Learning Adventures with Mrs. Gerlach: Motivational Magic!

SO we all know as teachers that the first couple of weeks is dedicated to working on routines and procedures... Many positive "motivation" factors are considered in my classroom :) My first graders thrive on these little tricks of the trade! This entire post is dedicated to what I like to call my box of "motivational box" (aka some of the many "tools" on my teacher belt!). 1. My Behavior Clip Chart Sorry for the somewhat blurry picture, but this is my behavior clip chart. 2. I originally started "brownie points" a couple years back, but I saw this snazzy visual display on Pinterest... 3. I purchased a $1 spray bottle in the toiletries section of Target and filled it with water. 4. This is a brand new trick that I just started and it is BEYOND genius! 5. This is another original... 6. This is the new update to my old use of "Warm Fuzzies" (still have a deep rooted love my old guidance counselor and his warm fuzzies and cold pricklies)... 7. This idea came from the Kinder Gals... 8.

Kids Math Teacher Beyond Traditional Math | Fostering conceptual understanding with projects and rigorous problem solving. 8 Things to Look for in Today’s Professional Learning Over two years ago, I wrote “8 Things To Look for in Today’s Classroom”, and more recently, Sylvia Duckworth created the above visual that has been shared numerous times. As I am in the process of going deeper into the topic, someone asked me if this is something that we could do in professional development. As someone who is a big believer in creating experiences for educators where they partake in the types of learning that should happen in the classroom, I thought this suggestion made total sense. To be honest with you, professional learning in many cases needs an overhaul. Below, I am going to offer some of my own thoughts, not solutions, to different ways that professional learning can happen in schools and districts. So where I thought I would start is taking each one of the elements shared in the “8 Things”, and try to share an idea that focuses on one of the elements specifically, but obviously, each idea can have multiple elements. Voice Choice Reflection Problem-Finders/Solvers

Marilyn Burns Math Blog | Marilyn's current thinking about math education and her ongoing classroom experiences and learning. A friend and I were talking recently about how much work we put into planning lessons. Even after all these years of teaching, I have to think through lessons as carefully as possible, both about the logistics and about the mathematical thinking I want to keep in mind and support. Here’s an example. Read more » The card game Oh No! Read more » This blog post resulted from an email exchange I had with Jill Downing, a Title 1 Educator with the Helena Public Schools in Montana.

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