Why You Should Avoid Sending Students To The Principal. Contrary to what many believe, the role of principal doesn’t include directly influencing behavior in your classroom. It shouldn’t, anyway. Because the more personally involved your principal is, the harder it will be to manage your class. It seems counterintuitive. It seems like the opposite would be the case. But the truth is, if you want exceptional classroom management, if you want to create a peaceful learning environment you look forward to coming to every day, it’s best to handle misbehavior yourself. It’s best to avoid referring students altogether. Here’s why: It weakens your influence. When you refer a student to the principal you’re communicating to that student—as well as to the rest of your class—that you’re not the ultimate authority of your classroom. Thus, you become less relevant in your students’ eyes. It saps your confidence. Relying on your principal to step in and handle what is your responsibility can be devastating to your self-confidence.
It emboldens misbehavior. This chart can change your mindset and unlock new learning opportunities. Digital Pedagogy What do you do when you fail? How do you approach a new problem in life or in the classroom? You may tell yourself that you already have figured out a way to solve a problem or, perhaps, you’re not going to even attempt to solve a problem because you don’t want to fail. What if you could change your mindset and figure out a new way to approach learning and life as a whole? This chart helps lay out the basic idea behind changing your mindset. This chart just seems so powerful. The chart is based on Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck who talks about the power of our mindset as well as our beliefs around challenge.
And perseverance. We always have a choice. Response: Recover From Bad Days by Seeing 'Disasters as Opportunities' - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo. (This is Part One in a multi-part series on this topic) This week's "question-of-the-week" is: What do you do when you're having a bad day in the classroom?
How do you get over feelings of frustration? Who among us doesn't have a bad day now-and-then? This post kicks-off a three-part series responding to this question, so there is plenty of time for readers to continue sending in their suggestions. Before we get to them, though, I'd like to share a few of my own ideas. There's a lot of truth in the old proverb, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. " We obviously have an enormous amount of control about whether it's going to be a good day in our class or not. Putting a lot of effort into developing relationships: By demonstrating interest, respect, and caring, students are more likely going to make an effort to try their best or, at minimum, be less likely to be disruptive.
Modeling student activities: Explaining what I want students to do is not enough -- I have to model it. Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning. If kids can access information from sources other than school, and if school is no longer the only place where information lives, what, then happens to the role of this institution? “Our whole reason for showing up for school has changed, but infrastructure has stayed behind,” said Diana Laufenberg, who taught history at the progressive public school Science Leadership Academy for many years.
Laufenberg provided some insight into how she guided students to find their own learning paths at school, and enumerated some of these ideas at SXSWEdu last week. 1. BE FLEXIBLE. The less educators try to control what kids learn, the more students’ voices will be heard and, eventually, their ability to drive their own learning. But that requires a flexible mindset on the part of the teacher. Laufenberg recalled a group of tenacious students who continued to ask permission to focus their video project on the subject of drugs, despite her repeated objections. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Related. Smithsonian Quests | About. Smithsonian Quests™ inspire students to explore their own ideas and interests online, in school, at home, and across the nation.
The quests connect and reward learners of different ages and in different regions as they learn through discovery and collaboration. Rewards include digital badges that students (and teachers) take with them for life! Register now! The primary goal is to inspire youth to explore their own interests through a series of online activities and related incentive badges. The second goal is to enhance students’ cognitive capabilities by incorporating knowledge and skill-building into the quests.
All quests engage students in exploring a topic of interest either as part of a formal standards-aligned school curriculum or as a student-driven after school activity. Sign-up now! Tips and resources for supporting struggling readers SmartBlogs. The Common Core State Standards Initiative focuses on rigor and raising expectation in classrooms nationwide. It calls for an increase in reading complexity for students of all ages. As principals and teachers work hard to ensure their curricula are standards aligned, are struggling readers at risk of being left behind?
The 10th reading standard says that by the end of the year, students will read and comprehend texts at their respective grade level independently and proficiently. The first question to ask when familiarizing yourself with the standards: “What is grade level when it comes to reading?” This is a question that many special-education teachers and literacy coaches grapple with daily.
The common core website provides guidance on Page 4 of Appendix A, where readers will find a chart with updated information about text complexity by grade band and associate measures. There is a common misconception that in fourth or fifth grade, teachers can stop teaching decoding. Anxious About Tests? Tips to Ease Angst. Big Ideas Teaching Strategies Flickr: ccarlstead As any parent or teacher knows, tests can create crippling anxiety in students–and anxious kids can perform below their true abilities. But new research in cognitive science and psychology is giving us a clearer understanding of the link between stress and performance, and allowing experts to develop specific strategies for helping kids manage their fears. These potential solutions are reasonably simple, inexpensive and, as recent studies show, effective. Some work for a broad range of students, while others target specific groups. Yet they’re unfamiliar to many teachers and parents, who remain unaware that test anxiety can be so easily relieved.
Here, three such approaches: When students feel nervous, their capacity to think clearly and solve problems accurately is reduced, says Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist at the University of Chicago. Apprehension over tests can be especially common among minority and female students. Related. HMH-howtoraiseacuriousreader. A Collection Of “The Best…” Lists On Writing. Graphic organizers.pdf. Take one sheet of paper and really get to know your pupils | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional. A one-page profile is exactly what it says on the tin.
It's one page of information which has three questions. What do others like and admire about you? What is important to you? And what support do you need? We started using one-page profiles at our school four years ago because we had a year 3 class that wasn't gelling well and I wanted to find a way for the children to get to know one another, and to learn more about themselves, too. The pilot worked so well that we soon found ourselves introducing one page profiles across whole year groups and then across the whole school. I want to stress that this is not just another paperwork exercise. I cherish the conversations I can have in the corridor with our children now that I know who loves ballet and who plays cricket. So how do we use the profiles through the school year? Introducing one-page profiles hasn't all been plain sailing. But in late 2010 Ofsted inspectors visited. Plain one page profile Flower design one-page profile.
Response: Celebrating our Students' Good Writing - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo. {*style:<b> <i>(Note: This is the first post in a multi-part series on teaching writing) </i> </b>*} Katie Ciresi asked: This series is a companion to last year's five posts on Helping Our Students Become Better Readers . I'm "kicking off" with guest responses from three educators: Mary Tedrow, Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey. Look for many more in the coming three weeks. Mary Tedrow, NBCT, has taught high school English for 24 years in Winchester, VA. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey are professors in the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University (Fisher is also a classroom teacher at Health Sciences High & Middle College), and have authored books on several topics, including literacy, RtI, and formative assessments.
{*style:<i>Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2007). </i>*} Thanks to Mary, Doug and Nancy for contributing their responses. Please feel free to leave a comment sharing your reactions to this question and the ideas shared here. Why “Googling It” Is Not Enough. Big Ideas Culture Teaching Strategies Thinkstock Has the Internet changed the way students conduct research? Yes, and not always for the better, reports to a study released last week by the Pew Research Center, “How Teens Do Research in the Digital World.” According to a survey of more than 2,000 middle and high school teachers, “research” for today’s students means “Googling,” and as a result, doing research “has shifted from a relatively slow process of intellectual curiosity and discovery to a fast-paced, short-term exercise aimed at locating just enough information to complete an assignment.”
While teachers in the survey acknowledge the benefits of the web for students—great depth and breadth of information, material presented in engaging multimedia formats, and the opportunity to become self-directed and self-reliant researchers—many of them express concern that easily-distracted students with short attention spans are not developing the skills required to do deep, original research. Using digital tools to make a difference SmartBlogs. Quick question: If you wanted to make a difference in the world when you were a kid, how did you do it?
For me, “making a difference” meant setting up a lemonade stand at the end of the driveway and selling Dixie cups full of sweet goodness to raise money that I would send off to the causes that I cared about. And while I really enjoyed the entire process, I didn’t make significant change in the world. There were only so many neighbors willing to buy lemonade! Even as an adult, “making a difference” usually meant delivering food to a homeless shelter or serving meals to the needy on Thanksgiving — and while both of those practices made a difference in the local community, both of those practices had a limited impact on life beyond my town’s boundaries. Things have changed for anyone who wants to make a difference today. Using simple digital tools to raise awareness about causes in a process dubbed “clicktivism,” we can draw attention to the issues that we care about easily. Here are six: Response: Classroom Strategies to Foster a Growth Mindset - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo.
50 Useful Apps For Students With Reading Disabilities. Whether you’re the parent of a child with a reading disability or an educator that works with learning disabled students on a daily basis, you’re undoubtedly always looking for new tools to help these bright young kids meet their potential and work through their disability. While there are numerous technologies out there that can help, perhaps one of the richest is the iPad, which offers dozens of applications designed to meet the needs of learning disabled kids and beginning readers alike. Here, we highlight just a few of the amazing apps out there that can help students with a reading disability improve their skills not only in reading, writing, and spelling, but also get a boost in confidence and learn to see school as a fun, engaging activity, not a struggle. Helpful Tools These tools are useful for both educators and students with reading disabilities alike, aiding in everything from looking up a correct spelling to reading text out loud.
Speak It! Fundamentals Reading Writing Spelling. 7 Ways to Transform Your Classroom. Background: This is a blog post I originally wrote for a presentation on Classroom 2.0 Live! It is based on some ideas sparked in another post, Transformative or just flashy educational tools? , which only had 6 suggestions, but David Warlick inspired the 7th in his comment. The 7 aspects below, were developed when principal Stephen Whiffin and I were conceptualizing some of the important aspects we would be exploring at our new Inquiry Hub school, (more on the school here and here).
We believe that much of what we are doing at the Inquiry Hub can be done in any classroom. Note that in both the blog post and the accompanying slide show, each section includes an inquiry question that educators can persue to extend their own learning. (Give learners choice.) Inquiry based learning is a key tenet of the Inquiry Hub.
Which of these resources will help you develop more inquiry based lessons? (Give learners a voice.) (Give learners an audience.) (Give learners a community to collaborate with.) 7 Steps To Effective Feedback. Cc licensed image shared by flikr user HikingArtist.com Last week, our educoach chat (a twitter chat dedicated to instructional coaching and professional learning) focused on the topic of giving feedback. We shared our own experiences giving and receiving feedback and reacted to articles from the most recent issue of Educational Leadership (September, 2012, Vol. 70, No.1). Feedback is a topic we delved into in depth this summer as part of our book discussion chat on John Hattie’s .
Synthesizing more than 900 educational meta-analyses, researcher John Hattie has found that effective feedback is among the most powerful influences on how people learn. (John Hattie, , Educational Leadership September 2012, Vol. 70, No. 1) Feedback matters. I’ve recently come to embrace the idea that great principals and great teachers have at least three important habits in common. They offer feedback effectively. They show appreciation. Giving feedback is not easy for principals for a variety of reasons. Eight Ways to Use Video With English Language Learners. This blog was co-authored by Katie Hull Sypnieski.
This post is excerpted from their new book, The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide: Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools, and Activities for Teaching English Language Learners of All Levels. "I like the way you use videos with us -- you get us moving, talking, writing and speaking. The problem is you make us think too much. " -- "John," one of our English-Language Learner students We can think of far worse things a student might say to us, and John's comment demonstrates our perspective on using video with English-Language Learners (and, for that matter, with all students) -- research and our experience show that it can be a very effective learning tool, but it has to be used as an active one.
The word "active" comes from the Latin "actus," which means "a doing, a driving. " Here are some strategies for using video with ELLs that reflect those words and avoid the danger of just sitting back and watching the screen. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Response: Teaching Science By "Becoming A Learner" - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo. Technology Integration for Math Engagement » Math Stations and Screencasting on the iPad. Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform : Shots - Health Blog. Rules Rethink. Response: Ways to Include Students in the Formative Assessment Process - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo. Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement.
10 books to help boost young boys' reading. Resources and Downloads for Differentiated Instruction. The Power of the Positive Phone Call Home. Goal: 12 Resources for Giving Constructive Feedback. Free Classroom Guides and Educational Downloads for 2012. The Teacher’s Survival Kit for Lesson Planning! Tips & 1000s of Free Lesson Plans. It’s Not a Pipe: Teaching Kids to Read the Media. Personalization vs Differentiation vs Individualization. Have High Expectations? Provide High Support. Adam Saenz: From Jail to Harvard: Why Teachers Change the World. Coach G's Teaching Tips. Greece Athena Staff Blog. Object(ive) Writing: A Creative Exercise for the Composition Classroom.
Education Update:Quality Feedback:Quality Feedback.