Love this, and the name. On top of the retrieval goodness, students can momentarily 'hold forth' on academic content (and start to see and hear themselves as holder-forthers, I'd bet, which is an extra benefit).

I try to be intentional with retrieval practice in my classroom What is the purpose? Checking for attention: during direct instruction, whiteboards or cold call, lower difficulty questions that direct attention to the most important information. #teachertips

This.

Just teaching kids one time about retrieval isn’t enough. Repeat expectations before every retrieval attempt… No notes. No neighbors. Eyes on your own writing. And always “let’s acknowledge this is hard, judgement free, just try your best” low stakes or no stakes

Making retrieval practice work in my classroom is built on solid classroom routines. This starts with explaining why retrieval works. Buy-in on retrieval is so important because retrieval is hard. When Ss have a clear “why”. They are less likely to “cheat” on retrieval tasks.

Retrieval practice has been a game changer in my classroom. Most days my classes start with a brief selection of retrieval questions. I like to start with retrieval because it gives me a good idea of what stuck from our previous lesson. #teachertips

Not only is teacher pay far lower than it should be, educators spend their own 💰on their classrooms while billionaires and corporations get tax cuts. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

it's so deeply rude to answer someone's question with the output from a chatbot, or even to reference prompting the chatbot. they asked a person for a reason. if they wanted to see what output the chatbot would barf out, they could get it themselves.

If I were a student and I was being asked to write essays that my teacher was going to grade using AI I would absolutely use AI to write that essay. What the hell are we doing???

Got this idea the other day from a teacher on social media. After a lesson ask students to write 3 questions they have about the material, do a turn and talk, then ask them to turn and talk with a different student. Lastly, ask the class if anyone found similar questions to their own. Worked great!

Cheating policy in our district: Student has 48 hours to make up assessment up to 100% What?

This is absolutely horrifying. These teachers should not be fearing for their lives or their jobs. Just being a teacher is a risk factor now. www.kjzz.org/politics/202...

Walmart, McDonalds and Amazon are the largest employers of people who require SNAP assistance. The CEOs earned between 18-40 million last year, 1000x their median employee income. They took billions in profits, while their workers relied on SNAP to survive. Wanna fix fraud and abuse? Fix that.

Corporatization is one of the biggest problems in education in the US. Districts pay $$$ for devices, LMS software, curriculums (that have plenty of bells and whistles but very little substance), textbooks and testing. Now add AI into the mix and there seems to be no end in sight. #edusky

If you have it please donate cash to the food banks. $10 in their hands will feed more people than the $10 worth of canned goods you can buy for retail prices. Also check on your elders. Many of them will not admit they rely on these programs so grocery gift cards or a surprise bag of staples

This is a great idea!

A very offline cousin sent this to fam group chat. This story is breaking containment.

A1: Maintaining Ss attention and using a variety of questioning techniques, lots of whiteboard work, turn and talks and cold calling with warmth. My students are engaged and learning a ton #T2Tchat #Edusky

#T2Tchat #Edusku A2: Teaching anatomy as a HS elective is so much fun b\c Ss can share their life experiences. For example, I always set aside time for Ss to tell their broken bone stories, and of course I share mine. Ss also get to listen to and see their own heartbeats and measure muscle activity.

#T2Tchat #Edusky Q4: I use different types of grouping to encourage collaboration. I use compass partners, students pick their West and East partners and I make north partners heterogeneous and south partners homogeneous. I can be very intentional about my partner pairing using this system.

Wow! Utter nonsense. Does Jim Short even understand the science of reading? Teaching an inquiry based science curriculum and expecting students to think critically when they have no foundational knowledge is exactly what Calkins touted. I just can’t with this. www.the74million.org/article/youv...

Genuine question: for those enthusiastically pushing AI tools into every part of our education system—what checks/guardrails are there around algorithmic biases like this?

“ The great danger of comfortable fictions is not that they are wrong, but that they make us feel right. “ - Dr Carl Hendrick — a #mustread post! open.substack.com/pub/carlhend...

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

🎶 Take a look, it's in a book 🎶 🥹 After nearly 20 years... Reading Rainbow is returning to motivate, help, and encourage kids to become avid readers with new episodes, new friends, new projects, and of course... new books! Make sure to follow the rainbow 📚🌈 #FollowTheRainbow

— @mrrablin.bsky.social #EduSky

Happy #FollowFriday #edChat #EduSky educators - here are some amazing educators to follow. Add your own to the list and pass it on! Happy Back to School season one and all! @rdene915.bsky.social @timneedles.bsky.social @lieberrian.bsky.social @baggaleymr.bsky.social @alisonstonebio.bsky.social

🏆 TECHNIQUE OF THE WEEK: Stripped-back Slides A technique to support our presentations, demonstrations and explanations. Full details here: teachingpowerups.com/techniqueoft...

What strategies are y’all using to talk to kids who’ve witnessed a man being murdered? Turn and talk? Think pair share? www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8SYs9T7/

New: We keep trying to teach grit as if it were something students can just learn. Instead, if we make progress visible students will persist. Swap pep talks for clear modelling, sequenced practice & precise feedback. Teach the subject well & resilience will follow open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

Today I introduced smallpox eradication in the vaccines class I’m co-teaching w/ @jackiantonovich.bsky.social A public health hero I learned about prepping for this class is Benjamin Rubin. He developed the bifurcated needle, & waived all royalties for needles manufactured under contract w/the WHO.

I agree. And I'd argue it's intentional. The GOP has a long history of using fear-mongering around potential threats to children to undermine efforts toward women's equality. I write about this with the satanic panic around childcare in Holding It Together: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697130...

Such a cool little critter.

"Maybe helping students to be successful in an AI world means NOT using more AI in my classes." The voices I value most around AI are teachers who have actually done the work thoughtfully experimenting in their classroom. Such as this: theimportantwork.substack.com/p/shifting-m...

DC Sub Guy has done more to materially oppose fascism than Chuck Schumer and all of his spineless "lets be reasonable" centrists. Some drunk dude in a pink polo, slapping a cop with a sandwich, has done more to fight fascists than 95% of all elected democrats. That's where we're at.

Just another concern about using AI for education.

Posted this just before reading @heymrsbond.com ‘s Edutopia article www.edutopia.org/article/bann...

@heymrsbond.com what a wonderful article. In the US, we so often value product over process. In education this is a disaster, learning happens not in the creation of the product but in the space between. AI is all about product - we are cheating students of the chance to learn if we allow AI.

Hot take: maybe instead of investing time and money into PD about how to effectively use AI in the classroom (which btw no one really knows because it is too new) we invest in PD about the information processing model and how attention, retrieval and space practice are essential for learning.

Everyone is yelling at Ian about this but the article is good and this is a real problem! If you are a straight guy trying to get laid 99% of the advice you come across will be right wing-coded.

There’s renewable energy ads and there’s mother**cking wind farm ads. This, blissfully, is the latter.

It works for the rich students who attend. I’m sure that will apply to all students across the board. This is the republican’s dream to completely dismantle public education.

"Tuition is $40,000 a year at the Austin schools, and guides earn six-figure salaries, according to Ms. Price and several guides."

The ‘Boy Crisis’ Is Overblown www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o... Interesting data presented in this oped.

There are 3 things I would like my students to take away from our time together: ✅️ curiosity and openess to new experiences; ✅️ ability to cultivate attention; ✅️ desire to keep learning. Not something we can measure. But something to keep in mind when we are in the classroom & when we design courses.

1/2 Finally sitting down to read “Do I Have Your Attention” by @blakeharvard.bsky.social This quote really struck me: “The more context we have surrounding a particular topic, they easier it may be to retrieve that information”

Summer relaxation.