10 Questions for Inquiry: The Bigger the Better!
Inquiry is based on questions, but not all questions are created equally. Big questions open up big spaces for information, while little questions open up little spaces. The size of the answer is...
View Article5 Hit Shows Featuring Inquiry and Project-Based Learning
If you or your students are new to inquiry and project-based learning—or if you just need some popular-culture inspiration for your program—you should check out the following hit TV shows. Each one...
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Education Reform: Welcoming Strangers
These days, people talk about xenophobia—the fear of strangers. In the ancient world, though, people had xenophilia—the love of strangers. Locals were expected to welcome travelers into their homes and...
View ArticleThinking Like Breathing
Which is more important for today’s students, critical thinking or creative thinking? It’s a trick question. I may as well ask which is more important, breathing out or breathing in? “Whichever one I...
View ArticleUsing Inquiry Projects to Teach Language Arts
I knelt beside my sons’ toy closet, hauling out a strange menagerie of action figures. Here was a headless Tauntaun from Star Wars. There was the Smog Monster from Godzilla. How about the empty robe of...
View ArticleKnowing the Lake: Serving as Lead Learner
Let’s say four friends decide to do some fall fishing. All four have varying degrees of experience and success with fishing. For this particular outing, however, one individual, Aaron, is better...
View ArticleGetting the Sense of Sensory Details
As a novelist, I love sensory details: the red scarf, the crumbling cookie, the scent of coming rain. They’re just words, but they can take us away to other places. The right sensory details allow...
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Keep Your Lizard, Mouse, and Monkey in Mind
I just read three brilliant blog posts by neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, in which he identifies three parts of our human brains:The primate brain (cortex) focuses on connecting with others.The mammal...
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Inquiry: Groceries to Galaxies
Though you may be unfamiliar with the inquiry process, you use it every day. For example, imagine that you need to go grocery shopping:You start with questions: “What do we need? What do we want for...
View Article3 Simple Steps to the 4 C’s
So you’ve heard of the 4 C’s—critical thinking, creative thinking, communicating, and collaborating—but how are you supposed to teach your own subject and the 4 C’s?The good news is that the 4 C’s help...
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Conceptual Blending for Creative Thinking
Conceptual blending is a strategy that businesses use to inspire creative thinking, but it can also help your students think about and engage any topic. What is conceptual blending? Conceptual blending...
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Serious Fun in the Classroom
Some very clever people are using fun to solve social problems. The approach is called “Fun Theory,” and it’s tackling all kinds of social ills.For example, Kevin Richardson suggests creating a...
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What does your PLN look like?
You may have heard colleagues talk about their PLNs—their personal learning networks—or you may have one of your own. But just what is a personal learning network, and why is it so helpful for...
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10 Reasons to Try Project-Based Learning
You may have never tried project-based learning, or you may teach in a purely PBL environment. Whatever your background, you’ll find that PBL can be a powerful instructional approach. Here are ten...
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Vocabulary for Critical Thinking
Do you know what a mouse potato is? It’s a person who spends too much time staring at a computer screen. Mouse potatoes are the couch potatoes of the 21st century. In fact, Merriam Webster just added...
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Crowdsourcing in Your Classroom
How can you shift your classroom away from lecture and toward inquiry? You can get help from the modern phenomenon known as crowdsourcing—the practice of putting many minds to work on a single problem....
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Creating a Growth Mindset in Your Students
Belief that you can become smarter and more talented opens the doorways to success. That’s what twenty years of research has shown Carol Dweck of Stanford University. She has identified two opposing...
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Bring Out the Teacher in Your Students
“Look, Mom! See the turtle! He is scaly!”Spend a day with a small child, and you will hear many such observations. That’s because all of us have an innate human desire to teach. Somehow what we learn...
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5 Keys to Successful Student Collaborations
As you know, group work can give teachers headaches and students nightmares. If set up poorly, collaborative projects often result in one person doing all of the work, while others contribute minimally...
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Your Class Calendar as a Meeting Place: Lessons from Stonehenge
People say that Stonehenge was built to be a giant calendar that marks the winter and summer solstices. To me, that claim has always seemed a little odd. Who would spend 1,500 years building a calendar...
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