Arpan Chokshi – Page 3 – Teacher Reflections

Teacher’s Sanity: Late Work, Re-Takes, Pacing

Progressive teachers for decades (perhaps centuries!) have long advocated for deemphasizing grades, developing various methods for re-learning concepts & skills, and providing students multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning. These ideas have found a renaissance of sorts with the the recent movement towards standards based grading, mastery learning, competency based learning, and allowing students to submit

October 7, 2017 2 Comments

Improve Students’ English Language Skills: Academic Discourse, Word Interaction & Read Alouds

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend and present at the SIOP National Conference at the end of June. Although I gained a lot of ideas & strategies I can bring to my class, here are 3 things I hope to apply to my classroom this year: 1) Prepare students for a broader

July 20, 2017 No Comments

Reflections from 2016-2017

Before I close the chapter on this school year, I want to reflect on my successes and failures to learn how I can improve next year. Here are 3 of my takeaways from this school year: #1 Breaking out of our Bubbles: Creating safe but challenging spaces As a Social Studies teacher I often experience how upbringing

June 1, 2017 No Comments

Beauty Pageants & Discussions

According to Don McCormick of the University of Redlands and Michael Kahn, of the California Institute of Integral Studies most classroom discussions or seminars fall in one of the following four categories: Free-for-All: In this seminar there is a prize to be won, whether it’s the instructor’s approval or one’s self esteem. There is no

May 31, 2017 1 Comment

Download & Print from Google Classroom

Normally, I’m opposed to printing student assignments. With the proper workflow, I’ve found that I can offer more timely feedback in digital format, not to mention save acres of trees. However, there are times when you might find that you need to print entire classes worth of documents submitted on Google Classroom. It can be tedious

April 20, 2017 No Comments

Cognitive Science in the Classroom

I enjoy reading Daniel Willingham’s work because he makes complex but important findings in cognitive science accessible to the average, busy teacher like me. I was first introduced to his writing a few years ago when I came across his book Why Don’t Students Like School? Recently, I discovered that he has written a number

April 20, 2017 No Comments

SAT v. Grit: What matters in life?

Another season of SAT, ACT and AP testing is upon us. Teachers and administrators are beginning to stress whether their students are prepared for the tests and how students’ scores will reflect on their performance. Students are worried the tests will reveal how smart they really are and whether they will be a success of failure

April 4, 2017 No Comments

Annotating for Critical Literacy

One simple way to teach students to critically examine texts from various lenses is to utilize targeted annotation techniques. There are numerous guides for how to increase students’ comprehension by previewing texts, actively reading, summarizing, etc. One especially useful guide is from Susan Gilroy, Librarian for Undergraduate Writing Programs at Harvard University. Guides like this

March 8, 2017 No Comments

What Teachers can Learn from The Originals by Adam Grant

Recently I listened to the audiobook The Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant. Although the primary audience for his book are entrepreneurs and business people, many of his ideas are very applicable to teachers and school leaders. Teachers too often bring each other down. We champion our causes (ed tech, project based learning, gamification, flipped

February 28, 2017 No Comments

Author: Arpan Chokshi