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I continue my mid-year “The Best…” lists…

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 and resources 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.

You might also be interested in:

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2013 – Part Two

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2013 – So Far


The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2012 — Part Two

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers In 2012 — Part One

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers In 2011

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2010

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2009

In addition, you might find these useful:

The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice In 2011

The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2010

The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2009

Here are my choices for The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2014- So Far:

What Does A Good Common Core Lesson Look Like? is from NPR. I’m adding it to The Most Useful Resources For Implementing Common Core.

24 Assessments that don’t suck… is from Paul Bogush. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Effective Student & Teacher Assessments.

How My Students Evaluated Me This Year

I apologize if I’m blowing my own horn, but I’ve got say that my Education Week Teacher advice column is a treasure trove of practical advice offered by scores of educators on countless classroom issues.

I think the same can be said about my BAM! Radio Show, where I interview guests who have contributed written responses to the column.

What Are Education Tests For, Anyway? is from NPR, and gives excellent short and sweet definitions of terms related to assessments. I’m going to add it to A Collection Of “The Best” Lists On Assessment.

The Best Posts & Articles Highlighting Why We Need To Be Very Careful Around Ed Tech

Just Completely Revised & Updated My Bloom’s Taxonomy “Best” List

Here Are The Eleven Sites I’m Using For My Summer School “Virtual Classroom”

How I Incorporate Reflection Into Semester Summative Assessments

#IRA14 — Useful Tweets From The International Reading Association Convention

Using Instagram, Bloom’s Taxonomy & Student Interest As A Fun Part Of A Semester Final

Five Teaching Tips for Helping Students Become ‘Wild Readers’ is by Donalyn Miller, and appeared in Ed Week.

12 Ways to Learn Vocabulary With The New York Times is a nice collection. I’m adding it to The Best Sites Where ELL’s Can Learn Vocabulary.

White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics has created the ¡Gradúate! Financial Aid Guide to Success (Guide). You can read more about it here, and download it in English and Spanish.

The Smithsonian has a series of one-minute “Ask Smithsonian” videos that answer questions on a variety of topics. They’re short, sweet and interesting to watch. But I plan on using them for something else, too… Next year, I’ll be teaching a number of Social Studies classes to English Language Learners — Geography, World History, U.S. History. I could definitely see showing these videos and, as we study different themes, develop a simple template for them to use in creating similar short videos answering a question of their choice. You might also be interested in The Best Online “Explainer” Tools For Current Events.

Here’s The Writing Prompt I’m Using As Part Of My Final For Ninth-Grade English

New Writing Prompt For My U.S. History Class

Here’s The Writing Prompt I’m Using For My Geography Class

Class Activity: Setting A Goal For The Last Six Weeks Of School

Book Reviews – & Shakespeare – In Three Panels

Updated Personalization vs. Differentiation vs. Individualization Chart Version 3 is from Personalize Learning.

Grit, Failure & Stuff Like That

Simple “History Of Anything” Project

Another Good Writing Prompt: Reconciliation

“Tools for flipping your class”

The Best Resources On Professional Development For Teachers — Help Me Find More

The Best (Or, At Least, The Most Interesting) Posts On Teacher Attire

Excellent (& I Mean EXCELLENT!) Post On Asking Questions

Here’s One More Small Thing I’m Doing To Help Students See The Importance Of Social Emotional Learning

The “All-Time” Best Places To Find The Most Popular (& Useful) Resources For Educators

The Best Video Clips & Full-Length Movies For Helping To Teach Persuasive Techniques (Help Me Find More)

Teach UNICEF is an excellent resource for lesson plans and materials on social topics. I haven’t quite figured out the exact way to navigate it — it has an organized collection here, and then they have “Global Citizen Brief” like this one on Syria that appear to be elsewhere on the site.

The lesson materials are top-notch and provide versions based on grade-levels. Some of the student questions in the lesson plans themselves seem a little too UNICEF oriented, so I suspect most teachers will modify them.

Excellent Post: “This Brilliant Math Teacher Has a Formula to Save Kids’ Lives”

Great Chart: “the differences between teaching writing and teaching writers”

Tweets From My “Integrating Social Emotional & Brain-Based Learning Into Instructional Strategies” Workshop

If You Weren’t Able To Attend Our Workshop On “Developing A Self-Motivated Student Culture,” These Tweets Have It Covered

How To Turn A Negative Consequence Into A Positive Classroom Management Strategy

Free Resources From All My Books

I’m adding this to The Best Resources On Helping Our Students Develop A “Growth Mindset”: