Approaches to Professional Learning #5: Action Research
To some extent, “action research” is formalizing something that good educators do informally all the time. Every time a teacher ponders a challenge they are facing in the classroom, considers possible interventions to...
Creating Your Foundational Documents
Foundational documents are an important tool for your school’s development, so creating them needs to be done with care. Here are three related ideas to help you work through the process… Collaboration If your...
Teacher-Teacher Professional Collaboration
Many of us see the benefits of collaboration in the classroom and desire to see our students develop cooperative attitudes and skills… but what about in the staff room? Is your school a place where teachers work together,...
Collaborative Learning Strategies
Building collaboration in your classroom could begin with recognizing that some of the tasks you already ask your students to engage in could be done collaboratively. Solving a problem, practicing a skill, evaluating an...
The Benefits of Collaborative Learning
In my previous post I started a discussion about “what is collaborative learning?”. A related question to ask is “why should we use collaborative learning strategies in our classrooms”? In other words, do collaborative learning...
Elements of Effective Collaborative Learning
Over the next few weeks I am hoping to start a conversation about building collaboration in our classrooms and beyond. Collaboration sounds like a good idea… but what is it, and how can we use it to increase student...
Professional e-Learning with ACSI Europe
The ACSI Europe team has been working hard to develop high quality professional learning courses for teachers, and to facilitate these courses in a way that maximizes interaction between participants. We believe this makes...
How Much is Project Based Learning Used at Your School?
The Buck Institute for Education (BIE.org) provides excellent resources on Project Based Learning. They claim that the experience of thousands of teachers across all grade levels and subject areas, backed by research, confirms...