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The lilyPD blog turns research on effective teaching into strategies educators can use tomorrow. Each post pairs a classroom-ready idea — a routine, an activity, a scaffold — with the evidence behind it, trusting teachers to adapt it to their own students. Written by and for practitioners, it treats teaching as a craft worth studying together.
All blog posts (12)
Teaching Takeaway: The Benefits of Elaboration
Teaching Takeaway: The Benefits of Elaboration by Patrick Hussey As a student, I constantly learned by analogy. For example, as an anthropology student, when I was first learning about the concept of cultural relativism, I understood it (and remembered it!) by thinking about fish: A fish that’s only ever known one pond thinks its water […]
Nurturing New Teacher Growth All Year Long with lilyPD
Nurturing New Teacher Growth All Year Long with lilyPD If you’ve ever been a new classroom teacher, you probably remember the mix of excitement and uncertainty that came with those first few weeks. There was the anticipation of decorating your classroom, meeting your students, and putting your ideas into practice… AND also the reality that […]
See It, Name It, Prove It: Making Primary Sources Click for Multilingual Learners
Let’s be honest. Social studies is one of the hardest content areas for Multilingual Learners (MLLs). It is not just the vocabulary, though there is a lot of it. It is everything at once: dense texts, abstract concepts like democracy and citizenship, multiple perspectives to hold in your head, and then on top of all […]
We Asked. Teachers Answered. Here’s What They Say About lilyPD.
When lilyPD launched in March 2026, it launched with a dream of changing the way teachers receive professional development. We wanted it to be research-backed and fun. Practical and engaging. Flexible and immediately applicable to your classroom. We are so thankful for the community that has already gathered here and for the generous, overwhelmingly positive […]
5 Ways to Weave lilyPD into Your School’s PD Ecosystem
5 Ways to Weave lilyPD into Your School’s PD Ecosystem As a school leader, you already know the challenge: professional development time is precious, schedules are packed, and the needs of your teachers vary. Resources that can adapt to different contexts give you something rare: real options for supporting your teachers’ growth. lilyPD: Professional Development […]
Strategy Spotlight: Silent Round Tables
Today’s Strategy Spotlight, Silent Round Tables, comes from our microcourse Civil Discourse in the Classroom, which introduces educators to a research-backed framework for facilitating productive, respectful dialogue in classrooms of all levels. You can enroll in the course here or browse our library of related resources! The Challenge We all want our classrooms to buzz […]
A Reflection on Teaching the American Revolution at 250
Patriotism cannot be taught. What we can do is teach American history with fidelity and trust that, as students examine both the ideals expressed in our founding documents and the ways Americans have struggled to fulfill those ideals, they will develop a deeper appreciation for the nation’s enduring promises—and perhaps an even greater sense of responsibility for preserving and extending them.
If lilyPD Courses Were New York Times Bestsellers…
Every school year, I save a million tasks (house projects, doctor’s appointments, car maintenance, large-scale clean-outs of overloaded closets) and designate them as Problems for My Summer Self. I can’t possibly manage these tasks during the sprint of the school year. But in the summer, I know it will get done. Mostly, this is delusional. […]
Teaching Takeaway: Found Poems for Higher-Order Thinking
Poet Kate Baer has made a game of taking online hate-mail and transforming it into erasure poetry, a type of found poem. In a found poem, a writer takes key words from another text, arranges and rearranges them, and creates a completely new, original work. In her erasure poems, Baer takes something meant to attack […]
3 Ways to Use lilyPD to Super-Charge Your Summer Learning
Let’s be honest: you need a break this summer. A true break. Time to sleep in, read a silly book, and soak up the long, slow evenings. You have had a school year that I bet was both challenging and rewarding. You have earned some rest. But time away can also be clarifying; it helps […]
Stop Rushing Past Artifacts: Why Slowing Down Changes Everything
Engaging with artifacts in the classroom can be used as a tool to move from surface‑level observations to deeper questions and reasoned interpretations, and it can be fun too!
Explore Word Gaps for an Instant Reading Comprehension Boost
A “word gap” is a word or phrase that a student doesn’t know (Beers and Probst, 2015). A word gap might represent a brand new word the student has never seen before or a word they can understand from context but can’t define. The Collect and Explore Word Gaps strategy asks students to bring together the word gaps they find in a text and then explore them. This strategy is about more than simply learning new language, though. Collecting and exploring not only these individual words but the patterns they form can also help readers understand the big ideas of a text.
All blog posts (12)
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