In these activities, students utilize play to refine and clarify vocabulary without feeling embarrassed or singled out in the classroom. Suggested methods include creating non-examples to show understanding; using online tools like Wordle or Visual Thesaurus; drawing pictures of unknown words; and using physical movement and a intensity rating scale to determine nuance and meaning.

This article outlines how one educator made a math project culturally relevant to the racial and cultural composition of her classroom which impacted the relevancy of the learning and increased student engagement. The teacher also implemented the practices of Universal Design for Learning such as backward mapping of the lesson and providing student choice for demonstrating their learning.

In this lesson, students learn basic and complex directional skills to navigate nature and the greater biosphere.

In this activity, students will be divided into different roles--bracket makers, seeding committee, or class logo/bracket namers. The activity will span 3 weeks and take about 10 minutes each day, as students debate, support, and choose their picks for the "March Madness" of books, poetry, or short stories (or favorite characters, etc.). Students must discern, defend, and support their picks, offering the opportunity for assessing understanding of the texts.

This website is a online self assessment for students to find out their learning preferences and how they learn best.

Learn how to increase engagement and retention in your classroom. Edutopia's professional development PBL teaching module is designed for either a two- to three-hour class or session or a one- to two-day workshop, and is divided into two parts.Part one, Guided Process, designed to give participants a brief introduction to PBL, answers the questions "What is PBL about?" "Why is PBL important?" and "How does PBL work?" The Guided Process also includes the Teaching About PBL section as well as a PowerPoint presentation (including presenter notes), which can be shown directly from the Web site or can be downloaded for use as a stand-alone slide show.Part two, Group Participation, assigns readings and activities for experiential PBL. Ideally, the tasks will be accomplished using group collaboration and with the use of technology.

This resource explains how to encourage students to make changes by becoming social entrepreneurs.