Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

TeachingBooks, Sora and Pear Deck Announce Collaboration to Expand Student Engagement and Learning

CLEVELAND –   TeachingBooks.net today announced a unique collaboration with  Pear Deck, providing expanded opportunities for student engagement and learning. In this new collaboration, Pear Deck takes book-specific supplemental materials from TeachingBooks and creates a custom, interactive lesson. When used with the  Sora student reading app, a complete interactive literacy experience is created that engages students of all ages and provides unique learning opportunities. All TeachingBooks templates, as well as Pear Deck’s other content, are available for free at  Pear Deck’s Content Orchard.

“By partnering with TeachingBooks and Sora, we’re bringing free, ready-to-teach literacy lessons to teachers and learners, furthering Pear Deck’s mission to create powerful learning moments for every student, every day,” said Stacy Yung, a former teacher and Senior Instructional Designer at GoGuardian, parent company of Pear Deck. “Reading is a strong lever in building a community in the classroom. We’re confident that this partnership will increase access to engaging lessons that help students connect with books, gain new insights and improve understanding, ultimately building deeper love of reading.”

With Pear Deck, now part of leading digital learning company GoGuardian, educators can transform lessons into impactful formative assessments and active learning experiences that seamlessly integrate with learning management systems. Templates, quick-start activities and ready-to-teach lessons connect students across all grades and subjects. TeachingBooks offers high-quality instructional assets such as author interviews and cultural reflection prompts that help educators bring books to life. The Sora student reading app is the leading digital book platform for schools that helps students read or listen to school-selected ebooks and audiobooks, 24/7 on any device. Sora offers the largest collection of premium materials used for instruction, novel sets and choice reading, including the most in-demand and beloved books and authors such as  Diary of a Wimpy Kid and  The Great Gatsby. All three platforms offer free access to a “starter set” or “introductory catalog” as well as paid content options. California educators already have premium access to TeachingBooks.net via the  State Library of California and the California K-12 Online Content Project.…Read More

Balancing high expectations with relationship building to boost engagement

Teachers are constantly challenged with improving student engagement, something they know directly impacts student learning outcomes. A USC Rossier School of Education Center EDGE survey this year queried 1,400 teachers about the engagement strategies they use most often in their classrooms and those they think will hold most value next year. For 2022, the most common response was building relationships with students. In 2023, educators anticipate establishing high expectations for students. 

The prioritization of these two practices alongside each other begs the question of how teachers can balance these two strategies — one of which relies on kindness and compassion, and the other which lends itself to more serious goal-setting and intense conversations. The key is approaching high expectations as an integral part of building strong relationships.

Raising the bar for learners …Read More

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Cool! 6 TED-Ed lessons about the cold

It’s January, and in many places, that means cold weather–and possibly some snow. It may be hard to capture students’ attention now that most winter breaks are over.

Creating a video-based lesson that explores different concepts around cold weather is one fun way to boost student engagement.

These TED-Ed Lessons cover snowflakes, the coldest place on Earth, myths about the cold, and more.…Read More

9 TED-Ed Lessons about different holiday origins

Most schools are gearing up for December break, and students’ attention spans are likely to grow shorter each day. But crafting a video-based lesson that explores different holidays is a surefire way to boost student engagement.

These TED-Ed Lessons cover Labor Day origins, they examine why we celebrate Groundhog Day, they delve into St. Patrick’s Day, and more.

The TED-Ed platform is especially cool because educators can build lessons around any TED-Ed Original, TED Talk, or YouTube video.…Read More

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Students desperately need to see relevance in their learning

Many students see no relevance between their education and the real world, and say they are struggling to find meaning in their education or find a career direction, according to a new survey from YouScience, a student engagement platform.

The paper, “Solving Education’s Relevance Gap,” is a call to action for educational institutions, businesses, families, students, and community leaders to analyze the state of student engagement and work together to shift educational approaches to better meet student’s needs.

If communities take advantage of opportunities to close the relevance gap, students can move from disengaged to motivated, with a deeper understanding of their own natural talents and their potential for fulfilling, long-term, in-demand careers, according to the paper.…Read More

COVID crushed engagement–is student-centered learning the solution?

In a new survey of thousands of U.S. educators, teachers validate concerns over student engagement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but believe that technology and student-centered approaches to teaching can help to reinvigorate students in the fall.

Seven in 10 teachers believe that their students are more engaged when lessons involve play, and 68 percent of teachers said that their students are more likely to remember what they learn during learning activities they choose themselves. The survey of 8,000 was conducted by Kahoot!. 

“Even with most schools back to fully in-person learning, educators are reporting that their students continue to struggle. So much was out of students’ control for so long, and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing teachers pick up on the importance of student choice in their own learning,” said Louisa Rosenheck, Director of Pedagogy for the Kahoot! Group. …Read More

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What’s so great about online teaching?

Had I been asked what I thought about online teaching two years ago, I would probably have given you quite an earful of the many known shortcomings of virtual teaching modalities, including the challenges to student engagement and community building. Ask me now and my answer could not be more different. Amid the latest push for a return to in-person teaching, many instructors have been adamant about the advantages of digital classrooms and look forward to continuing teaching online in a post-pandemic world. I am one of them.

I teach sociology at CUNY, the largest urban university in the U.S., which serves a very diverse student body of mostly first-generation college students. By the time the COVID-19 outbreak officially struck in mid-March 2020, I, along with millions of instructors around the globe, had to figure out how to move my in-person classes to virtual platforms. Many of us were caught off guard during the initial phase of “emergency remote teaching” and had no choice but to invest, learn, and experiment with technology by trial and error.

With incentives from the administration, we hurried to get online certifications and took summer workshops widely offered by our teaching centers and IT departments. When we succeeded, it was often not by replacing the in-person teaching with virtual scenarios, but by combining the best of both worlds: the interpersonal dynamics of face-to-face interactions with key high-tech tools that enhanced our online classrooms. If it is true that practice makes perfect, the more we conducted our business remotely the more we tightened up our craft. In this piece, I will tell you how this happened.…Read More

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How teachers use Wordle–and other games–for next-level engagement

“Did you get the Wordle today?” What initially began as something Josh Wardle created to serve as a personal daily game has become a household name, with users sharing their Wordle progress on social platforms and urging friends to start playing. And now, teachers are using Wordle, along with other games with viral status, to boost student engagement.

The popular game tasks users with guessing–in six guesses–a five-letter word. When users guess a word, a green square indicates they have guessed a correct letter in its correct spot. A yellow square indicates that the letter is in the word, but the user has put it in the wrong spot. And a gray square indicates that the letter is not in the word.

In a January tweet, teacher Samantha Morra shared how teachers can create their own custom Wordle words of any length–a great way to add longer and more challenging vocabulary or other relevant words and concepts to a lesson.…Read More

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6 ways to create stellar student engagement

Whether your students take the bus to school or run downstairs to the computer room, keeping them engaged in their classwork throughout the day is the best way for them to master content and progress to the next level of their education.

But not all students do this, or at least, do it well. So how can teachers and principals up their game to keep students engaged and make sure each child stays focused and ready to learn?

As teacher for more than 20 years, I have 6 tips to help keep students engaged throughout the day, whether they are in a traditional or a virtual classroom.  …Read More

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5 instructional practices that drive student engagement

Student engagement has long been an indicator of growth and progress, and in the wake of the pandemic, it will prove essential for academic and social-emotional recovery.

Recent insights pulled from a survey of more than 2,000 identifies instructional practices that enable student engagement, no matter the learning environment.

Using qualitative and quantitative survey data, the following five instructional practices were ranked highest for driving engagement.…Read More

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