1-833-933-4TFD Blog
Great Games for Learning, Part 4: Math Games for 3rd-5th Graders
Listen Math is one of the best areas to use board games as practice and review for learning skills. Math just lends itself so nicely to gameplay. We’ve searched for some of our favorite board, dice, and card games that can be used for building math skills and placed them...
Working with Young and Inexperienced Parents of Students
Listen Parenting is a tough gig, and when working with younger children, it’s especially clear when your student is coming from a family with very young parents who have little social support. Educators are in a unique position to help young and inexperienced parents. Here are a few things we’ve...
Helping Underachieving Students: In Middle and High School
Listen It can be so frustrating to have a student in class who you know can be doingmuch better than they actually are. It may be that the student started the yearstrong and something happened to them personally that made them start to slackoff. For some it could be caused...
How Administrators Can Influence Adult Bullying
Listen Many of us in education grew up in a time where bullying was just seen as part of everyday life - something nearly everyone must endure as some sort of rite of passage. Unfortunately, that attitude not only puts our students at risk of being bullied by their peers,...
Goal-Setting with Young Students (Pre-K through 2nd Grade)
Listen Goals are like a road map. Setting and achieving goals are important life skills, and people aren’t born knowing how to do it. Many of the most successful people in the world rely on setting goals as motivation and a way to harness self-direction. Teaching children to set goals,...
Teachers as Facilitators
Listen Recently in a conversation with colleagues, one of our writers overheard a seasoned educator say, “Children can’t learn on their own. It’s obvious! Otherwise, there would be no need for teachers.” And there was a time - fairly recently, even - when that was true. However, now any child...
12(ish) Great Games for Math Learning in Grades K-2
Listen We love using games to reinforce learning skills! We went through our cabinets and lockers and pulled out some of our favorites for games that help kindergartners, first graders, and second graders with numeracy, addition, subtraction, and even money. So without further ado, here are a few of our...
Seasonal and Side Gigs for Teachers Who Love to Write
Listen When most adults think of writing, they imagine slaving away from dawn ‘til dusk on the next great American (or… insert your country here) novel. The truth is, though, written information adults - and especially teachers - interact with on a daily basis is largely non-fiction (email, curriculum, lesson...
Great Games for Learning, Part 1: High School ELAR & LOTE
Listen Having fun is psychologically and neurologically beneficial to learning. When students and teachers play, the brain produces a concoction of “happy chemicals”, namely dopamine and endorphins. Oxygen levels even increase. When there is an opportunity for collaborative risk and reward, learning is far more likely. The novelty created by...
Comprehension, Orthographic Awareness, and Oral Language Skills
Listen Part Four of our Four-Part Series: Helping Students Improve Their Reading at Any Age Comprehension Comprehension is really what reading is about - understanding, relating to, and having the ability to share the information learned. Comprehension is the point of reading. There are many ways to build comprehension. In...
How Building Community Can Create Safer Schools
Listen Everytown Research reports that information contributed by “the New York Police Department’s review of active shooter incidents found that in 75% of these incidents, the shooter or shooters were school-aged and were current or former students of the school.” This means that active shooters in schools are very often...
How Do We Keep Good Teachers?
Listen Teaching is a hard job, and we all know that it doesn’t pay in proportion to the amount of work that it requires. Sometimes the reality of what teaching really is compared to the image put forth in teacher education programs and movies is too much for teachers,...