Lindsey Hampton
During her 20+years as an educator, Lindsey served various grade levels and subject areas. For 8 years she led inclusive classrooms and taught advanced placement courses. Following her classroom years, Lindsey spent 10 years as an instructional coach, professional development specialist, and district administrator of new teacher induction. She has presented at numerous conferences, including the Florida Association of School Administrator Conference, the Tennessee Principals Association Conference, and the Kentucky Association of School Administrators. Today, she works directly with teachers and school leaders in the implementation of the Learning-Focused Instructional Framework.
For the last two years, I have had the privilege to work with the Hiwassee Dam Elementary and Middle School teachers in Cherokee County, NC. In October, during a coaching conversation, a middle school teacher told me she intended to incorporate more writing in her 8th-grade math class. At that time, her students had already…
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Have you ever considered how you approach travel planning may be the same as how you approach curriculum planning? I love traveling, but I must sheepishly admit I think I like planning for it even more. Over the years, I have planned trips with a myriad of people, and I have noticed three distinctive types…
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For Instructional Improvement, Address the Knowing-Doing Gap Represented In Instructional Continuums
If learning can be thought of as a continuum or an ongoing journey to improve, adapt, and grow, then so must instruction. After all, instructional improvement, or effective instruction, is largely an outcome of a teacher’s understanding and use of specific strategies, skills, and structures – each ranging in its use and effectiveness. It is…
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How many unknown vocabulary words in a text can a student skip over before comprehension is affected? Read this altered text and try to construct its meaning: The fribble has a large head with two eyes that can see very well. They are able to see fish and objects that others might miss. Shucky arms…
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While some schools have already said, “See you next year!” to their students, many others are still in the midst of preparing for this bittersweet moment. But regardless of where you are now, whether it’s in your last few days or weeks, or you have already begun cleaning your classroom, the end of the year…
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Why are some students reluctant to learn? Experienced teachers will tell you that there are many reasons why a student may be less than enthusiastic about learning, such as hunger, a lack of support at home, feeling emotionally distressed or worried, or a lack of self-confidence. In fact, this last reason can be one of…
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Technology has often been seen as a catalyst that would revolutionize education. But whether that technology was papyrus and ink, slate and chalk, the Socratic Method, or a Chromebook, what has remained a constant, proven repeatedly by research, is that technology is only a means to an end and that in itself, does not lead…
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In his book, Mind Rules, John Medina describes key principles on how the brain works. One of these principles is “Stressed brains do not learn the same way as non-stressed brains.” Emotional instability can lead to chronic stress and chronic stress affects concentration, language processing, problem-solving, and memory (Medina, 2008). More specifically, children who are…
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There are many challenges that face students whose native language is other than English and whose background experiences may have occurred in a different culture and geography. Early experiences may have been rich or chaotic, but regardless, both make up the life experiences of these students. We know that students build new knowledge on previously…
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A popular viewpoint among educators is that discipline must come before instruction. Because student disruptions create a ripple effect across a classroom, teachers often feel forced to immediately deal with every misbehavior, resulting in a significant loss of instructional time. Teachers report losing as much as 144 minutes of instructional time on average to classroom…
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