How you arrange your seating can be an asset for differentiating instruction. Summit Preparatory Charter High School in Redwood City, California, uses different seating configurations for independent work, collaborative work, mini lessons, and large-group discussions.

Through scaffolded guidance from their teachers—which includes a personalized learning platform, daily goals, and a culture of formative assessment—students understand how they learn best and what resources they need, enabling them to choose and set up the seating arrangement that works best for them each day.

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My job as a makerspace teacher is to create learning experiences that apply what my awesome third-grade students are learning in other classes and help them develop collaboration skills and unleash their creativity. I recently had them create cardboard armor, a learning experience designed to meet the students’ needs to work more thoughtfully and to learn to listen to the ideas of others.

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In the first part of a new series on authenticity, our regular contributor and Unlock author Lewis Lansford asks teachers to consider the advantages of using authentic materials in the ELT classroom.

I asked a dozen teaching colleagues (identified below by their initials) for reflections on the advantages and disadvantages of using authentic materials in the classroom.

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