The title of this “The Best…” list is pretty self-explanatory. What you’ll find here are blog posts and articles this year (some written by me, some by others) that were, in my opinion, the ones that offered the best practical advice to teachers this year — suggestions that can  help teachers become more effective in the classroom today or tomorrow.  Some, however, might not appear on the surface to fit that criteria, but those, I think, might offer insights that could (should?) inform our teaching practice everyday.

For some, the headlines provide enough of an idea of the topic and I haven’t included any further description.

Here are my choices for The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2009 (not in order of preference):

(If you’re viewing this post on Facebook or via a Feedblitz email subscription, you might have trouble accessing some of the links listed here. People reading it through their RSS Reader shouldn’t have any difficulties. If you having a problem, just go directly to my blog and all the links will work fine. I’ve recently figured out what the problem is, and it shouldn’t happen very often in the future, but I’m just to lazy to redo posts that I’ve already completed)

Feedback is always welcome.

The Best Teacher I Ever Had was published years ago, but was new to me this year.  It’s a lesson that reminds us one about one of the key ideas our students should be learning from us.

When we want to evaluate our work as a teacher (which is probably a good thing to do everyday), here’s a good question to ask ourselves.

What Kind Of Feedback Should We Give Our Students? is a post I wrote sharing resources on the importance of praising our students’ effort and not their intelligence.

Some more good classroom management advice from Marvin Marshall in How Can You Say No Without Saying No?

The Seven Secrets Behind Great Teaching is a thought-provoking article summarizing interviews with “15 award-winning teachers.”

The Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes is an excellent post by by Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University and Rebecca Brent, Education Designs, Inc.  It’s geared towards college-teaching, but much that’s discussed in applicable to K-12.

Angela Maiers wrote a great post on teacher language titled “Two Powerful Words: I Notice.”

Here are some posts that I’ve written that I think teachers might find particularly helpful:

I’ve shared links to four of my class blogs — United States History (which contains my entire curriculum), Ninth-Grade English, Intermediate English and Theory Of Knowledge. All contain ideas and links for lessons.

Summer School VoiceThreads shares examples of student presentations and the assignments they were given.

When To Teach Vocabulary

Test-Taking Strategies

When You Have A Sub…

I also need to include posts from my “What Do You Do?” series:

What Do You Do When You’re Having A Bad Day At School?

What Do You Do To Keep Students (And You!) Focused Near The End Of The Year?

What Do You Do On The Last Day Of Class (Part Two)?

What Do You Do When You Have A Few Minutes Left In Class? — Part Two

Answers To “What Do You Do On The First Day Of School?”

I also wrote A Few Simple Ways To Introduce Reluctant Colleagues To Technology.

Improvisation In The ESL/EFL Classroom — At Least In Mine

Student Goal-Setting Lesson I’m Trying Out On Monday and Report On How Goal-Setting Lesson Went.

Feedback and additional suggestions are welcome.

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You might also want to explore over 300 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.