November 2015: Top Blog Posts and Shows on the Cool Cat Teacher Blog
November has been a busy month. Not only are teachers using new tools, but they are struggling with burnout and old-fashioned interpersonal skills. We are needing inspiration and simple edtech advice as shown by the top blog posts here on the Cool Cat Teacher Blog and shows this month.
Remember, I'm over at coolcatteacher.com for those of you who haven't moved to the new link.
Top 10 Blog Posts of November 2015: The Cool Cat Teacher Blog
- 10 Ways to Flip a Kid and Turn Their Day Around
- Note Taking Skills for 21st Century Students
- Why Teachers Need to Keep Going Even When It's Hard
- 5 Ways to Teach Gratitude in Your Classroom
- 15 Best Google Drive Add-Ons for Education
- How to Use Padlet: A Fantastic Tool for Teaching
- 10 Inspirational Videos for Teachers
- What To Do When Someone Hates You
- 6 Reading Comprehension Problems and What To Do About Them
- 8 Great Ways to Level Up Game Based Learning in the Classroom
Top Shows of November 2015: Every Classroom Matters
Every Classroom Matters continues to have more than 110K downloads each month and growing (November stats aren't in yet.) Thank you to all of you who listen, share, and share your ideas for guests on the show.
- Alec Couros' Epic Educational Truths - Alec reflects on his career as a teacher and Sylvia Duckworth draws an amazing sketchnote to go with it.
- My Lesson Plan is Not Working, The Kids Are Not Learning, I'm Freaking Out with Alicia Roberts
- Throwing Students Across the Room Doesn't Work, This Does Classroom Management expert Steve Miletto reflects with me what could have been done differently in Spring Hill.
- How We Can Stop Teaching to the Test and Start Learning (For a Change) with Eric Sheninger about his new book Uncommon Learning
- Kid President: Kids Inspiring Kids to Change the World - This was an October Show with Brad Montague, founder of Kid President but it continued to be widely shared in November.
- 6 Learning Experiences You Should Give to Every Student with David Jakes as we reflect upon classroom design
- How Teachers Can Self-Publish Books with David Hopkins from the UK gives us a simple how-to on self publishing
- Improving Teaching through Student Reflections with Dean Shareski who reflects honestly about how we should have students reflect as we improve our lessons.
- How I Motivated my Autistic Students to Publish 63 books with Jon Smith
- Hip Hop Language Education: Using Rap to Teach, Really? with Jason Levine
November has been a great month! We have several weeks of very hard work left in December and then we have a little break. Yahoo! I know it is silly that I'm still tired after Thanksgiving break, but that is the truth. It is the end of the grading period and final exams at my school. These are stressful times and keeping up with everything is just nuts!
Thank you to the sponsors of Every Classroom Matters!
We've had some fantastic sponsors for the show recently! If you haven't checked them out, take a moment to look at these amazing sponsors:
- VIF Learning Center has fantastic lesson plans and ways for educators to connect.
- Lesley University has wonderful online education classes for busy teachers.
- Bloomz - how I'm connecting with parents this year! I love it and continue to share this one everywhere I go!
- Volunteer Spot - An awesome tool to connect parents, teachers, and volunteers and easily set up parent-teacher conferences.
- Help Teaching - has a free, fantastic test maker and lots of Common Core and standards-aligned resources to help you create and make resources to use in your classroom
- Staples - I loved doing back to school work with them. This is where I shop! (Just today I picked up my planner paper.)
These organizations have support Every Classroom Matters and the mission of helping every teacher level up every day! I hope you'll click the links, try their services, and support those who support the show! Remember, your classroom matters! Thank you to all of you who are listening! I have some new sponsors I'll be announcing soon who are supporting the show and this blog! Thank you for making this work possible.
