When I first moved into my house, I went to the hardware store and bought myself a set of tools. It had the basics such as a screwdriver, a hammer, and a pair of pliers, but it also had several really neat tools such as a stud sensor and several spackling tools. I went home [...]
Recently, a teacher with whom I was working confessed to me, “Robyn, I cannot work any harder than I am already working. And yet, my kids aren’t making the progress they need to make to pass the AP test. I am so frustrated.” I hear this a lot. Teachers are working as hard as they [...]
I had been working on the final draft of second edition of The Differentiation Workbook and had nearly finished it when I got interrupted and put it down. When I went to pick it up a day later, it was gone. Just like that. Gone. I looked everywhere. I went to my office and my [...]
Recently, I invited my favorite eight-year-old to help me bake cookies. I set out all the ingredients we would need and we got to work. First we measured the flour. She asked me, “Can I do it?” “No sweetie, you’ll make a mess. Let me measure the flour and then you can put it in [...]
Because our professional development at Mindsteps™ is fully customizable, how schools implement our work looks different from school to school. While the concepts and principles are the same, how each gets implemented is highly individual to each teacher. Here is how one school has used our workshops and materials on rigorous instruction* to create a school-wide focus [...]
Every year, we spend time at Mindsteps™ conducting student focus groups with the schools we serve on an ongoing basis. We conduct these focus groups to find out if the work we are doing with teachers and administrators is really making a difference where it counts – with the students. Every year, I am surprised [...]
On the seventh day of Christmas, Mindsteps sent to me the seven principles of effective instruction, six things I look for when I visit a classroom, five of the biggest mistakes I made as a new teacher, four differentiation mistakes to avoid, three ways to survive the December crunch, two Webinars, and a free [...]
Most of us agree that students need to be engaged in order to learn at optimal levels; but, it is often difficult to tell whether an activity will engage them rather than just entertain them.
