What Kids Need From Grown-Ups (But Aren't Getting) : NPR Ed Annelise Capossela for NPR Erika Christakis' new book, The Importance of Being Little, is an impassioned plea for educators and parents to put down the worksheets and flash cards, ditch the tired craft projects (yes, you, Thanksgiving Handprint Turkey) and exotic vocabulary lessons, and double-down on one, simple word: Play. That's because, she writes, "the distinction between early education and official school seems to be disappearing." If kindergarten is the new first grade, Christakis argues, preschool is quickly becoming the new kindergarten. And that is "a real threat to our society's future." If the name sounds familiar, that's likely because Christakis made headlines last October, writing an email that stirred angry protests at Yale, where she is a lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center. "Have we lost faith in young people's capacity — in your capacity — to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?"
Say What? 5 Ways to Get Students to Listen Ah, listening, the neglected literacy skill. I know when I was a high school English teacher this was not necessarily a primary focus; I was too busy honing the more measurable literacy skills -- reading, writing, and speaking. But when we think about career and college readiness, listening skills are just as important. This is evidenced by the listening standards found in the Common Core and also the integral role listening plays in collaboration and communication, two of the four Cs of 21st century learning. So how do we help kids become better listeners? Strategy #1: Say it Once Repeating ourselves in the classroom will produce lazy listening in our students. Of course you don't want to leave distracted students in the dust so for those few who forgot to listen, you can advise them to, "ask three, then ask me." Strategy #2: Turn and Talk One way to inspire active listening in your students is to give them a listening task. Strategy #3: Student Hand Signals Motivating Words
Kids explain how banned and challenged books helped them and even saved their lives / Boing Boing By Joan Bertin and Millie Davis Banned Books Week has come and gone but we can be sure of one thing: the coming year will be marked by challenges to the same kinds of books that were controversial this year, and in years past. report this ad Controversies over what books are taught in class or shelved in the school library typically start when an adult—usually a parent or community member—feels that a book selected by teachers and librarians is inappropriate, offensive or objectionable. Most often, the objections relate to sexual scenes, offensive language, or depictions of drug and alcohol use. Ironically, some of the most frequently challenged books are the very books that young readers say are especially important and meaningful to them. To explore the significance of controversial books for young readers, we asked authors of frequently challenged books to share messages they’ve received from their readers. ● This book saved my life. ● This book turned me on to reading.
10 Teacher Organization Hacks to Help You Regain Your Sanity - WeAreTeachers My mother likes to tell the story of how, when I was 3 years old, I announced rather matter-of-factly that I was “born to organize.” Teaching is a hard job, and much of the stress involved is beyond our control. Being organized, however, is one thing that any teacher can do to reduce stress, create a more orderly classroom and ultimately be more effective at helping students learn. Here are my best organizational hacks. 1. Try a “Look Up” Board Have a dedicated bulletin board in the classroom where you post the daily schedule, school calendar, classroom rules, school discipline rubrics and other information that students routinely ask about. 2. Tape off a grid on a section of the white board using electrical tape. 3. Get a binder with section dividers for each hour or course you teach. 4. Every teacher must have this on his or her desk at all times—seriously. 5. 6. Instead of file folders and stacks on the desk to organize papers to grade, use an expandable file folder. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Donald Trump Cuts Library Funding - Institute of Museums and Library Services FundingCut When you introduce yourself as a librarian at a dinner party — as I have been doing for my whole adult life — you usually receive one of two responses: either the dreaded “But wait … aren’t libraries, like … dying? Because of Google?” or the well-intentioned, but gently incorrect “You must love books, huh?” It’s not that librarians don’t typically love books — most of us do! Advertisement - Continue Reading Below All of which makes President Donald Trump’s decision to ax federal funding for libraries especially painful — we are solving huge, pressing problems, Mr. A quick stroll through IMLS’s database of awarded grants — where 93 percent of the admirably efficient agency’s budget went in 2016 — does a great job of demonstrating why libraries are so beloved. Take a look at this map — built by a librarian, naturally — and you will see how the Institute of Museums and Library Services’ grants have benefitted communities all over the country, red state and blue alike.
Breaking the Teacher-Student Conflict Cycle: 5 Steps You Can Take Now - School Leaders Now Devon enters your classroom with his head down and his stride slow. You look at him and say, “Good afternoon, Devon.” He responds by dropping his head even lower and walking faster to his desk. He says nothing. You’re disappointed by his behavior. Devon doesn’t usually greet people, but it’s a skill you’ve been working on with him. How do you respond? Walk away.Ask him softly, “Why don’t you feel like talking to me today?” This situation, like any difficult or less-than-pleasant interaction with students, illustrates the many behavioral choices grown-ups have when responding to students’ problem behaviors. Recognizing the Conflict Cycle If you react to Devon by rolling your eyes and turning your back on him, you simply mirror the same disrespectful behaviors he demonstrated. According to Long and Wood, crisis is the product of a student’s stress that is kept alive by the actions and reactions of others. Addressing the Cycle What Educators Can Do It makes a tremendous difference.
7 Fiction Books That Will Light You On Fire – Personal Growth – Medium Besides reading to feel, most of us read to learn. We want to know what we need to know when we need it, and so we keep pushing the number of books. Higher. We read books recommended by billionaires, books validated by bestseller status and books our idols tell us to read. I didn’t read 365 books last year. “I don’t need more information. “I wish I’d read more books” is a familiar face on our list of end-of-year regrets. Our top regret always comes in different shapes, yet in the same size: “I wish I’d done more stuff.” A lot of smart people tell us to read more. Reading isn’t just learning. What if, instead of reading to know, we read more to do? You know who’s never not motivated to do stuff? Kids. Children don’t read articles like this one. Harry Potter receives his letter at age 10.Spider-Man got bitten at 15.Peter Pan never grows up. Tom Sawyer, The Little Prince, Ali Baba, Oliver Twist, and, of course, Alice In Wonderland. Kids, kids, kids. 1 — The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
30 Techniques to Quiet a Noisy Class One day, in front 36 riotous sophomores, I clutched my chest and dropped to my knees like Sergeant Elias at the end of Platoon. Instantly, dead silence and open mouths replaced classroom chaos. Standing up like nothing had happened, I said, “Thanks for your attention––let’s talk about love poems.” I never used that stunt again. Most teachers use silencing methods, such as flicking the lights; ringing a call bell—see Teacher Tipster’s charming video; raising two fingers; saying “Attention, class”; or using Harry Wong’s Give Me 5––a command for students to: Focus their eyes on the speaker, Be quiet, Be still, Empty their hands, and Listen. There’s also the “three fingers” version, which stands for stop, look, and listen. Below you’ll find a collections of lesser known techniques for all grade levels. How to Quiet Early Elementary Students Novelty—such as the sound of a wind chime or rain stick—captures young students’ attention. Late Elementary and Middle Grade Attention Getters
The Hobbit: How a 10-Year-Old Boy Helped Unleash Tolkien Upon the World Let’s start at the beginning, the place where Tolkien would want us to start if he were writing this article. Where did the idea for The Hobbit come from? According to Tolkien, in a letter written to W. H. At this time, Tolkien had no idea what a hobbit was. Over the next two years, Tolkien worked out the story of The Hobbit, attempting to create a tale that children would want to read. Here’s a great interview with Tolkien that took place back in the 1960s where he describes The Hobbit and its conception (it’s archival so the quality is, you know, iffy): Once the story was complete, he lent a few copies out to his colleagues and friends. By chance, in 1936, Susan Dagnall, a staff member working for publisher George Allen & Unwin, made her way to Oxford and got in touch with Griffiths. Upon reading the manuscript, Dagnall passed it up the chain to her boss, Stanley Unwin, who was, obviously, in charge of what was accepted and rejected for publication at the company. The rest is history.
Cry, Heart, But Never Break: A Remarkable Illustrated Meditation on Loss and Life “Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead,” John Updike wrote, “so why … be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?” Half a millennium earlier, Montaigne posed the same question somewhat differently in his magnificent meditation on death and the art of living: “To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.” Yet mortality continues to petrify us — our own, and perhaps even more so that of our loved ones. And if the adult consciousness is so thoroughly unsettled by the notion of death, despite intellectually recognizing it as a necessary and inevitable part of life, how is the child consciousness to settle into comprehension and comfort? This warmly wistful story begins outside the “small snug house” where four children live with their beloved grandmother. But Death eventually curls his bony hand over the cup to signal that the time has come.
Is there one great phrase to boost student effort and performance? - Assessment Literacy Have you read Daniel Coyle’s book, The Talent Code? It dives into patterns that are common across some of the world’s talent hotbeds. If you liked it, be sure to check out his blog – The Simple Phrase that Increases Effort 40%; it really resonated with my passion for formative assessment strategies. It’s also a phrase that needs to be shared with educators and parents alike. Teacher feedback is at the heart of successful formative assessment. It’s feedback from the student to the teacher as well as from the teacher to the student. In his blog, Daniel shared research by a team of psychologists from various universities that was designed to determine if there was a best practice for providing constructive feedback. “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.” As Daniel points out in his blog: Looking closer, the phrase contains several distinct signals: 1) You are part of this group. 3) I believe you can reach those standards.
Lessons From McGraw Hill: The Eurocentric Influence on History Textbooks and Classrooms Earlier this month, McGraw Hill found itself at the center of some rather embarrassing press after a photo showing a page from one of its high-school world-geography textbooks was disseminated on social media. The page features a seemingly innocuous polychromatic map of the United States, broken up into thousands of counties, as part of a lesson on the country’s immigration patterns: Different colors correspond with various ancestral groups, and the color assigned to each county indicates its largest ethnic representation. The page is scarce on words aside from an introductory summary and three text bubbles explaining specific trends—for example, that Mexico accounts for the largest share of U.S. immigrants today. The recent blunder has to do with one bubble in particular. The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations. McGraw Hill swiftly did its damage control. Related Video