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| Four Reading Motivators for Teenage Boys Motivating adolescent boys to read can seem nearly impossible. Here are some tips that can help you turn teens into readers, and maybe even get them to like it! |
| Fun Ways to Engage Students During Classroom Transitions When the bell rings to change classes, sometimes all learning engagement goes out the door, too. Here's a great way to capture your students' focus and attention the second the walk in your classroom. |
| Fresh Eyes on History It's often challenging to get students interested in the past, so teaching History can be tough. Here are some innovative tips that can help you bring clarity AND interest into your Social Studies classroom. |
| Fair Grades for Group Work Evaluating individuals on group assignnments a challenge for you? Enlist the help of your students! Read about how Ms. K's class lends a helping hand with grading. |
| Five Games To Learn Students’ Names Looking for a fun way to learn students’ names? Check out how these veteran educators do it. |
| Fun and Games Assessment Students might think it's fun and games, but this educator's back-to-school tip is also an educational classroom activity and an icebreaker all-in-one! |
| Film Clips Reinforce Learning and Note-Taking Ms. Cashell uses short film clips to reinforce specific subjects and topics of study, and to help students practice note-taking skills with three writing prompts. |
| Flags Around the Classroom Ms. Marcolina found a creative way for students to learn geography, be artistic and add character to their classroom walls. |
| Family Service Night Debra shares an idea that combines service work with the traditional school open house. Families get involved with their children’s school, and everyone learns the value of community and responsibility. |
| Flipping the Classroom How a math teacher working on an army base uses the flipped classroom strategy to better serve students and parents by individualizing instruction for all learners, including ability levels, needs, and learning styles. |
| Flipped Lessons Ms. Spock uses flipped lessons to encourage her students to teach themselves before they even come to school. |
| Facilitating Respectful Discussions Eileen shares a simple idea that will help you better manage large group discussions, especially ones that cover controversial issues, and help your students demonstrate respect and active listening. |
| 5-Minute Diagrams This review game is quick, non-threatening and fun. Best of all is that it doesn’t require any preparation or grading! Read about this technique that works for almost any grade or subject matter. |
| Fast Facts Melanie’s students make two-sided math fact cards, as we’ve all traditionally made flashcards. But she keeps these drills exciting by randomly shouting out, “Fast Facts!” during the day. Read more about these updated flashcard drills. |
| Forgive Yourself Ms. Kast takes photos of her students throughout the year and uses the pictures to measure their progress throughout the year. Discover how each student mounts the pictures and writes descriptions, memories and reactions about each photo in the yearbook. |
| Football Across the Curriculum Ms. Moser has an imaginative, interdisciplinary curriculum unit using football at the core. Students learn language arts, math, science and social studies skills throughout the season. |
| Football Behavior Program Ms. Postman’s primary school competes in a yearly Behavior Bowl. Read about how classes collect football points for good behavior and drive the field for touchdowns, treats and a school-wide celebration. |
| Focus First, Then Questions Do you ever wish students would actually read your instructions before asking questions about them? Ms. McCarthy certainly did, so she developed a very effective method for teaching the simple, fundamentally important skill of following directions. |
| Filing Mail and Paperwork Even though the paperless, digital age is upon us, let’s face it: there’s still a lot of paperwork. If piles of paper are driving you crazy, learn how this organized teacher maintains are sanity with a few simple routines. |
| Family Communication Communicating to parents and families isn't always easy. Ms. Postman lends some thoughtful advice about extablishing - and keeping - good, open relationships with her students' families |
| Flashcard Review This test review activity comes with a prize at the end! See how Ms. Harris motivates her science learners. |
| Free Virtual Literature Circles Ms. Hunt recommends more than a half dozen free Web sites to use as the foundation for a project-based learning activity in which students collaborate to build their own Web sites. |
| Flex Grouping A great challenge to educators in teaching students with different skill levels. Before you go crazy trying to figure it out, check out Ms. Fryar's tip and how she and her colleagues made it work for them! |
| Fabric Backgrounds Here's an inexpensive way to create bulletin board dbackgrounds that can last all year long. See how Ms. Crockett makes it happen in her classroom! |
| Fabric Borders Ms. Flammang shares a tip for making inexpensive bulletin board shapes, die cuts and borders last longer. |
| Fabric Bulletin Boards Tired of throwing away (and wasting!) all that paper you use on your bulletin boards? Here's a great tip from Ms. McCullough that will eliminate the waste and save you some time. |
| Faces and Names What a great back to school tip! Learn students' names and allow parentsto put faces with the new names they are hearing so much about from their child. |
| Faculty Leaders Leadership and parental involvement have been key to staff development at Ms. Barna's school. See how they've boosted their reading strategies whole fostering a safe and supportive environment for students. |
| Fading Colors on Whiteboards Maintaining a whiteboard can be troublesome. It’s easy to erase or smudge markings, which means you need to rewrite the entire board for every class period. Ms. Kirk has a colorful solution to this common problem. |
| Family Book Club What a great way to get younger students reading while attracting the support and contribution of parents! Check out Ms. Kruming's tip and see it it can work for you! |
| Fair Play Ms. Mitchell and Ms.Odum's students love to perform plays in class, but selecting students for the character roles can become a hassle and leave students disappointed. Read about how they found peaceful and efficient solution! |
| Families and Long Division This mnemonic will help young students learn and remember long division steps. It’s easy to refer to during a directed lesson and brings a little humor to the classroom. |
| Family Literacy Center Ms. Coyner knows how important family involvement is to student success. Here she describes how she brings parents into the picture to improve their reading skills. |
| Family Maps Ms. Shogren puts her students on the map! Read about how she breaks the ice at the start of school by marking where her students traveled during the summer or where their family members live on a large map. |
| Family Reading Night Talk about family fun night! This tip gathers students, families, and community leaders together with one goal: celebrating the love of reading. Read about Ms. DeBond's tip here! |
| Famous Scientists Ms. Maldonado-Vargas motivates her science learners by tapping their creative juices. See how she incorporates the arts into the study of atomic theory! |
| Fast & Easy Tracking If you’ve ever had a student who didn’t do their homework only to later accuse you of losing it, then you’ll appreciate Ms. John’s procedure for tracking student work. |
| Favorite Book Challenge Both teachers and students struggled with sustained silent reading at this middle school. Ms. Snow tackled the problem by challenging for her students with specific reading goals. Then she answered the reading challenge they gave her! |
| Favorite Sites Her students often get distracted from their assigned Internet research when they stumble upon interesting but off-topic Web sites. Ms. Scheidt has a low-tech solution to this problem that keeps students on-task without stifling their curiosity. |
| Feature Stories Mr. Whary’s unit on feature writing includes interviewing activities: a short, warm up activity in which student practice interviewing before moving on to longer, more substantive interviews. |
| Feedback through E-mail Response is integral to learning. Ms. Krusenstjerna's tip allows students, faculty, and parents to all weigh in on students' work and classroom projects. See why she says it brings many happy returns! |
| Feeding Fish Ms. Bordash likes to keep a classroom aquarium, but her overzealous students have a tendency to be heavy-handed with the food. Her simple solution keeps the students and the fish in good spirits. Learn more. |
| Feeling Fit Mileage Club The PE teacher at Ms. Dean’s school developed a walking/running club for students and teachers. Keep fit in 2017-18 and motivate your school with this easy-to-implement program. |
| Feely Box Looking for a fun, unique, and effective way to motivate your students? Ms. Reed's reward system may be able to help - read about it here! |
| Fiber Art Project When art and recycling collide, Ms. Comes sees a teachable moment! Read about her tip that comes with many lessons. |
| Fieldtrip of Dreams Sometimes students don't see a bright future because they haven't been shown opportunities that exist. Ms. Melits and her colleagues took on her school's high drop-out rate head on with this pracitcal and motivating activity. |
| Fiesta with Friends What better way to learn Spanish than with a field trip fiesta and some menotoring from older students. Read about Ms. Adams' tip and see why her students say it's muy bueno! |
| Filling a New (or Veteran!) Teacher's Stocking Over the years Ms. Sunderland has collected a list of great suggestions for stocking stuffers, some are her own ideas, others she borrowed, but all the ideas are good. |
| Fingerprint Stationery This holiday arts and crafts project comes from 5th-grade teacher Denise Muto, whose students use acrylic paints and fingerprints to create a variety of fast, easy, inexpensive gifts and decorations. Find out how she they do it. |
| First Day Handouts This teacher always had trouble finding his favorite paperwork at the start of each school year, until he came up with a great idea for organizing his First Day files and minimizing bulky storage. |
| First Day Organization and Confidence Even after ten years of teaching, Ms. Gray still gets nervous on the first day. She developed a way to organize typical first-day-of-school paperwork that helps her stay completely calm and lets students know she’s on top of it. |
| First Name Alphabetical Lines Looking for a great way to curtail cutting in line? Enlist some student helpers! See how Ms. Guthrie's tip can help you keep the peace when it's time to line up. |
| First Week in Kindergarten Here's a sweet way to acclimate kindergartenders and younger students into their big, new shool surroundings. Best of all, this tip ends with cookies for everyone! |
| Fish Raising Project Ms. Robb works with state environmental agencies to give her biology learners a classroom experience most people can only find in the wild. Read about her tip here! |
| Five Ideas for Family Communication Ms. Donato maintains positive communication with families throughout the entire school year, using five ideas that cover everything from simple routines & procedures to carefully-planned special events. |
| Five Ideas for Reaching ELL Students In roder to teach English language learners you have to reach English language learners. Ms. Braverman lists five critical steps that can help you make both happen |
| Five Tray Filing A cluttered desk is something Ms. Fergusen would rather not deal with every day. So she came up with a filing system that works wonders for her. Can it work for you? |
| Floor Circles Teaching the parts of circle is more than a hands-on activity in Ms. Luckenbaugh’s class: it’s a “feet-on” experience, literally. Find out her unique, and completely engaging, way of helping students understand pi, area and circumference. |
| Floor Maps Ms. Morgan's unit on Africa includes a gian map that students can actuall walk on as well as add three dimensional items reprenting different regions. Her 2nd-graders love it! |
| Fluency Phones Who knew that spare bits of PVC pipe could help students master reading fluency? Ms. Hawes, that’s who! Next time you pass the plumbing section at that local hardware store, keep her tip in mind. |
| Fly-away Overheads Ms. Garwick has a great tip to keep your transparency cover sheets from being blown away by the projector fan. Best of all? It will cost you three cents. Really, just .03! |
| Flyswatter Game Here’s a fun math game to play inside, perfect for antsy students trapped indoors by bad weather. Slap the correct answer and watch your students get buzzed about math! |
| Focusing on Reading When students are having trouble concentrating on the lines they are reading, it's Ms. Anderegg's to the rescue! See how easy she says it can be to keep her remedial readers on task. |
| Foliage Across the Nation See how students learn about the plant life and the changing seasons in different regions of the country with this creative tip. |
| Food and Spelling How do you improve your students' spelling skills? Lure them with food! See how Ms. Easley's tip may increase your students' appetite for learning! |
| Foreign Langauge Ice-Breakers Getting your foreign language learners back in the groove when school starts can be fun with this tip. Ms. O'Neill's students think so, too! See if her tip can work for you. |
| Forming Groups Selecting students or setting up groups of students can leave some feeling left out or overlooked. See what Ms. DeGreen does on the first day of school that helps prevents those issues all year long. |
| Fostering Friendships Mr. Lim is proud to decorate his classroom door with the meaning of friendship. He has a unique – and beautiful – classroom setup idea that helps him build positive relationships among students. |
| Foul Language Policy Here's an interesting way to curtail cursing and boost vocabulary. Read about Ms. Fandino's Foul Language Polity and see if you can make it work for you. |
| Found Treasures After watching classroom teachers discard unwanted, but still usable and well-conditioned, classroom furniture, this custodian came up with a recycling fantastic idea that will work in any school. Find out how you can do it too. |
| Four and a Half Day School Week Imagine half-days on Fridays! Ms. Matthews and her colleagues firgured out a way to shorten the school week. Best of all, parents loved it because they could get doctor's appointments scheduled and even start their vacations earlier. |
| Four Corner Questions Here’s a fun game to play when students become restless. It gets them out of their seats, involves the whole class, and helps prepare them for continued instruction. |
| Four Square Comprehension Ms. Sparks shares a fun activity that targets her students’ reading comprehension skills. Take your teaching out of the box and try this mental challenge that keeps kids connected to reading. |
| Four Stars for School Lunch Ms. Lovell has a tip that teaches students about nutrition, planning, and research. Best of all, their work gets implemented at the school, so everyone can see (and eat!) the fruits of their labor. |
| Fourth Grade with Asperger's Syndrome When asked about tips for handling her 4th-grade classroom with a child who has Asberger's, Ms. Vandre answered the call. Read about her thoughtful and practical tips here. |
| Free Quiz This teacher’s quiz lottery rewards a single, lucky student and motivates the others. More students are completing their homework, everyone’s grades have improved. |
| Free Stickers Are you inundated with address labels from every organization? Don't toss 'em in the trash until you've read Ms.Gundrum's tip! |
| French Web Site When Ms. Wells discovered there were very few sites available for students in French programs to use for review and extra help, she designed her own! Read about her tip and check out her website! |
| Friday Funnies Mr. Helm uses comic strips to illustrate language use, including puns, double entendre, quality writing, etc. Whether or not his students get the joke helps him structure additional lessons in critical reading. |
| Friday Tutoring Days Here's an unconventional - but successful - to promote good attendance. Read about this educator's tip and see if your school could make it work! |
| Friends Around the World Ms. Anderson has a fun way to spend April in Paris with her first graders. She creates a Friends around the World unit in which they read a story set in Paris, create a paper doll character and plan what she should pack in her paper suitcase. |
| Fundraising Readathon Ms. Arbogast's class needed funds for a field trip, so she incorporated that into a cross-curricular learning experience. Read about her tip and see if it can work for you! |
| Future Career Aspirations In Ms. Walls' class, it''s never too early to decide what you want to be when you grow up. See how she matches students' career goals to make her classroom run efficiently. |
