Tag: teaching

Posts tagged teaching

2017 End of Year Notes

In what’s become a half-tradition, some unfiltered thoughts as I finish another school year. – Splitting time between teaching and instructional co... Read more

Using Someone Else’s Videos in Your Class

In November 2015, an independent model showed YouTube received around 500 hours of video content uploaded every minute. There are 1440 minutes in a... Read more

Desmos in Science

I’ve wanted to try the Desmos activity builder for a long time, so I finally did. We were finishing up the nervous system, so I grabbed a graph of ... Read more

No, Today’s Students Don’t Learn Differently

If you’re working in instructional support (#edtech, instructional tech, learning support…whatever you want to call it) you’ve probably heard, “Tod... Read more

Teach Like a Teacher

Teaching is being overrun by impostors. Perhaps I’m reading into something, but the explosion of “Teach Like a [thing]” culture scares me. Cultural... Read more

Review Questions with Spreadsheets

I wanted to use a new method of reviewing with students as we wrap up our cell activity unit. I’ve been working with my students on forming questio... Read more

There is No Room for Pride on a Team

I’m proud of the work I do every day, both in my classroom and in the small instructional team I work with. There’s nothing wrong with being proud ... Read more

Introducing: Endnote Generator Add On

A year ago, I posted a script which converts footnotes in a Google Doc into endnotes. I’ve gotten great comments and feedback and have made the sta... Read more

Building a Custom Web App from Google Sheets

I’m working with a group of teachers to run a mock election this week. They had a basic Form set up for students to vote along with two other “pie-... Read more

Defining the Problem

Consider the train problem: A train is barreling down the tracks. At a fork, you have the option of flipping the train to the left branch or the ri... Read more

Maybe it IS About the Video…

In 2011, I wrote a post in which I strongly declared that Flipped Learning [is not about the videos](http://blog.ohheybrian.com/2011/10/video-is-no... Read more

Another Free App is Closing

News came down this week that [Zaption](http://www.zaption.com), a popular web app that layers quiz question and other interactive features on top ... Read more

The Line Between High Expectations and Impossible Expectations

I absolutely hate teaching bonding. The abstract nature of atoms, the minutiae of nomenclature, and the details of writing formulas bog students do... Read more

I Need to Remember to Post Answer Keys

Everything I do in class is geared toward building understanding. I want students to be able to both complete the task and understand _why_ they’re... Read more

Minimum Viable Input

In software, there’s a lot of discussion about the “minimum viable product” when you’re designing something: what is the bare basic you can deliver... Read more

Assessing the Assessed

State testing. There are no words. Week two of six is halfway done. Meanwhile, I keep teaching and I keep assessing. Most of it is formative, infor... Read more

Question Mark Answers

We played Jeopardy today in class (with some major upsets coming during final Jeopardy…quite exciting) to review atoms and the periodic table organ... Read more

Why Are Questions So Scary?

I remind my students constantly that I can’t help if they don’t do one of two things: 1) Ask me a question when they’re confused, or 2) get somethi... Read more

Making Seen the Unseen

My grading practices have improved this year. I’m keeping better track of information, I’m using it more often, and I’m showing students – constant... Read more

Expanding the SBG Tracking Gradebook

I mentioned Evan Weingberg’s standards-based tracking system in a short snippet a couple weeks back. I want to expand on that thought a little bit.... Read more

Teaching Thoughts

Some things I’m thinking through this week, written here so I can find them later. – Evan Weinberg has a good string of posts on his blog related t... Read more

Don’t Call it a Sheep

Test prep is becoming more insidious. Rather than being outright drill-and-kill for the multiple choice marathon students are forced to take, now i... Read more

Above all, I must not play God.

The Hippocratic Oath really parallels education. More on that somewhere else. I cannot play at God in my classroom. I am not a dictator. My role is... Read more

Choices

Before I dive in, I think Justin Aion and I are parallels of one another in the multiverse. His day was similar to mine. — Six weeks into this seme... Read more

Learning as a Sum of Experiences

I’ve been working very hard this year to make sure students experience science – or the process of science – as much as possible. Physics and chemi... Read more

The Earthquake Lab

Waves are tricky to teach. Students feel like they already have a ton of experience with them (you’ve been to the beach somewhere, I’m sure.) and t... Read more

Quickly Format Articles for Annotations

We’re working very hard with students on annotating articles in preparation for the new state test sections. The goal is to help them find pertinen... Read more

Graduate School Final Project

I promised Stacy Lovdahl I’d post this the other day and then promptly forgot. Sorry, Stacy. I took a graduate course on curriculum development and... Read more

Futility

The end of the semester is bittersweet. It’s exciting to think of the long break coming up. At the same time, the burden of work to be completed fe... Read more

Actions Beget Standards…Kind Of.

I wanted to write this down while it’s fresh in my mind (and because it’s late). I’m finishing a graduate semester on curriculum theory and practic... Read more

Columns and Colors

I’ve taken a big dive into test analysis lately. Spreadsheets, formulas, correlations, and color-coding have become the norm after an exam to help ... Read more

Close Reading – Day 1

We’re working on our close-reading skills. Indiana has changed the standardized test format (again) and students will be doing very Common Core-lik... Read more

Newton’s Laws Posters

I don’t know what day of class this is, but here’s what we did today. We took a test a week ago that did not go well, to say the least. I already w... Read more

Cultures

I gave a test a week or so ago. When I scored the test the first time, I didn’t think I made my key correctly. So, I double checked it and re-score... Read more

Natural Consequences

This is the hardest part of teaching, if you ask me. What are the natural consequences of not completing a task in the given amount of time? It sta... Read more

Get in touch

Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at brian@ohheybrian.com