For many years now, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament has been known as March Madness. Sixty-four teams from all over the United States compete for the ultimate prize: to be named National Champions. It's not easy! The team that wins it all has to prevail in 6 consecutive, pressure-packed game...

February 1st has been named Digital Learning Day by the Alliance for Excellent Education. Given the explosion in technology use in our classrooms, homes, and as part of social communication, dedicating a day to this topic seems only fitting. The technological focus of 21st Century skills goes ha...

Classroom games are fun, motivating, and educational for students. Many years ago, I came up with a way to reinforce important vocabulary words with something I call The Vocabulary Game. All you need to play the game is a pocket chart, which you can find at your school or at your local educatio...

Some of the most interesting teaching opportunities stem from taking advantage of the many "awareness" weeks and months which are built into each school year. In this article, I'd like to propose some activities for you to use during the upcoming National Aviation Awareness Week.  The&nbs...

One of my favorite subjects is physical geography. Ever since I was a young student, I've always loved looking at maps of all kinds and finding out about different parts of the world. I find human geography fascinating as well. The astounding variety of cultures, languages, customs, religions, ...

Throughout my teaching career, I have been consistently surprised by how little my students know about the Pilgrims and the origins of Thanksgiving. Since the Pilgrims are such an important part of our nation's history, I make it a point every year to teach my students about them and the histor...

October is officially National Bullying Prevention Month. According to statistics on bullying, 2.7 million students reported being bullied in 2010 alone, and about 160,000 children miss school every day from fear of being bullied. For students who suffer from depression or low self-esteem, bull...

Let's face it, we've all done it. We enter our classrooms right before the end of our summer vacation and ask ourselves, "How should I arrange my seats this year?" If you're like me, you probably set up your classroom exactly the way it was when school ended in June. One year I decided to try so...

Many teachers dread Back to School Night. While speaking to a group of students may be easy for teachers, speaking to a group of adults can be difficult and intimidating. I made it through 22 Back to School Nights and, using trial and error, came up with a system that worked for me. As the new sc...

Teaching students how to deal with anger, and coping with their peers, isn’t often in the typical curriculum, but it  is one of the things that is essential to a positive classroom environment. Teaching anger management strategies is important to creating a safe, successful classroom e...