by mindroar | Feb 20, 2021 | blog, teaching strategies, teaching study skills
Imagine this, you are at home after work. Teacher-brain has descended and you feel like your brain is processing at half-speed. You walk in the door, hang your bag on a hook, unpack your kids’ bags, and turn on the TV hoping to distract said kids while you cook...
by mindroar | Jan 28, 2021 | blog, reasons why you should, teaching, teaching strategies, teaching study skills
“This is boring!” said Billie-Jean to her friend seated next to her. I wasn’t supposed to hear it, but I did. And my heart sank a little. Medieval history was one of my favorite topics to teach in my Year 9 Social Sciences class. All those castles,...
by mindroar | Jan 14, 2021 | blog, teaching study skills
In the first senior English class I taught, I was stunned one day when I asked students to write a bibliography for their research paper only to be met with blank stares and *crickets*. So, I spent the next 20 minutes explaining how to research. On the board, I drew...
by mindroar | Oct 9, 2020 | blog, teaching study skills
How often have you marked a student paper only to find a Wikipedia entry staring back at you? You taught them digital research skills, but their work doesn’t show that you have. Cue the sigh and face-palm. As teachers, we’ve all been there. But maybe...
by mindroar | Apr 16, 2020 | blog, teaching strategies, teaching study skills
The first time I heard about visual note-taking (also called sketch notes or doodle notes), I thought letting kids draw in class was crazy! How could students remember information if it was drawn in their books? How would kids remember all the facts, stats, ideas, and...
by mindroar | Mar 20, 2020 | blog, Crash Course Study Skills, teaching study skills
Feeling about fifty weeks pregnant on a sweaty, dusty day about a year ago, I stumbled across my old university lecture notes while packing boxes to move house. When I read through them, I realised I had written notes that were chunky, random, and disorganised. Sound...