Jason Deehan 🇵🇰🇲🇲🇩🇴🇰🇷🇰🇼

How to Get Students to Focus on Learning—Not Grades With a few shifts in the classroom, teachers can encourage students to pay more attention to the skills they are building than to a number or letter score.

Teachers see it all the time: students (and parents) who are obsessed with grades.

Here are 4 strategies that can shift the focus from “What grade did I get?’ to “What did I learn?” 🌟 💯

#EduSky

Bar chart titled Read Aloud to Improve Writing. "When students were asked to proofread texts aloud, they found up to 12 percentage points more typos, grammatical mistakes, and errors in word choice, a 2022 study found." The bar chart shows the difference between accuracy during silent and aloud reading: silent, 59%, and aloud, 71%.

Here’s a useful tip to help students improve their writing. ✍️

Ask them to read their work aloud. While it may not feel as natural—or modest—as reading silently, it can help them catch often-overlooked errors, a 2022 study found.

The Wings of Fire series is, um, fire!

Student questions aren't always aligned with discovery.

Daily Activities That Support Students’ Creative Mindset Teachers can provide learning experiences that guide high school students to become comfortable with uncertainty and risk-taking.

When creativity becomes a daily habit:

⭐ Students ask more original questions.
⭐ They approach challenges with flexibility.
⭐ They notice opportunities for improvement & problem-solving.

Here are 3 simple ways to support learners’ creative mindset each day.

#EduSky

Guiding Students to Receive Feedback as Information to Improve Their Skills Students may take feedback from teachers or peers as a personal judgement unless it is intentionally focused on their work.

“The most impactful feedback makes it clear that students are more than their current ideas, and their work is always open to improvement. When feedback targets the work—the reasoning, the strategy, the evidence, or the process—then students have something concrete to evaluate and revise.” 📝

6 Cool Visual Thinking Activities That Strengthen Student Writing Visual activities like mapping, sketching, sculpting, and writing comic strips can help students clarify ideas, strengthen drafts, and deepen literary analysis.

Visual activities like mapping, sketching, sculpting, and writing comic strips can help students clarify ideas, strengthen drafts, *and* deepen literary analysis. 🗺️ ✍️

#literacy #EduSky

A screen showing a worksheet asking "Why?" "How?" "Can?" "Should?" "Would?" etc.

Student reflections written on sticky notes in response to various prompts.

Close up of student sticky notes sharing a "should" opinion about their learning.

💡 How do you invite students to share questions and opinions after a lesson?

Here's a strategy from educator Felicia Henderson:

x.com/fhenderson19...

Amazon.com : jason deehan

As well as being an educator and an active member on #EduSky, I am a self-published author. Please check out my titles at url-shortener.me/F08Y I've got historical fiction, superhero fiction, kids silly books, and two titles where the hero is a social studies teacher. Yeah, we can be heroes. Thanks!

Cult of Pedagogy!

Who are the essential voices in education that you follow online? Hey everyone! 😁 Edutopia’s working on curating a list of the most essential voices in education right now, and we want *your* recommendations! Who are the “must-follow” accounts that fuel your…

We’re working on curating a list of the most essential voices in education right now, and we want your recommendations. 📣

Who are the “must-follow” accounts that fuel your practice?

12 Ways to Activate Your Students’ Prior Knowledge Threading prior knowledge into new material makes for more durable learning. Here are 12 research-backed, teacher-tested strategies to help kids unpack what they already know.

Edutopia’s @andreatamayo.bsky.social lays out 12 evidence-based strategies to help kids unpack what they already know to learn new material. 📦🧠

#EduSky

📣 Calling all support staff! We've EXTENDED the registration deadline for NEA's upcoming #ESP conference, March 27-29 in Anaheim, CA. Be sure to register by Wednesday, February 18, at 11:59 p.m.!

11 Classroom Management Tweaks You Don’t Learn in Teacher Prep Over time, every teacher makes small changes that have a big impact on how their classes run. A veteran teacher shares the hacks that work for him.

Here's a collection of some of the more unique classroom management techniques I've gathered over the years.

www.edutopia.org/article/clas...

What’s something you learned that truly stuck? Asked by Jay M, Podcast Guest

Let’s talk about formative assessment! 💬

On this week’s episode of School of Practice, we chat with veteran educator Jay McTighe about how to use formative assessments like an expert teacher. He’s here in our community forum if you have questions or thoughts to share: edut.to/469GuJx

1-Minute Read. Brain-Based Learning. Coaching Executive Functioning Skills. By Daniel Vollrath.

Executive functioning is a set of powerful cognitive skills that help students manage their emotions, thoughts, and responsibilities.

Here’s a quick five-minute mini lesson high school teacher Daniel Vollrath uses to strengthen these skills.

🧵1/5 #EduSky

Optimizing Working Memory in the Classroom Research shows that distractions, confusing material, or an overwhelming amount of information can tax a student’s working memory. Here’s how to better support this essential executive function.

How does working memory function? And how can you better support it for students in your classroom? We've got 5 tips to help. 🧠

#EduSky

Screenshot from a NYT article on encouraging boys to read. #Edusky

Real, Fake, or Deepfake? This Lesson Helps Students Decide Students examine videos and online information to investigate what is real and what is not in this engaging lesson.

Here’s a way to help middle school students investigate the information around them! 🕵️

In this 60-minute lesson, students evaluate a few websites and short videos—learning strategies to identify misinformation and use evidence to defend their thinking.

#MiddleSchoolTeacher #MediaLiteracy #EduSky

Today in 8th Grade Computer apps we're going to be "Privacy Policy Detectives" as we explore the changes in TikTok's privacy policy.... https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TRgPzMgeQkdV8iH1BAB5n7myOF8vDnMfn8f1y3wCuyQ/edit?usp=sharing&utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=Vicki%20Davis

5 Models Teachers Can Use for Asking Higher Level Questions More and better questioning allows students to work at higher levels of rigor. Barbara Blackburn shares five options teachers can use to improve what they ask.

5 WAYS TO ASK HIGHER LEVEL QUESTIONS

Teaching coach & author Barbara Blackburn says higher level questioning adds rigor & can help all students reach the learning summit. #edusky #educoach #teachersky @barbararblackburn.bsky.social @routledgebooks.bsky.social

www.middleweb.com/53033/five-m...

Helping Middle and High School Students Cultivate Habits That Support Learning Through explicit instruction, teachers can help students develop the skills necessary to do well in school.

We sometimes ask students to “do better” without ever teaching them how.

This piece explores why explicit instruction in learning habits matters and how level-setting helps students become stakeholders in their own success.

#EduSky #TeacherSky

🔗 www.edutopia.org/article/guid...

Why Students Forget—and What You Can Do About It Our brains are wired to forget, but there are research-backed strategies you can use to make your teaching stick.

To learn more about the research, read our article: edut.to/49LzMdE

12/12

I try to have a personal/unique interaction with every student. I also unleash a terrible dad joke periodically! They should look forward to entering the classroom.

Why Students Don’t Ask for Help – and How to Change That 1. Modeling: Lead by Example 2. Structure: Designing for Engagement 3. Communication: Changing the Narrative Around Help-Seeking Via Teacher Cathleen Beachboard and Edutopia

"I saw students go from silent frustration to actively seeking help. The problem wasn’t their ability. It wasn’t even their motivation. The real barrier? Social norms."

From T @cathleenbeachbd.bsky.social, via @edutopia.org: www.edutopia.org/article/gett...

13 Tips to Quickly Deliver Super Effective Feedback These efficient feedback strategies support student learning without sacrificing a teacher's nights and weekends.

Cut at-home grading time, strengthen instruction, *and* give students the timely feedback they need with these teacher-recommended techniques. 📝

#EduSky

AI Isn’t the Main Problem—It Just Shows Us What That Problem Is Students are chasing points and grades because that’s what the education system prioritizes, but we can guide them to focus on learning.

Students might use AI, @mrrablin.bsky.social says, if they think they can’t succeed without it—so he has tips for building their self-efficacy. 🧰

#EduSky

How to Successfully Institute Student-Led Conferences at Your School A middle school principal on how teachers, students, and families have benefited from an initiative that guides students to take ownership of their learning.

“During the conference, we’ve had parents become emotional and tear up with pride, having never heard their child speak about themselves in this way.” 🧡

Here’s what happened when this school started implementing student-led conferences.

#SchoolLeaders #EduSky

The Ones Left Behind: Building Belonging in a Transient School Community I recently conducted a survey with middle school students at my overseas international school. I was looking for information about student feelings about trusted adults they felt comfortable approa…

Latest blog post about what we can do for the students left behind in a school with a high turnover rate. educationalexploits.com/2025/12/16/t... #edusky

I created a student survey and instead of analysing the data on my own, I did it with the help of the students. So enlightening!