'faves' photo (c) 2005, sheldonschwartz - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Every year I identify my personal favorite posts, and it’s time for my end-of-year selection.

You can see my choices for each of the past seven years here, which includes Part One for 2014.

Here are My Favorite Posts In 2014 — Part Two:

Here are some of my favorite “The Best…” lists from this year (by the way, the total lists I’ve published reached 1,400 this year):

The Best Posts & Articles On How To Teach “Controversial” Topics

The Best Resources Sharing The Best Practices For Fruitful Classroom Discussions

The Best Movie Scenes, Stories, & Quotations About “Transfer Of Learning” – Help Me Find More!

The Best Online Learning Simulation Games & Interactives — Help Me Find More

I’ve continued to write posts for The New York Times about teaching English Language Learners, though I’ve been doing it at a reasonable pace of once-a-month instead of my previous insane schedule of once-a-week. You can see all of them at All My NY Times Posts For English Language Learners – Linked With Descriptions. They’ve been very helpful to my students and me, and I hope other teachers can say the same.   Two of my favorites (actually, they’re the only ones I’ve written there this fall — look for more in 2015) are:

Food is the topic of this New York Times Learning Network post for English Language Learners, and it’s chock full of some pretty unique lessons. In addition, it discusses how to apply Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow” to those lessons and, in fact, to just about any other lesson, too.

Teach academic writing through civics and citizenship lessons around the legal voting age.  In addition, use surveys and polls to provoke listening and speaking practice.

I’ve continued to publish two or three posts each week at my Education Week Teacher advice column. Teachers Should Dress As Students’ Advocate Not ‘Peer’ was insanely popular, but my favorite was ‘The Teacher Wars’: An Interview With Dana Goldstein.

I didn’t write as many articles as I usually do for other publications over the past six months since I was focused on finishing up the third book in my student motivation trilogy 🙂 (look for Building A Community Of Self-Motivated Learners to come out in March, with early excerpts in Education Week, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Middleweb and Edutopia). However, I was able to write two for The Washington Post that I liked and were fairly popular:

And I’ve had a lot of fun doing a weekly ten minute radio shown for BAM!, where I’ve been interviewing guests who have contributed responses to my Ed Week column.  They just redesigned their website, and it’s worth a look…

Here are some favorite blog posts divided by category:

Education Policy

Did The Obama Administration Signal A Major Shift In Teacher Evaluation Policies Today?

VERY Interesting Info On The Results Of KIPP’s “Character Education” Program

The Onion Explains Perfectly The Difference Between “Mobilizing” & “Organizing” For Change

Classroom Instruction

Important Study: “Expecting to teach enhances learning, recall”

It Doesn’t Matter If It’s “Effective” If Students Won’t Do It

Classroom Management

“Oh, I Get It! If You Send Me Out, Then I’m Being Bad; If I Send Me Out, Then I’m Being Good!”

Why A Teacher’s Willingness to Say “I’m Sorry” Matters….

English Language Learners

Oh, Boy, This Is Great! Researcher’s Scans Show Brain Connections Growing When Learning New Language

My Latest British Council Post: “What Does Enhanced Discovery Learning Look Like In The ELL Classroom?”

A Simple Lesson On Climate Change For English Language Learners