inappropriate" topics may be exactly what teen readers need, and the importance of raising the hair on the backs of readers' necks in the first 50 pages.

On a very hot day in June, I took a risk. I made a beeline to the front of the room at ISTE so I could shake hands w/ Jason Reynolds.

Nervously, I blurted out, "I know you have to leave, but my editor would never forgive me if I didn't ask to interview you."

My latest for @edutopia.org:

Making Use of a Worked Example to Improve Learning By explicitly modeling each step of a problem and gradually fading away supports, teachers can give students a clear path to mastering new content.

To see Hamilton’s work in action and learn more about the benefits of worked examples, watch the full video here: edut.to/40gI8FG

5/5

Then she lets students complete a problem on their own.

If students are struggling with a part of the problem, Hamilton models another worked example to reinforce the part of the process that students don’t understand.

4/5

Next, she invites students to participate in a different worked example.

She works out the problem with them, but doesn’t reveal the answer, letting the students come to their own conclusions.

This gradually allows them to take greater ownership and understanding of those processes.

3/5

Hamilton starts by modeling a problem step by step using the overhead projector, thinking aloud as students watch.

For example, while showing students how to divide, she models how the dividend (the lines and dots) can be split into the divisor (the large circles).

2/5

Students are often asked to solve new math problems before they have a clear model of how the process works.

In math teacher Susan Hamilton’s class, she explicitly walks her fourth-graders through each step in a worked example to help.

🧵1/5 #EduSky

5 Ways to Develop Students’ Social and Emotional Skills in Music Class These performance-based activities can be fun for students and provide opportunities for them to develop empathy.

These performance-based activities aren’t just fun—they also provide opportunities to develop SEL skills! 🎵

#MusicTeacher #MusicEducation

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If you work in a school, you know: Tips and support for classroom management and behavioral disruptions are needed more now than ever. Check out this article from @edutopia.org ⬇️
#EduSky #TLSky

3 questions that appear the end of my article for Edutopia on AI concerns with teachers

We are certainly at a crossroads around AI in education (and likely will be for some time) but I continue to think the focus needs to be centered on the choices ADULTS are making, not the students

Three questions I think are worth asking any educator using AI in their work right now:

A 3-Step Strategy for Addressing Difficult Situations With Parents Administrators can resolve complicated issues by holding an information-gathering meeting, conducting an investigation, and then circling back to parents.

Elementary principal Dan Fisher offers advice for productive parent meetings, cultivated over the course of 15+ years as a school administrator! 🏫

#SchoolLeaders #Principals

8 Proactive Classroom Management Tips New teachers—and experienced ones too—can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

Teachers report losing 2 hours of instructional time to behavioral disruptions each week. These research-backed #ClassroomManagement tactics can help prevent some of them, giving you much-needed time back. ⌛

“Today a kindergartner forgot our librarian’s name, so she called her ‘Mrs. Books.’” – Dorie Conlon, Teacher

📚

Writing Prompts That Tap Into Springtime Energy Upper elementary teachers can channel students’ excitement around the changing season into thoughtful writing that incorporates all five senses.

Get your students excited to write about spring by leveraging their natural curiosity and encouraging them to think creatively! 🌷🪻

#ElementaryTeacher #EduSky

Guiding Students to Receive Feedback as Information to Improve Their Skills Students may take feedback from teachers or peers as a personal judgement unless it is intentionally focused on their work.

“The most impactful feedback makes it clear that students are more than their current ideas, and their work is always open to improvement. When feedback targets the work—the reasoning, the strategy, the evidence, or the process—then students have something concrete to evaluate and revise.” 📝

Implementing PBL in Physical Education At its core, high-quality PBL uses content to teach, build, and assess skills like collaboration and problem-solving—and PE classes are a natural place to continue this work.

PE often gets left out of the conversation when it comes to project-based learning, but teachers can adapt existing approaches and collaborate with educators in other content areas! ⭐

#PhysicalEducation #PBL #EduSky

Navigating tough conversations with care can ultimately strengthen your school culture.

This three-step process from @edutopia.org offers a guide for moving forward with Ss' families in challenging moments:

www.edutopia.org/article/hand...

In this low-stakes activity, students talk to people they don’t normally talk to. Bonus points: it gets them up and moving. 🙌

#60SecondStrategies #EduSky

What's a scaffolding strategy that works well with your students? Maybe it is something you use to get a lesson going, when reading a text, or to help students with writing. What is your go-to strategy? Getting scaffolding right—amid the messy reality of teaching…

Have you listened to the latest episode of School of Practice yet? 🎧️

In this ep, we explore one of the toughest challenges in teaching: scaffolding.

Now our guest, educator Beck Alber, is here in our community forum, ready to talk about *your* strategies and questions!

Join the convo 👇

6 Common Teacher Mistakes—and How to Avoid Them From rushing through prep to misjudging students’ readiness for a task to teaching the way they were taught, experienced teachers talk about some of the mistakes they’ve made.

Each anecdote in this @edutopia.org piece by @mirplo.bsky.social about learning from our mistakes in the classroom links to some specific strategy or resource.

One of the anecdotes is my own 😊

www.edutopia.org/article/comm...

We appreciate you, Brett!

+1️⃣

Preserving 10-15 minutes for a "soft start" may sound like a lot – but it's an investment in the whole day's learning.

Find out how, via @edutopia.org:

www.edutopia.org/article/crea...

How to Decide What to Do After Your Formative Assessment You’ve checked for understanding—now you can use this framework to understand what students’ confusion is telling you, and how you can adjust course.

New teachers—and some experienced ones—may struggle with the second half of formative assessment: deciding how to adjust instruction accordingly. 🔧

@toddfinley.bsky.social shares a framework that can help.

How to Achieve Alignment Within Your Administrative Team When leaders take the time to build shared understandings, they are able to work together more effectively to support their school community.

A unified administrative team is better equipped to handle the challenges that arise throughout a school year. Diane Spencer and Shawn Suzuki share how they created an effective, lasting leadership partnership that supported their school. 🏫

#SchoolLeaders #Principals #EduSky

“The longer I teach, the more I realize I haven't figured it out yet. This, my friends, is not a bad thing.” —Melissa Dean, Teacher