How To Master Your Time The secret to time management is simple: Jedi time tricks. Imagine you were a Jedi master called Bob (your parents, whilst skilled in the ways of the force weren’t the best at choosing names). The love of your life – Princess Lucia – is trapped in a burning building as you hurry to save her. You might think of Lucia as the embodiment of your dreams, your aspirations – she is your most important thing. Unfortunately, before you can reach her an army of stormtroopers open fire. The incoming stream of lasers demand your attention – if you fail to dodge them, you’re dead. We all know how a hero resolves this dilemma. And so it is with your life. The secret to mastering your time is to systematically focus on importance and suppress urgency. Look at what you spend your day doing. Say no. Schedule your priorities. One final lesson from the Jedi: they’re heroes. Heroes inspire us for many reasons: they make tough decisions, they keep going and they get done what matters.
Solving the Hand Raising Problem Advice from Real Teachers Every Wednesday at 8:30 pm EST, I'll post a call for teacher questions on my Facebook page. I'll review the questions and choose a few to feature on Facebook each day, and you'll be invited to chime in with your advice. When I see a post that receives a large number of responses, I'll compile the best answers to create a helpful blog post. That way your great ideas won't get lost in Facebook land! Today's Question D'Anna asked for advice about how to handle students who raise their hands constantly while she's giving instructions. There were so many great responses to D'Anna's question - 175 in all! Peggy Seals: I have 2 very anxious seventh grade students that used to do this. Thank you to everyone who took time to answer this question. I am so grateful for this question. And Melissa:
Reader Idea | ‘How The New York Times Saved My Class’ Lance Rosenfeld for The New York TimesPrimate pets can require unusual home improvements. Dave Viguers and his wife built an addition and put a big cage in their living room for six capuchins, including Eldon. Our Reader Idea today uses this related 2009 article. Welcome to a week of Great Ideas From Readers. We begin with an idea from an English teacher from New Jersey, Margueya Poupko, whom we met at a Learning Network presentation at the National Council of Teachers of English annual convention in November. We hope this week of lessons inspires you to write in and tell us how you’ve taught with The Times, too. Teacher: Margueya Poupko Institution: Bruriah High School, Elizabeth, N.J. Grade Level of Students: High School Idea: Students express their opinions and learn how to write critical analyses of issues they care about, using human-interest articles from The New York Times as their text. Why We Chose It: Ms. We think that other teachers will appreciate reading about how Ms. What Ms.
Teachers Top 100 Books for Children The following list was compiled from an online survey in 2007. Parents and teachers will find it useful in selecting quality literature for children. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown I Love You Forever by Robert N. Munsch Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo Oh! Classroom Management: The Intervention Two-Step All of us have had major classroom disruptions that try our patience and push our limits. These incidents can threaten our sense of control and generate fear of looking weak to other students. We fear that other students might do the same thing if we don't take a strong stance. Couple these feelings with the possibility of taking the disruption personally, and we have a recipe for disaster. It's important that we divide our response into two parts: Immediate stabilization Intervention to resolve these issues Crisis Management If you go to the emergency room, the goal is not to make you better (unless the required treatment is minor). The same is true in the classroom. Calming down requires time for both the student and teacher to depersonalize the incident. Common wisdom tells us to intervene as fast as possible, that waiting is a bad thing. Do's, Don'ts and 5 Examples Understand that stabilizing is not excusing, letting the student get away with anything or ignoring. Things to avoid:
35 Psychological Tricks To Help You Learn Better - InformED : Learning languages is a workout for brains, both young and old UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Learning a new language changes your brain network both structurally and functionally, according to Penn State researchers. "Learning and practicing something, for instance a second language, strengthens the brain," said Ping Li, professor of psychology, linguistics and information sciences and technology. "Like physical exercise, the more you use specific areas of your brain, the more it grows and gets stronger." Li and colleagues studied 39 native English speakers' brains over a six-week period as half of the participants learned Chinese vocabulary. Of the subjects learning the new vocabulary, those who were more successful in attaining the information showed a more connected brain network than both the less successful participants and those who did not learn the new vocabulary. The researchers also found that the participants who were successful learners had a more connected network than the other participants even before learning took place.
25 Attention-Grabbing Tips for the Classroom Posted 03/13/2014 11:55AM | Last Commented 03/06/2015 8:04PM Whether you're a new or experienced teacher, strategies for getting student attention are an important part of your classroom-management toolkit. In this presentation you’ll find 25 tips for quieting a noisy class. You can view the presentation here: 25 Attention-Grabbing Tips for the Classroom These attention getters were contributed by educators from Edutopia’s community in response to a plea for help from a student teacher. One important point highlighted in the discussion and the guide is that what works for one teacher, might not work for another. Be playful.
Study Finds That Brains With Autism Fail to Trim Synapses as They Develop Photo As a baby’s brain develops, there is an explosion of synapses, the connections that allow neurons to send and receive signals. But during childhood and adolescence, the brain needs to start pruning those synapses, limiting their number so different brain areas can develop specific functions and are not overloaded with stimuli. Now a new study suggests that in children with autism, something in the process goes awry, leaving an oversupply of synapses in at least some parts of the brain. The finding provides clues to how autism develops from childhood on, and may help explain some symptoms like oversensitivity to noise or social experiences, as well as why many people with autism also have epileptic seizures. It could also help scientists in the search for treatments, if they can develop safe therapies to fix the system the brain uses to clear extra synapses. Dr. The findings are the latest in an area of autism research that is drawing increasing interest. Dr.
We think more rationally in a foreign language One of psychology's major contributions has been to document the myriad ways our thinking is sent haywire by a series of biases. Investigations into the ways and means to combat these biases have lagged behind, but that's starting to change. Now a team of researchers at the University of Chicago has reported that people are immune to two key biases when they think in their second, less familiar language. The first half of the investigation involved well-established framing effects. The gamble in each condition is effectively the same, but numerous studies have shown that people are systematically influenced by the way the choice is framed. Boaz Keysar and his team showed that dozens of native English speakers showed the typical framing effect when they completed the task in English, but not when they completed the task in their second, classroom-learned language of Japanese. The second half of the investigation focused on loss aversion. Boaz Keysar,, Sayuri L.
What to Do About ... Students Who Seek Attention Advice from Real Teachers Each Wednesday at 8:30 pm EST, I post a call for teacher questions on my Facebook page. I review the questions and choose a few to feature on Facebook each day, where you're invited to chime in with your advice. When I see a post that receives a large number of responses, I compile the best answers to create a helpful blog post. Doing that means your great advice doesn't get lost in Facebook land! Today's QuestionToday's question comes from Anne, who asks, “I have a second grade student who at this point in the year still interrupts class. He has the need to always be right and be heard constantly. Many of you weighed in with really great answers, and I'm sharing some of the best below. Sonya Callaway Adamson: I have a few students in my class that are always eager to be the first to speak, answer, interrupt. Shimona Moloney: I had a pupil who constantly interrupted my lessons with off topic questions.
Relationship Building Through Culturally Responsive Classroom Management School behavior problems often originate outside of the classroom. For example, asthma is the number one cause of absenteeism. When asthmatics are unable to sleep at night, they miss class or arrive at school so sleep drunk and irritable that disruptive behavior ensues, getting them tossed out of class. Consequently, they fall more behind in classwork, which increases academic struggle. Poverty and race nitro-accelerate the cycle. Don’t blame asthmatic students, their parents, or their teachers. Society pays a high price for these inequities. What can teachers do to reduce these inequities? Take the Cultural Competence Test Our perceptions and values might feel stable, but they’re actually influenced by social forces. “Suppose you are on a boat with your mother, your spouse, and your child. Of the U.S. citizens who answer the question, 60% decide to save their spouse and 40% save their children. Cultural Competence Begins with Relationship-Building Monitor your discourse style.
Dressing Up the Brain: Wearing a Suit Makes You Think Differently Some psychology research in recent years is making an old aphorism look like an incomplete thought: Clothes make the man… Yes? Go on? Clothes, it appears, make the man perceive the world differently. A new study looks specifically at how formal attire changes people's thought processes. “Putting on formal clothes makes us feel powerful, and that changes the basic way we see the world,” says Abraham Rutchick, an author of the study and a professor of psychology at California State University, Northridge. Research on the effects of clothing on cognition remains in its early stages. That said, at work, when some have to wear suits, there are some specific implications when attire flicks on abstract processing. The researchers arrived at their finding after a series of experiments. Does the effect Rutchick, Slepian, and their colleagues found matter just as much for everyday suit-wearers as more sporadic ones?