I continue these end-of-year “The Best…” lists…

I’m adding this post to All 2017 “Best” Lists In One Place.

You might want to explore The Best Resources On Class Instruction In 2017 – Part Two, too.

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 many, 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 (& Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2017 – So Far

The Best Articles (& Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2016 – Part Two

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2016 – So Far

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2015 – Part Two

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2015 – So Far

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2014 – Part Two

The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice & Resources To Teachers In 2014 – So Far

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 2017- Part Two:

I’ve got to start off with by suggesting readers check out the posts at my teacher advice column at Education Week Teacher.  Hundreds of top teachers have provided guest responses to just about every imaginable education question, and they’re all categorized and easy to access.

A related resource are the eight-minute radio shows that accompany each Ed Week post.  Those are not behind Ed Week’s paywall, and you can find them at All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions.

The Best Interactive “Copy-Edit This!” Grammar Quizzes In The New York Times

I’ve shared a lot about the importance of pronouncing students’ names correctly, including sharing commentaries from my students on the topic (see The Best Resources On The Importance Of Correctly Pronouncing Student Names). Recently, Ed Week ran a good op-ed on the subject, Pronouncing Students’ Names Correctly Should Be a Big Deal.

The Best Resources For Learning About “Nudges” In Schools

When Faced with Conflict, Try an Introspective Approach is a new Harvard Business Review article by Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a good summary of the approach I try to take when I have a conflict with a student or anyone else. And it’s worked out well, I think, for my students, colleagues, family members and me…I’m adding this info to Best Posts On Classroom Management.

Three Specific Actions I’m Taking This Year To Support Student Academic & SEL Development

The Best Advice For Student Teachers & Their Collaborating Teachers

New Metacognition Study & How I’m Thinking Of Applying It In My Classes – Feedback Welcome!

The Best Resources For Learning About Retrieval Practice

George Saunders Wins Literary Prize – Here Are Past Posts About His Work & How I’ve Used It In Class

The Annenberg Institute has published a pretty impressive two-part series of practical articles on performance assessment:

Performance Assessment: Fostering the Learning of Teachers and Students

Performance Assessment: A Deeper Look at Practice and Research

And, if those don’t contain enough info for you, I’ll be adding them to The Best Resources For Learning About Performance Assessment.

Brainpop videos are good, and I have a teacher’s subscription to them. But you have to pay in order to see them. Simple History is a YouTube channel that provides a decent selection of comparable – and in some cases, better – animations. They don’t offer the extras, like quizzes, offered by Brainpop. And if your school or district pays for Brainpop, the additional student creation options are great. However, if you’re in a school that doesn’t pay for it, and you’re already spending your money on a ton of other school-related resourced (see The Best Data On How Much Money Teachers Pay Out Of Their Own Pocket – What Do You Spend?), then Simple History is worth a look.

Now that Katie Hull are “done” with our third book on teaching English Language Learners (I put “done” in quotation marks since we still have to review the copy editor comments and then the final galley sheets before it’s published in April of next year), it’s time for me to start working on my next one. That one will be my tenth book overall, and the fourth in my series on student motivation. The first three were (each link leads to a ton of free resources):

Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Challenges

Self-Driven Learning: Teaching Strategies for Student Motivation

Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners: Strategies To Help Students Thrive In School and Beyond

This fourth installment will be published by Routledge either in the Spring of 2019 or 2020, depending on how ambitious I am next summer 🙂In the meantime, you can access tons of free resources from all nine of my books here.

Empatico is a new site designed to help teachers have their students connect with other classes online. There are a lot of others out there trying to do similar things (see The Best Ways To Find Other Classes For Joint Online Projects). Empatico seems a bit more structured than some, though, and that might make it more attractive to certain educators and less so to others. You might also be interested in Links To The Joint Projects My ELL Geography Class Did With Classes Around The World.

How Do You Make Kids Love Reading? is by Timothy Shanahan. Here’s an excerpt that makes an important point, though I do think it’s a false choice – you can do both:

If you want kids to love reading, then make reading important in your students’ lives.

Instead of providing free reading time during the school day, pose academic and social problems for the kids to solve (or, better, let them pose their own); problems that reading can help address.

Harvard Business Review Publishes Yet Another Excellent Guide To Classroom Management

I know that many educators have read the book “Made To Stick,” by by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

Here’s a nice summary of it:

The National Day Of Writing Is On Oct. 20th – Here Are 36 Related “Best” Lists

My Growth Mindset Lessons Usually Go Well, But What I Did Today Was The Best Yet (Student Hand-Outs Included)

Impressive Fall Slate Of Free Webinars From NY Times Learning Network

Former high school teacher Clint Smith has a a good – and short – essay in The New Yorker today headlined James Baldwin’s Lesson for Teachers in a Time of Turmoil. He talks about Baldwin’s “A Talk To Teachers,” which you can read in its entirety here.

Another Study Finds That Learning By Doing Works….

Resources For Talking About Race In The Classroom

The Best Resources For Learning About School Dress Codes

Resources From All My Blogs

SAS Curriculum Pathways, my favorite online site (see I Really Like How SAS Curriculum Pathways Site Incorporates Knowledge Transfer In Social Studies and SAS Curriculum Pathways, Just About The Best Online Ed Site, Has Gotten Even Better…) has unveiled a ton of new free online interactives. The new exercises are for just about every subject, and they’re too numerous to list here. You can see them all here.

Can I Still Rely on the National Reading Panel Report? is an excellent post from literacy expert Timothy Shanahan. I certainly still rely on it, and it was great to read that follow-up studies have found that its recommendations work for English Language Learners, too. I’m adding it to The Best Posts On Reading Strategies & Comprehension – Help Me Find More!

The Best Resources For Planning “Learning Stations” – Please Add More

I’ve written and shared a lot about differentiated instruction (see The Best Resources On Differentiating Instruction) I read an interview with author Kim Scott where I think she hit on a key to successful differentiation (you can read the full interview at Lead by Caring and Challenging: An Interview with “Radical Candor” Author Kim Scott). Here’s the “money” quote:

Whether it’s knowing how students will react to classroom management strategies, the different styles of error correction, or if they’re having a bad day and want to do their work alone in the library, the idea of a platinum rule is good point to keep in mind.

The Benefits of Saying Nice Things About Your Colleagues is a new article in the Harvard Business Review that offers a lot of good advice about how we talk about, and to, our colleagues and our students.

Here’s an excerpt:

I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning How To Best Give Feedback To Students.

The Best Resources For Teaching Students The Differences Between A Good & Bad Slide

Overcome Resistance to Change with Two Conversations is a very good Harvard Business Review article.

I particularly like the four ground rules (check out the article itself for elaboration on each “rule”) it suggests for “Talking With Resistors:

Forget efficiency

Focus on listening

Be open to change yourself

Have multiple conversations

I’m adding this info to The Best Posts & Articles On Building Influence & Creating Change.

The Best Resources On Developing A Sense Of Community In The Classroom

I was recently interviewed by Val Brown on parent engagement.

It was part of the Center for Teaching Quality “microcredential series.”

If you find it useful or interesting, you can read and/or listen to other commentaries I’ve done on the topic.

Great Strategy For Interacting With Art!

The Best Harry Potter Teaching & Learning Resources

Earlier this year I posted Here Are Two Activities I’ll Be Doing With My ELL Students The Day We Come Back From Break, which I included a lesson I did with students sharing research on how having cellphones out hurt cognitive performance. It ended up being quite effective, probably more so than anything else I’ve done around cellphones. With periodic reminders of the research when students had their phones our when we weren’t using them for class, it seemed to reduce inappropriate phone use and reduced classroom tension (it’s nicer for me to say “Remember what we learned about leaving phones on the desk” instead of “Please put your phone away.”) Now, another study has found similar results. You can read about it at The mere presence of your smartphone reduces brain power, study shows.

The Best Suggestions On Ways Teachers Can Sanely Approach PD Over The Summer & Still Have Time To Relax

Good Reminder About How To Give Constructive Feedback

A Beginning List For Learning About The 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

A Collection Of Resources On “Tricky” Teacher Topics

What Are Your Rules About Students Eating In Class?

The Best Resources For Examining “Privilege”

Harvard Business Review Lays-Out A Good Three-Step Process To Introduce A Lesson

This Is Interesting: Hattie Says Jigsaw Strategy Hits a Homerun

Now THIS Is An Example Of Writing For An Authentic Audience: Writing For History

“Words Without Borders” Looks Like An Excellent New Source Of International Texts & Teaching Ideas