Marco James' Blogger: The 2015 Top Blog Posts of the Year

from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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What a 2015! The Cool Cat Teacher blog celebrated 10 years, has 167 new posts this year with a total of 3,672 blog posts in the archive. Millions have visited this blog and wow, so many things have happened in ten years. This year was another year of learning and leveling up for all of us.

The stats are in and here’s what you liked on my blog this year! Thank you for reading and sharing my blog (and especially for the emails and comments!)

In 2016, I’m going to be giving lots of goodies to my email subscribers. Sign up now. Each time I update my blog, you can have it in your inbox (2-3 times a week usually). I also send special newsletters that will save you time and point you to awesome freebies you can use. Right now when you sign up, you’ll get my free ebook 10 Habits of Bloggers that Win. I also have another bi-monthly social media secrets email list where I’ll help you level up your social media learning if you want to know how I do it ;-). Sign up for either one of them on this page.

Top 10 Blog Posts of 2015 on the Cool Cat Teacher Blog

Want to read the post? Just click the title of the post and you can read and share it!

10. Top 10 Tips for Close Reading Activities

This was a sponsored post I wrote in 2014. Each year, I hand pick several sponsors and dig deep into their work. Here’s a great one that helps with close reading.

9. 6 Reading Comprehension Problems and How to Solve Them

Another sponsored blog post on reading comprehension that has staying power.

8. 6 Ways to Motivate Teachers: Be The Hope

Inspired by the amazing Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) at my school, this post shares unique ways to inspire and motivate teachers who need all the encouragement they can get! I also include cool pictures of some neat things they did at a teacher luncheon.

7. If I’m Such a Great Teacher, Why Do I Want to Quit?

Great teachers sometimes have to answer hard questions, like,

“Can I stay teaching?”

There’s a reason so many teachers are quitting. It is not an easy time to teach, but there has never been a more important time to teach. I’m grateful for the emails from teachers who decided to stay in teaching because of this post. Encouraging broken teachers and helping them heal is why I blog. Here’s to you hurting teachers, we can keep on teaching. Our students need us.

6. 18 Epic Productivity Apps

While Mailbox is going to have to be removed from this list (since Dropbox is cancelling the service), these apps are awesome.

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5. 10 Ways to Flip a Kid and Turn His Day Around

Inspired by a comment made by Kevin Honeycutt on a show where he told his touching childhood story, this blog post talks about the power one person can have in a child’s life. We can flip a kid like we flip a house.

4. Notetaking Skills for 21st Century Students

Sketchnoting and visual notetaking is part of the notetaking lessons we need to teach students. I share the videos and information I use to teach my students how to take notes.

3. What to Do When Someone Hates You

This post just won’t go away. So many people struggle with hate and type it in Google. I’m glad they find some answers here, but it breaks my heart that so many struggle with being hated. It isn’t something I’d wish on anyone. The cutting looks and rolled eyes hurt. I wish I could say I was happy that so many have been helped, but there’s nothing happy about hate. Hating evil is one thing but being hated is not something I’d wish on anyone.

2. 15 Best Google Drive Add-Ons for Education

Google Drive, Google Classroom, and Chromebooks are big, so this post remains popular.

1. How a School Threw Out Their Reading Program and Finally Got Excited About Reading

This post received over eighteen thousand views in the first day and within three days had more than 10,000 likes on Facebook. Teachers want to inspire a love of reading and are tired of programs that kill that joy. Principal Todd Nesloney recorded an amazing show that was a companion to this blog post.

Thank you to all of you who love students and work hard to improve every day. You do so much already. Your time is a treasure. Thank you for using some of it to read my Cool Cat Teacher blog. My students might have named me (can you believe that?) but you keep me going! Keep teaching, you are noble, dear friends — always remember that you are noble as long as you act that way.

The Cool Cat Teacher Blog reached 220 Countries this Year.