What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? David Valdes Greenwood: The Magic Backpack: 5 Must-Haves for Every Student Parents of school-aged children often receive somewhat Byzantine lists of back-to-school supplies that they must send in with their child: this particular pencil and those particular markers, notebooks designed with the precise number and configuration of pockets, and onward down the page. But for all the functional objects schools might request, the most crucial tools for your child are not physically tangible at all, but rather values that will influence every moment of the school day -- and not only for them. If I could send my daughter to school with just five items, these are the supplies that would fill her backpack. Stereotype Erasers Kids don't innately know stereotypes. Community Glue We learned last year that one of the toughest things about elementary school is the triangulation that occurs, the way some children insist on dividing their peers. A Self-Ruler Creativity Highlighters The zeitgeist of elementary school today is centered on standardized test scores. A Hunch Box
Rewarding kids in the 21st century Read Part 1 of this post series: The day “reward” became a bad word Read Part 2 of this post series: Ideas for student rewards and incentives The whole-class behavior management system I used for the last few years I was teaching was something I created called the bead system. It’s a simple premise: kids earn beads which are traded in at the end of the week for additional center time. Bead distribution was fairly random and unexpected: the kids never knew when they’d get one because I didn’t dangle the promise of reward ahead of time with bribes like “If you’re quiet, you’ll get a bead”. To be honest, I wasn’t sure exactly why the system worked so well until this week when I read Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Pink conducted a number of fascinating behavioral studies, including a bunch with children, to see what factors made them want to work hard and try their best. Instead of “if-then” rewards, Pink recommends “now that” rewards.
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Global SchoolNet: Home Fostering Relationships in the Classroom Students and teacher need to develop positive and trusting relationships in an effective classroom. It is also critical that all students, especially English-language learners, develop trusting and enriching relationships with each other. There are many activities which can be used for both introductory purposes and throughout the year to build and maintain positive relationships in the classroom. Some activities which work well to introduce students to each other and to the teacher can be used again at later points in the year as students' interests change and as they gain new life experiences. While this is certainly not an exhaustive list, it contains several suggestions we have found successful and which could easily be adapted for use with different levels of students. 1) Sharing Weekly Reflections 2) Introducing Me/3 Objects This activity is sometimes called a "Me Bag" or an "All About Me Bag." 3) "I Am" Project There are many variations of the "I Am" activity. 6) Four Squares
Visible Thinking Core Routines The core routines are a set of seven or so routines that target different types of thinking from across the modules. These routines are easy to get started with and are commonly found in Visible Thinking teachers' toolkits. Try getting started with with one of these routines. What Makes You Say That? Think Puzzle Explore A routine that sets the stage for deeper inquiry Think Pair Share A routine for active reasoning and explanation Circle of Viewpoints A routine for exploring diverse perspectives I used to Think... See Think Wonder A routine for exploring works of art and other interesting things Compass Points A routine for examining propositions (This will download all Core Routines)
Preventing Classroom Discipline Problems Free Questionnaires: Help: About the Book/Video A handbook, with its own self-improvement exercises, for all the skills needed to implement successful classroom management, and eliminate discipline problems in elementary, middle school, high school and college classrooms - with a training video and DVD both cued to the book for: education workshops, administrators, teachers and education students. The video can be shown at faculty meetings/education workshops, classes, etc., and the DVD (which has the same demo scenes) can be used for independent training (with better random access) at each student or teachers' private computer. The video actually demonstrates both the ineffective and effective teacher with real classroom discipline problems, demonstrated by real teachers cued to the skills for each section of the book. Cartoon by David Sipress The video is unique! Both the book and video are very practical, not theoretical, thoroughly indexed by specific problems, and easy to follow.