With spring in bloom, teachers are exploring creative ways to bring joy into their classrooms during a stressful time. They share some ideas that have worked in their classrooms to help make learning fun.

When I was a high school student, nothing pleased me more than sitting down with a blank planner, color-coding my class assignments and creating a detailed to-do list of tasks I could check off as I completed them.

Whether it’s recording a live instrument, working with pre-recorded sounds, sound designing, DJing or remixing, music production is a great way to engage secondary school students in learning.

The Internet Archive is an encyclopedic clearinghouse of all things that can be digitized, including books and textbooks, video clips, audio files, images and newspapers. It’s a nonprofit, free from advertising, with free downloads. It makes an excellent source for classroom materials.

Teaching elementary school students while they are up on their feet gives them the opportunity to allow their bodies and minds to work together.

After a year in which instruction was disrupted by the pandemic, that back-to-basics approach of phonics-based reading instruction may be especially important to help struggling readers take concrete steps toward progress.