Photo courtesy of marinakvillatorofrom Flickr Creative Commons. “Look, Mom! See the turtle! He is scaly!” Spend a day with a small child, and you will hear many such observations. That’s because all of us have an innate human desire to teach. Somehow what we learn isn’t real until we share it with someone else. “Watch what I can do! Let me show you how!” The exclamation points are almost mandatory, because we want to teach. “Show and tell” is one of the most popular times in elementary school—the chance for students to become teachers.

As you know, group work can give teachers headaches and students nightmares. If set up poorly, collaborative projects often result in one person doing all of the work, while others contribute minimally or actually disrupt. Arguments, inefficiency, mess, and chaos follow closely. When set up well, though, group work taps into the power of collaboration. Here are 5 keys to setting up successful student collaborations. Download a free Word template. Define individual success.

Photo courtesy of rupjones from Flickr Creative Commons. People say that Stonehenge was built to be a giant calendar that marks the winter and summer solstices. To me, that claim has always seemed a little odd. Who would spend 1,500 years building a calendar out of stone? Invent paper, people. But let’s think of a calendar in deeper terms. A calendar doesn’t just track the days of a year. It tells which days are significant and why: Mardi Gras, Passover, Tax Day, Bastille Day, Election Day, New Years. . . .

The Internet began as a U.S. military computer network meant to survive a nuclear attack. ARPANET, developed in the 1960's, stored information in a broad network of computers linked by distributed hubs so that an attack against one or more hubs could not bring down the entire thing. Decentralized. Interconnected. Robust. Nuke-Proof. Wouldn't it be great if you could get your students to build the same kind of neural networks around the subjects you teach? How can you move beyond superficial, short-term learning to create learning that sticks?

In order to get students to think critically, you need to help them break through their mechanical thinking and manage their emotional thinking. What is mechanical thinking? When students think mechanically, their brains are just repeating looped recordings of thought without considering them. For example, students might have the mechanical thought, “I'm not good at math.” It just crops up in their brains whenever they look at a math problem.

By kallerna (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 orGFDL], via Wikimedia Commons If you teach in an inquiry- or project-based classroom, you probably use guiding questions to help your students really dig into a topic. Well, now that summer is officially upon us, it's time to consider what questions will guide your summer and help you really dig in. Here's a list of 100 guiding questions that can help you get the most out of this season. Pick a question from the list, or let the ideas here inspire you to fashion your own.

My friend Oliver Schinkten knows 150 awesome human beings. They’re students in his Communities and leadership classrooms at Oshkosh North High School, and they routinely do amazing things. Last year, each student in Communities found and interviewed a local veteran of World War II, the Vietnam War, or the Korean War. They prepared questions, conducted and recorded hour-long interviews, edited them into stories, and created keepsake DVDs for the veterans and their families. The students then planned and ran an event celebrating the service of these people and presenting them with the DVDs.

The Common Core State Standards require students to think more deeply in all classes. But what counts for deeper thinking? Bloom’s revised taxonomy lists thinking skills in order from superficial to deep: For many years, we’ve done well teaching and testing the top half of the taxonomy. After all, multiple-choice, true-false, and fill-in-the-blank items do an excellent job of measuring what students remember, understand, and can apply. On the other hand, they don’t easily measure what students can analyze, evaluate, or synthesize.

Communication is complex. Students need to be able to write to different audiences. They need to create an appropriate voice for each topic and purpose. They need to understand how to get their point across in a larger context. All of this complexity can be bewildering.

Calvin's twisted take on traditional snowpeople shows his creative thinking.(Image courtesy of Vegas Bleeds Neon via Wikimedia Commons.) When I write the first draft of a novel, I'm Calvin from the classic comic series Calvin and Hobbes. Brimming with imagination and life, I don't care what may be sensible, realistic, and conventional. I'm full of passion, flying in many different directions. Sure, there'll be plenty of mistakes, but at least they'll be big. When I revise and edit a novel, I'm Calvin's parents.