Category: Instructional Design

By far, the best children’s novel content that I can find for a classroom are the books by Kate DiCamillo. Her books are brilliantly written. The plot, characters, setting, and theme are exceptional. They are my “go to” for fourth grade read alouds. Her books are funny, deep, thought provoking, […]

To this blog, I plan on adding some book and movie reviews of all kinds which we can use in the classroom or as resources to help support education in our classroom. Today, I want discuss a movie which has an absolutely stellar cast and an excellent plot based on […]

As a teacher, I really enjoyed playing music for my students as they worked. My architectural drafting teacher offered that (music while we worked) in high school. It made the learning process so much more enjoyable. I thought maybe we could explore some recent, contemporary music (to me anyway!) to […]

Just the title makes my head spin. This was a well intended program which has just gotten weird and inconsistent. Put this in the category of non-academic things that school systems have delved into which waste academic instruction. Schools are not parents. They are not grandparents. They are not aunts […]

I am no fan of communism. Let me get that out of the way right now. Communism is a meat grinder of humanity. I have no love for it. Look no further than the war in Ukraine, a war that I doubt many people in Russia support and a war […]

Creative block is basically writer’s block. It is being at an impasse when designing good lessons. And no, I am not an instructional design expert(aka academic coach) – gross. However, good teachers do still build authentic design lessons, and sometimes during that process….we get stuck. Listen, I am one of […]

I grew-up during an age in which we put men on the moon. The sky was literally the limit. At the time, I thought by now that we would have traveled throughout the solar system. We haven’t gone back to the moon since I was a young child. Alas, space […]

Get off on the right foot by teaching the curriculum on day one. It sets the tone that your expectations are about learning. I used to spend the first day or two on procedures only. It always left me in a rush at the end of the nine weeks. What […]

My freshman English professor in college often noted that learning can be uncomfortable at times, especially the learning that sticks with you. As noted in an earlier post, he gave very clear feedback on what we needed to improve. I think he often told us that learning was uncomfortable, because […]

The soundtrack for A River Runs Through It is cinematic perfection, specifically the main title. When the fiddle begins to hum the familiar music, I am immediately taken to early 1900s Montana. It is a time when the modern world was growing out of frontier America. Mark Isham, the composer, […]