Projects–Step Two Planning the Project This is Step Two of teaching with projects–How to plan a project To sum up, my previous post, this is where you should be: You have decided your project goal. If you are doing a group project, you probably have made project groups . You have decided the topic and, …
Category Archive: high school teaching
May 13
Projects in Teaching and Learning, Step One–Setting Goals
Projects–Step One Setting your Goals and Making Groups Projects that accomplish specific learning objectives, also called project-based learning, is the best way to learn. I’ve been using projects for more than 10 years now, but what if you are just starting out and want to use projects in your teaching, but you really have no …
Mar 25
What Can You Learn from Video Games?
What can we learn by playing video games? If you are like me, you think of video games as sitting in front of the TV, controller in hand, shooting space aliens that are falling from the sky; perhaps driving a formula one car on a twisted race track–that kind of thing. This is the first …
Mar 18
Daydreaming Is a Mind Using Its Excess Capacity
What is daydreaming? Well, that probably varies a little among individuals, but a report on Scientific American, showed that daydreaming Daydreaming is your brain putting its excess power to good use. In other words, when you daydream, your brain is staying active by daydreaming since whatever it is you are really doing is not keeping …
Mar 07
Why?
Why are you here? Why are you teaching? Why are the students learning? Why? The most important question you will ever ask your students (and perhaps yourself) is this. Can you answer the question? Can your students answer the question? If they cannot, you have not convinced them that what you are teaching has …
Jan 23
Teaching in Japan, The English Center Test, Translation
This is my third article on the English Center Test. This time, let’s look at translation. Many English teachers in Japan feel that they need to translate English into Japanese, or that students need to translate the English in to Japanese. This has its uses, but they are few. This time, we will look at …
Jan 22
Japan Teaching, Grammar and the English Center Test, Part Two
We talked about grammar and the English Center Test in the last post. We saw that in the first section we looked at, Part 2, Section A, that what looks like grammar questions, are in fact, testing usage. They do not test grammar. Next, I will look at the only section that really requires that …
Jan 21
Teaching in Japan, Is There Grammar on the English Center Test?
Today, I want to talk about the English Center Test and grammar. If you do not know what the Center Test is, and you teach in Japan, you need to learn. There is a myth that grammar is important to do well on the Center Test. This is wrong. Students only need to …
Jan 16
Teaching in High Schools in Japan–The Center Test
If you are teaching in Japan, you probably have heard of the Center Test. If you haven’t, and you are teaching anywhere in the education realm, you had better learn what it is and why it is important.The Center Test is the largest entrance exam taken in Japan. This year, it was given on Saturday …