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Classroom Instruction Resources Of The Week
Each week, I publish a post or two containing three or four particularly useful resources on classroom instruction, and you can see them all here. You can also see all my “Best” lists on instructional strategies here. Here are this week’s picks: 10 Ideas for Reflecting at the End of the School Year is updated from The NY Times Learning Network. I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Finish The School Year Strong. Math is creative? Yes! 4 ways to encourage creativity in math class is from Teach Learn Grow. I’m adding it to The Best Apps, Online Tools & Other Resources For Math.
From Superheroes to Taylor Swift: Using Students’ Passions to Ignite Learning is from Edutopia. I’m adding it to The Best Ideas For Helping Students Connect Lessons To Their Interests & The World. I’m adding this tweet to The Best Rubric Sites (And A Beginning Discussion About Their Use):
I’m adding this video to The Best Questions To Use For Class Closing Activities — What Are Yours?:       A Look Back: Teachers Might Find My “Concept Attainment – Plus” Instructional Strategy UsefulFor the next several months, each day I’ll be republishing a post from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2016.
As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of using Concept Attainment as an instructional strategy for writing. You can see examples at Here Are Some Examples Of Using “Concept Attainment” In Writing Instruction. As I explain in that post, teachers using this strategy place examples, typically (though not always) from unnamed student work, under the categories of “Yes” and “No.” The class then constructs their own understanding of why the examples are in their categories. It’s a great tool for many lessons, and I like it especially for grammar and other writing. Last week, though, I had a brainstorm, and came up with a revised strategy that I’m calling “Concept Attainment – Plus,” and it has worked very well. I think teachers of English Language Learners and non-ELLs alike might find it useful and, I hope, offer suggestions on how to improve it further…. “Concept Attainment – Plus” has three steps: STEP ONE I pick an example of student writing that especially illustrates one writing error and put it under the “No” column. In this case, I’m focusing on the tendency for many ELLs to have very long run-on sentences, along with the frequently made mistake of how to write “the United States.” Parallel to that passage, under the “Yes” column, I re-write the paragraph correctly. Student have to compare the two passages, identify the errors in the student’s writing, and explain why they are mistakes. After students have completed their review, I call them up to the overhead individually to identify one mistake at a time.
STEP TWO The second sheet contains a short humorous passage in the “No” column that I write and which mimics the errors in the first student passage. Students have to identify the errors and re-write it correctly on the left under the “Yes” column. Again, I call students up to the overhead frequently.
STEP THREE I then give students a simple and engaging prompt where they need to write a passage demonstrating their understanding of the writing feature we have learned in the first two sheets.
Students always like “regular” Concept Attainment, but they have loved this more intensive scaffolded process. It takes about one full class period to do from start-to-finish, and takes me about an hour to prepare it. It’s definitely worth the time. Let me know what you think of the strategy and, importantly, how you think it can be improved…. I’m adding this post to The Best Resources About Inductive Learning & Teaching and to The Best Posts On Writing Instruction.  This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom geralt / Pixabay
At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM. Here are the latest: Listen Hub lets you create a podcast for any topic, using any material. It’s just like ZenMic, but on Listen Hub you can only create three podcasts each month for free. 20 ChatGPT Prompts to Learn a Language is from The Barefoot TEFL Teacher. 
Breaking Down Language Barriers: How AI Can Give Every Student a Voice
AISheets is not free, but it’s an example of how every textbook publisher should be designing their online materials. QuizTube will create a … quiz from any YouTube video for free. There’s no way for teachers to access scores by people who take it, but I don’t really understand why this site can do it, but Quizizz can’t anymore?  Google Video: “2025 — Year in Search”I Really Like This Strategy For Talking With People You Disagree With wal_172619 / Pixabay
I have shared a lot over the years about strategies for talking with people we disagree with – you can check those previous posts out at The Best Ways To Talk With Someone Who Disagrees With You and The Best Posts & Articles On Building Influence & Creating Change. I even have designed an AI chatbot designed to help people figure out these strategies. In fact, folks have given me positive feedback about how much the chatbot assisted them in dealing with difficult family conversations. Recently, The Washington Post published an article that I think offers useful advice in this area. It’s based on recent research. It’s headlined Defuse political tension in your family with one simple question and, I think, reflects somewhat similar thoughts to what I’ve previously shared at Leading With Inquiry, Not Judgment. Here’s an excerpt from the Post article: “One of the worst questions that you could ask people, politically, is … what they believe and why, and that’s what most people do,” Kashdan tells me. Instead of asking them why they feel that way about abortion or immigration, he says, tell them: “I’m totally hearing what you’re saying. I’m wondering, how would that work?” It is the “how” question and not the “why” question, Kashdan continues, “that gets people having to really think through it and realize, ‘Shoot, I don’t even know what fracking is. Shoot, I don’t even know what DEI stands for. Shoot, I don’t know what Marxism or socialism is.’” The “how” question shouldn’t be posed as a gotcha but with humility: I don’t know this stuff as well as you. How would it work? Once your interlocutors realize they don’t know, they become more open to new information and ideas. By abandoning the attempt to persuade Uncle Billy and Aunt Sally to change their minds, we actually make it more likely that they will. This is consistent with many other recent studies of curiosity. “We found in a series of experiments that if you ask a question and then you justify that question with your curiosity, it almost doubles the amount of interaction with the question — whether you’re looking at Twitter data, Reddit or personal interactions,” says Spencer Harrison, a professor of organizational behavior at the European business school INSEAD.
Interesting stuff…..  More Recent Articles
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