Social studies teacher and Big Apple Award fellow Jay Maqsood discusses the merits of concept mapping to help students better retain and synthesize complex information and sets of data points.

As a school counselor, I recommend that classroom teachers do these four things to support students in their social-emotional growth. 


High school teacher Amy Matthusen of East-West School of International Studies in Queens explains how to deepen students' engagement with a play or novel by having them produce a talk show featuring characters from the text.

Strategies such as journaling, reader’s notes and social-emotional prompts can help students make the leap to making inferences from the fiction and non-fiction they read.

As a middle school math teacher, I’ve learned that providing students with spiral reviews — having students revisit concepts throughout the year — created by their peers instills a sense of ownership of the work. It typically makes the problems more relatable to their lives.

In my work as a 10th-grade social studies teacher, I’ve found that fostering student agency — allowing students some choices and control over how their day goes — increases engagement. 
Here are some ways that a classroom teacher can encourage student agency in the classroom.