5-Minute Energizers to Activate You and Your Students

We’re officially in the grind. I ask my teacher colleagues how they’re doing, and the standard response is a sigh: “I’m really looking forward to catching up on grading over the 3-day weekend,” “I’m counting down the days until Thanksgiving,” “I have 20 letters of recommendation to write” (sidebar – anyone else have this problem?).……

How Floop Started: Startup Weekend EDU from an Educator’s Perspective

Re-posted from the Seattle Public Library’s Shelf Talk blog. I wrote this blog post back in 2016 to commemorate the 1-year anniversary of Startup Weekend EDU Seattle 2015, the weekend where Floop got started! It’s been almost 3 years since then, and now, Startup Weekend EDU Seattle 2018 is just around the corner. Learn more……

Teaching Teamwork in 10 Minutes: The Birds Activity

The first week of school is a powerful time to set norms, and one of the most important norms in a collaborative classroom is valuing others’ perspectives on teams. There are lots of great activities out there – for example, lost at sea or the marshmallow challenge – but when you run a chaotic, project-based……

WOOP: Motivating Goals for You and Your Students

What’s the difference between a goal that’s just written on paper and a goal you actually achieve? Whether you’re thinking about your personal goals for the next school year, or how to help your students write goals, using a framework helps define goals to make them more attainable. You’ve probably heard of SMART goals, so……

What I Learned When I Gave Every Student an A

What happens when there are no grades and every student has an A? After years of fielding questions from students about grades instead of content and noticing struggling students demoralized by the numbers, I saw how grades distracted students from learning. So, when I discovered that going gradeless was an option, I decided to throw……

Teacher + Peer Feedback = The Feedback Tool of Your Dreams!

All educators know: Feedback is the most impactful driver of students’ learning progress (Evidence for Learning), but effective feedback “must be timely, relevant, and action-oriented” (Hattie and Timperley). As three different teachers in Seattle, we struggled to give our students the feedback they needed, when they needed it. We decided to take this problem into……

Three Simple Frameworks for Feedback

Here at Floop, we’re all about creating effective feedback systems that mix different strategies to best meet your students’ needs. This post is part of a series sharing simple feedback strategies. When giving or receiving feedback, using a structured framework helps keep the feedback constructive and balanced. Here are three of my favorite feedback methods,……

Set High Expectations Using Whole Class Feedback

If you have 20 minutes in class, here’s a quick exercise to set expectations for student work. By showing student examples and facilitating a class discussion, I turned students’ observations and feedback into their own list of expectations. In my class, students are working on documentation skills, but I can see this exercise for any……

Stamp As You Go – A Simple Feedback Strategy

Here at Floop, we’re all about creating effective feedback systems that mix different strategies to best meet your students’ needs. This post is part of a series sharing simple feedback strategies. Any other teachers amazed at how motivated students are by stickers? Stickers are classic – I remember getting stickers in piano lessons every time……

“Giving an A” – Shift Teacher and Student Attitudes in the Classroom

My favorite way to ease into back-to-school is revisiting my favorite education books. After considering my feedback system, I realized that the first time I ever heard of going gradeless was when I read The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander. Back in high school, my band director made band leadership students read……