I’ve always found that getting into the heads of your students is one of the best ways to learn what they bring with them into the classroom. In today’s stressful, standardized testing-based culture, ...

The first thing you need to do to write better online class assignments is to understand what is being asked. Once you get the hang of it, follow the instructions and the proper assignment writing ...

Writing is a valuable educational tool for learning. In the classroom, writing can help students grapple with and understand content more deeply and help students learn disciplinary ways of knowing ...

Constructing an assignment that elicits good writing may be as difficult for teachers as writing the essays is for students, a forthcoming study suggests. Teachers must strike a delicate balance ...

Travis Grandy is a PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Find him on Twitter @travisgrandy or at his website. I work with a lot of instructors who use ...

Effective course design begins with understanding the process of thinking and learning. These processes are commonly termed "metacognition." Metacognition includes a critical awareness of one’s ...

AP and NWP teachers participating in the survey report giving students written assignments ranging from research papers to short responses, journaling, and creative writing. The type and frequency of ...

Substantive writing assignments offer students unique opportunities to get to know the content of your course more deeply, to refine their thinking, and to get to know how to write like a biologist, ...

It is good teaching practice to be clear and transparent about the purpose, task, and criteria for assignments and learning activities. This includes communicating with students about what is and is ...