Group Work: Do You Require It or Offer an Alternative?

In a recent Teaching Professor Blog post from education professor Maryellen Weimer, Weimer wrote about a group of higher education professors who had been discussing the merits of students working in groups and by themselves.

Weimer wrote about the usual dilemma that teachers face: shouldn’t teachers require students to complete at least some group work? After all, most professions require at least some group work. Isn’t it a disservice to students not to prepare them to work well with others?

Online Student Records Help Parents Monitor Student Progress

In my last year of teaching, it was a budget year with teacher pay and benefits, school spending for buses, theater, sports, and maintenance all up for review. Our superintendent had budgeted a sizable amount of money to online student record access for parents. At the time, it seemed to me like a frivolous use of taxpayer dollars. It’s not like we didn’t send out progress and grade reports. How many parents had I called because their son or daughter had been missing class and hadn’t turned in work? Countless.

How to Address Classroom Cheating

The other day, my daughter’s middle school teacher caught my kid cheating. My daughter was finishing up a test, had moved to the classroom’s back tables, and was working when the next class entered the room. The bell rang and teacher began to teach. My kid quietly returned to her stack of books, removed the top layer, and took out a piece of paper that had writing on it.

The Pros and Cons of Rubrics

I read on Professor Maryellen Weimer’s excellent higher education teaching blog, The Teaching Professor, a post about a discussion college teachers were having about the pros and cons of using rubrics to grade student products.

It’s an interesting discussion and probably something you and your teaching colleagues have discussed before: do rubrics guide both teacher and student or do they limit student creativity and independent thinking?

Students Online: Time Wasters or Innovators?

Your students are spending a lot of their free time online. Think of the number of hours you estimate they spend online. Double it. The doubled number is probably closer to the truth.

According to the Norton Online Living Report 2009, parents believe their children spend 21 hours online. The reality is that students in twelve countries reported spending 39 hours online. Don’t tell me these kids don’t have time to finish their assignments or clean their rooms.

Posting Homework Online: Is It a Benefit for Students and Parents?

Lexi (named changed) has ADHD. She writes her assignments in her assignment notebook, but she doesn’t come home with all the books and materials she needs to complete her homework. Nearly every night Lexi asks her mother to drive her back to school to collect a missing book or packet.

Some nights Mom spot-checks Lexi’s assignment notebook against the homework the teacher posted online. It helps prevent missing assignments, Mom said.