Like any good invention, the Tabor Rotation Framework came out of necessity. A couple of decades ago, I realized that my students needed a better way to learn mathematical concepts. I had almost 40 students in a class, a classroom with no walls, fewer than half of my students on grade level, less than 60 minutes to teach math, and my students would be taking MSPAP (Maryland School Performance Assessment Program). …
Fun isnât always educational and education isnât always fun, but when the two come together – it just doesnât get any better.”    -Tom Jackson
âResearch consistently shows that the more time students spend involved in learning activities, the more they learn. That is, there is a strong positive relationship between the amount of time students are actively engaged in learning activities and their achievement.…
âWe donât stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.â    -George Bernard Shaw
The Texas drought may have dried up our pond, but it offered our two youngest children the opportunity to play in the biggest mud puddle theyâd ever seen.…
âI’ve learned there are three things you don’t discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin.â    -Linus
Out of all of the Peanuts comic strips and television specials, this one is my favorite. As a child I thought that waiting for the Great Pumpkin was much more fun than waiting for Santa Claus.…
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.”    -Colin Powell
Building conceptual understanding for math can be done through almost anything. I’ve witnessed the most powerful understanding of fractions by cooking with my children. When we double or half the recipe it develops fractional understanding at the middle school level.…
âThe doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.â -Flora Whittemore
âMy basic principle is that you donât make decisions because they are easy; you donât make them because they are cheap; you donât make them because theyâre popular; you make them because theyâre right.â…
How can a teacher ensure simultaneous interaction in their classroom? How do you easily and quickly group students? How can one assess the depth of their students’ understanding of a concept? One simple, interactive, and non-threatening way to do this is by using a “Value Line” and a “Folded Spectrum.”…
A friend, knowing how strongly I feel about the power of engaging students in a classroom, sent me a link to a news article. After reading the article, she said it sounded like my kind of classroom. The study, conducted with Canadian college students, compared a lecture format with an interactive format.…
What is the difference between simultaneous and sequential interaction? When I first pose this question to students, I ask them to think about the definition of each word for a couple of minutes. Then I ask them to share with their partner what they thought (Think-Pair-Share).…
“For some reason, when you become a support to others, you become bigger than you are.” -Susan Jeffers, from “Feel the Fear…and Do It Anyway”
This morning was spent filming parts of the new Tabor Rotation DVD Training Series. My cinematographer, Chris Shepherd [http://www.christophershepherd.net/], is amazingly creative and dedicated to making this an incredibly informative AND entertaining film.…
