This Week... August Monday, Sept. 3: NO SCHOOL-LABOR DAY Tuesday, Sept. 4: K MAP Wednesday, Sept. 5: K MAP Thursday, Sept. 6: Friday,...

Looking to develop your Canva confidence so you can create beautiful handouts, flashcards, and models for your ELA classroom? Great! Find help in this post.

Try these Five Tips to Strengthen Your Classroom Discipline. Here is a list of 5 things you can do right now to tighten up your discipline.

In the first month of school, teachers are usually focused on classroom setup, establishing procedures, launching routines, and digging into the first unit. Although we DO want students to be organized and to feel safe as individuals, we also need them to open up and collaborate as part of a bigger classroom community. Read on for 9 ideas about how to create bonding, shared experiences, and interactions that foster community-building. (By the way, you can check out a similar blog post of ours about community-building here.) The SuperHERO Teacher Teaching kindness and collaboration amongst students is such an important part of a positive classroom community! I love using interactive bulletin boards to encourage students to motivate each other. Recently, I created this nature-themed bulletin board using Polaroid frames with inspiring quotes, twine, and clothes pins. Basically, if students need a bit of motivation, they can take a quote from the board, but they must replace it with a new quote! At the end of the year, students will be exchanging quotes from each other-- making a strong classroom relationship! Here's the link. Addie Williams I work hard to create a collaborative and welcoming classroom community and one way I do this is through writing about kindness. I share a kindness quote with my students as a writing prompt and have them work on it individually before sharing their ideas with a partner and then with a larger group. I ask them to look for similarities in their responses. Demonstrating to my students that I value kindness and community early on in the year will hopefully create a sense of caring throughout the year. Use these free Kindness Quotes to get started! Secondary Sara One of the hurdles to community-building is when students aren't willing to be vulnerable, they try to be perfect, or they compete instead of connect. As much as strengths and growth mindset are important, we teachers also need to help students identify and tackle their weaknesses in an honest way. I like doing this in a humorous way by "curing" student diseases. I joke about students who have "Procrastinitis", and when students own that problem, it becomes a springboard for other areas of concern as well (like upset binders, high test pressure, and silence infections). Get the poster set AND activities to accompany them here. Danielle Hall One of the ways students build our classroom community is by working together to solve problems or puzzles. I use team trivia to start out our class at the beginning of the year, getting students used to collaborating and thinking critically. They develop a healthy sense of teamwork and competition. Here's a free week to get you started. The Classroom Sparrow A simple way to create a positive classroom community is to display work from students around a classroom. It doesn't necessarily have to be an assignment, even a collaborative discussion full of insight from everyone in a class adds positivity and shows that everyone's opinion/view is valued! If you're lacking in work to display, simply begin a class with a simple prompt, motivational quote, or question! Here is a collaborative poem I had students create to begin a poetry unit. Everyone took 10-15 mins to cut out 30-40 words, then I paired students and peers to create a beautiful and colourful example of poetry, which remained on my bulletin boards for the length of the unit! The Daring English Teacher I teach at a very diverse school, and there are 23 different home languages represented in our student body. Bringing together such a diverse group can sometimes be challenging, so I created Classroom Community Bell Ringers to help us all find a common ground. These bell ringers include quotes about love, acceptance, diversity, and tolerance and a brief writing prompt. My students take the first five minutes in class to read the quote and quickly respond to the prompt. Then we share our responses aloud. This exercise has helped forge new connections amongst students who once thought there was no common ground. Stacey Lloyd At the beginning of the year we always spend time thinking about positive and negative behaviors in the classroom: social, emotional and academic. Students come up with their suggestions by walking around the room and anonymously adding their thoughts to various prompts. I then compile these into a list and have students all sign their names on the document - which stays on the wall all year. Any time I find a student acting out or being unkind or unhelpful, I point to their signature and hold them to account. Room 213 We spend a great deal of time during the first few weeks building our classroom climate. I want kids to feel free to discuss their views and to know that it's okay to disagree with someone, as long as they do so respectfully. We develop a class code of conduct, and I put up posters to remind them to be empathetic, kind and understanding of differences. They are a good visual reminder of the things we discussed and the exercises we do during the first few days of school. You can grab them for free here. Presto Plans Building a positive classroom community is an intentional process. One way to do this is by having students complete short challenges that encourage kindness, collaboration, teamwork, expression, and the sharing of ideas and opinions. Start your year or semester by presenting short classroom challenges that can be used as bell-ringers, a class close-up activity, or a fun way to start or end the week. I suggest you set up a bulletin board that allows you to build suspense and reveal one challenge at a time. Make the challenges fun, collaborative, and stress-free. For example, you might consider getting students to write a thank-you card for someone, write a funny top 10 list, play a game of 20 questions, or interview a classmate. We hope you enjoy these ideas! Tell us what you think, or tell us more ideas in the comments!

For the most part, it’s a misnomer. 99.9% of parents love their children. They may have a misguided way of showing it. They may not sign one bit of correspondence from the school. They may be uninvolved, negligent, or worse. They may be preoccupied ... Read more

Looking for some new and unique ideas to help you differentiate your reading instruction? I've got 4 awesome differentation strateigies to try!

Social Emotional Workshop offers practical tools for social emotional learning and counseling.

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I want to discuss seating charts, but first let's start with some definitions. Heterogeneous is to be diverse in character or content while homogeneous is to be the same kind or alike. It is very

Ideas for teaching proportional relationships (7.RP.2) - including activities and common misconceptions to avoid in your math classroom.

Learn the simple, quick strategies cognitive scientists say can boost student learning in any classroom.

You begin the school year with so much hope. But then, not an hour after teaching your classroom management plan, your students are misbehaving. They’re talking when you’re talking. They’re leaving their seats without permission. They’re calling out, giggling, and ignoring your directions. It’s ... Read more

Ideas for meeting the needs of all learners through differentiated instruction. Here are 13 ideas for differentiated reading instruction in elementary...

Every English language arts teacher needs a variety of successful, student led discussion strategies that will provide opportunities for student learning.

9 classroom review games you can use over and over. These are perfect for engaging students in any grade level and any subject.

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Don’t get me wrong — I love candy. And, a jolly rancher, a tootsie roll, or a starburst can work wonders in the classroom for student motivation and enthusiasm. So can pizza parties, and cupcake days, and brunch, and…I’ve had so many types of food parties I can’t even keep track! Recently, however, I’ve been […]

Getting your classroom to manage itself, procedures, models and more. Visit us:

Whether your students are lethargic or super-charged, adding movement to your lesson plans will help to solve both issues. Not only is it healthy to move throughout the day, but it can also help students focus and become more engaged with the content they are trying to master. Due to the nature of English classes, ELA ... Read More about 10 Ways to Add Movement in the ELA Classroom

Explore these 21 things every 21st century teacher should be doing right now in the classroom

Teaching and learning research; trial and error; participation in studies; experience of teaching and observing teachers over the past 25 years.

Teach your students to stop tattling with the 5 B's classroom management system.

An escape room in the classroom is a super fun way to engage your students in any topic. Make one easily with the worksheet you already have!

Stop taking away recess and using other punishments to control your students. Find success with 10 powerful classroom management strategies!

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I share these stories because I suspect you have also had moments you’re not proud of, stories you’ve never told anyone; I want you to know you’re not alone.

Have you ever had a class that just tried your patience day after day? Have you ever felt like you could walk away from teaching forever tom...

10 ideas for planning engaging novel units: creative, engaging lesson ideas for your next whole-class novel unit

One of the biggest reasons difficult students misbehave is because they’re often treated with the expectation that they will. Teachers tend to hover near them. They’re frequently pulled aside for reminders, lectures, and pep-talks. They’re rewarded inexplicably, praised effusively, and spoken to differently than ... Read more

The miracle is in how well it seems to be working in real classrooms, at all grade levels, across the country.

Executed well, student-centered instructional methods can disarm some of the more intimidating parts of academia.

Every teacher needs a few fun, fast, easy, tricks up his/her sleeve. Here are a few easy classroom management tricks I've picked up over the years. Need a Second to Get Ready for the Next

On a normal, middle-of-the-year day, I want my students to come into my room in the morning knowing it is a calm place, a cooperative pla...

Thousands of teachers have used these tried and true GUARANTEED tups to stop students from blurting out. Chatty Class? YOU NEED TO READ THIS!

As a teacher, I am always on the hunt for the perfect tools at the cheapest prices for my ELA classroom. Taking care of our students and keeping our learning

Outlawing the words "I'm done" changed my classroom! Find out how to reform fast finishers and improve the quality of work in your room!

The Unfair Game is a totally unfair twist on Jeopardy that your students will LOVE to hate! Learn how to play and find sample game boards in this post.

32-characteristics-of-high-performing-classrooms Via Dan Kirsch

Why I don't review the syllabus on the first day of class in high school and what I do instead. Fun first day of school activities and icebreakers!

There is a secret to great teaching very few teachers are aware of. Yet, it's so powerful that it can result in massive student growth and improvement.

Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.

I've been blogging about teaching multiplication lately, and have mentioned playing a game called Sparkle as part of our memorization process. Today I thought I would explain how we do this in my classroom. Basically we are skip counting by ones, twos, etc. We call this "Secret Code Sparkle," because we're just cool like that. =) This is a cooperative practice game that requires listening skills. If a student is talking, they will not know the answer. Uh-oh. They learn pretty quickly to pay close attention to what is going on. It also teaches students how to handle the frustration of being out of the game, whether they have made a mistake, or through no fault of their own. (I have students model good and bad ways to respond when they get "sparkled". I have found that third graders also need to learn how to be gracious winners, so we model that, too.) Here are the basic rules: 1. Have your students stand in a large circle around the outside of the classroom. 2. The teacher stands in the middle. 3. NO moving once you have found your spot! 4. The teacher chooses a number from 1 - 10 and points to a random student, saying, for example, "Count by twos to twenty, GO!" (The teacher holds up two fingers while always facing the student who is speaking, in case they forget the factor being used.) Be careful at this point! If they get going really fast, you could get very dizzy! 5. The first student repeats the number, the next student (going clockwise) says the next skip counting number, and so on, until the original number has been multiplied by ten. 6. When the last number is stated, the next student says, "Sparkle!" 7. The student after the sparkle student sits down. They are out of the game. 8. If a student says the wrong number, or takes too long to answer, they must sit down. (Because of Whole Brain Teaching, the entire class says, "It's cool!" when someone makes a mistake - making it much easier for students to handle!) 9. The last student (or students - you decide when to stop) standing get a reward. This can be anything: first choice for centers, an extra minute of recess, first in line to lunch, a reading buddy (stuffed animal) on their desk during quiet reading, a lollipop, etc. Whatever is a reward in your classroom. (I know that many of us have special needs students in our classroom. I have found that my students naturally give more wait time when it's needed, and extra positive feedback for a correct answer, etc. I do allow certain students to "sit out" the game, if they are having a bad day.) There are many variations on this theme: A. Use spelling words every Friday before the test. B. Use vocabulary words, but instead of spelling them, the first student defines the word, and the second must use it in a sentence. (This works best with smaller groups during centers.) C. Use parts of speech. Say, "Give me 5 verbs, GO!", "Give me seven nouns, GO!", etc. We have a lot of fun practicing what we have learned with this game, while learning important listening skills, speaking skills, and social skills. Do you use this game in your classroom? I would love to hear other ways that it is used! Please let me know in the comments. Happy Teaching With Sparkle,

Now that the 2017-2018 school year has come to a close, I am spending some time reflecting on my practice as an educator. While there were some lows of the

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I’ll admit, when I first began using stations the main reason was so I didn’t have to make copies for 200 students. The copy machines at my school were frequently broken, out of toner, and often inaccessible due to high need from other teachers and the lack of regular and predictable planning periods. If I wanted to make copies, I either had to get to school around seven or stay well after the final bell rang. Even then I might not be able to print what I needed for my students because the paper might be locked away to save the district some money. Stations were a perfect solution to my copy machine dilemmas. However, once I began using stations I found many more reasons to keep using them in my seventh grade science classes. Perhaps most importantly, students love stations and are motivated simply because they can be out of their seats and be more in charge of their learning (more on that later). Stations are super easy to differentiate and can be used to meet the needs of all of your students. Also, they are easy to use and quick to set up. If you’ve never heard of stations, ever considered using stations, or if you currently use stations and they aren’t quite as effective as you’d like, keep reading. Students practice identifying variables and writing hypotheses with these Scientific Method Stations. What are stations? Stations are a way for students to practice lesson content while moving around the classroom instead of being seated at desks. (That might sound scary when considering certain classes—believe me, I’ve been there. However, I’ve used stations with even my most rambunctious, out of control classes of 35+ seventh grade students. It can be done successfully.) Stations can be questions or short tasks posted on the perimeter of the room. In my science classes I typically used questions that could be answered with students’ notes, textbooks, knowledge, or skills. I included a variety of question levels—some easy and straightforward and others rigorous and challenging. I have also set up measurement stations with tasks to complete such as finding the volume of an object using the water displacement method or predicting the mass of an object and then using a balance to see how close their predictions were. When I noticed students had a hard time finding information in textbooks, I had stations where students had to find a specific piece of information using glossaries, tables of contents, or indexes. I’ve even cut up a worksheet and posted it around the room as stations. Answering the questions on a worksheet can be tedious, but when that same worksheet is in station form it becomes more engaging and meaningful. When students are up and around the room doing stations they’ll need to record their answers. This can be done on notebook paper that they hand in when they’re finished or in their interactive notebooks. How do I set up stations in my classroom? Start off by writing the questions or tasks you want your students to answer. Use fairly large font so they are easy to read from a distance of several feet. Then print them out and cut them up. If you want, you can laminate them so they are in good condition by the time the last class of students goes through them. I personally did not laminate them, so I always had some rips or pencil marks on the papers by the end of the day. Instead of laminating I just used extra tape to prevent the majority of damage. Once you have your stations printed, cut out, and maybe laminated you can tape them around the room on walls, windows, or tables. Finding space in my classroom was always easy because my room was ginormous. I also had countertops bordering the walls of three-quarters of my classroom. The space you leave between stations obviously depends on how many stations you have, but whenever possible try to leave at least a yard between them. This helps the students stay focused on their task instead of socializing with nearby groups. It also helps the teacher spot misbehavior earlier and sprout fewer gray hairs. When should I use stations? There were two purposes for using stations in my classroom: practice or review. If I was using the stations as a way to reinforce the material we learned, I scheduled them after taking notes and doing a whole class practice. Basically, I wanted my students to have the fundamentals down and the ability to be decently independent before beginning stations. If students needed to review material, I typically used stations as a review activity the day or two before a test. I’ve also had luck using stations before big breaks like Thanksgiving break, winter break, spring break, or summer vacation. Whenever students are especially squirrelly, stations are usually a good choice because students can move around the room and still engage in the material they need to learn and understand instead of wasting learning time. (Stations have kept me sane on more than one occasion before a break.) What behavioral expectations should be established before beginning stations? Before beginning stations, you MUST go over your behavior expectations. Otherwise, the students have a 95% chance of turning feral within three minutes. Here are the station expectations I went over every time we did stations. Students will have no more than three students to a station at any time. If there is already a group at that station, then they must go to another station. Students do not have to go in order. They may skip around to any station as long as they write their answers in the correct location on their own papers. As long as students are on task and working, students may pick the student(s) they want to work with. Students may also work individually. Students will receive only one warning for off task behavior. If they are off task a second time, they will have to complete the assignment individually in their seat using a worksheet form of the stations. Students may only visit the answer sheet twice during the stations. When students finish the stations they need to check all of their answers and return to their seats. How do I monitor behavior during stations, and what do I do about misbehavior? If you aren’t directly supporting a group of students, walk around the room and monitor behavior. Keep an eye and ear out for horseplay. Whenever students misbehave or don’t follow a station expectation give them a warning. If students have a second problem, direct the offending students back to their seats and give them a worksheet form of the stations to complete individually. Remind students they cannot get out of their seats for the remaining station time, otherwise you might find them messing with their friends and wandering around the room “working on the stations.” Depending on whether your stations consist of questions or tasks, your students might not be able to do every station on their worksheet. In that case instruct them to skip the station or complete it individually later on. Biggest advice here: don’t let small misbehaviors get out of hand. Immediately give the warning/consequence and briefly explain to the student what they did wrong and why it’s a problem. Here is an example of how that might sound: “Billybobjoe, you were visiting another group again. When you do this it is distracting to other students and you can’t learn. Because you didn’t follow the station expectations, now you will finish the stations at your desk by yourself on this worksheet.” How can I use stations to meet the needs of all of my students? Stations are excellent for differentiation purposes. Students can choose what works for them. For example, I let my students determine if they wanted to work independently, with a partner, or in a group of three. They also determined the order in which they completed the stations. They could skip around or go in numerical order while working at their own pace. Posting an answer sheet gave my students support by allowing them to check their work or get help with a problem they were struggling with. While my students were working, I was free to meet with a small group of students who needed extra support. Sometimes I determined ahead of time who should be in that day's support group and other times I left it up to the students to come to me for assistance. Consider posting answer sheets (like I did with the Changes in States of Matter Stations) so students can check their work and get assistance if needed. Another way to differentiate is by arranging the stations from easiest to hardest. For the most part, students are pretty good at determining their levels of understanding. Whenever I arranged the stations this way, I explained it to my students and let them choose where they needed to be. Providing the right context and reasoning is important for this. Don’t just say: left is easy, center is medium, and right is hard. Then you’d have a flock of students on the left with no one really benefiting. Explain that the stations on the left side are for students who feel they are having difficulty with the content and need to build up their knowledge and skills first. The stations in the center are a medium level of difficulty for students who feel they have a fairly good understanding of the content and are ready for reinforcement practice. The stations on the right side of the room are for students who feel they understand the material very well and need a challenge. When I explained it this way, my students didn’t feel bad if they were on the left side. As for the right side, many were eager for a challenge and would start by looking at the questions to see if they were ready or needed to go more towards the center. When arranging by level of difficulty, give your students a number of stations to complete. If there are 30 stations, maybe have them choose any 10. Having students complete all of the stations can defeat the purpose of arranging them this way. What do I do when students finish the stations at different times? There are several solutions to this. You can set a timer and have students complete as many stations as they can in 20 minutes. If there are a small number of stations or if the questions/tasks are relatively quick to get through, you can start a five-minute timer after the first five students finish; then announce that everyone needs to be done in less than five minutes. You can have students begin their homework or an individual class assignment at their seats. They can read a book. I’ve tried all of these methods in my class and switched it up depending on the student or lesson needs. What stations do you use in your own classroom? I'm so glad you asked. :) In my Teachers Pay Teachers store you can find many of the stations I have used in my seventh grade science classroom. Currently, these are the stations in my store: Scientific Method Stations: These can be used in a variety of ways. Most often my students used these stations to identify independent and dependent variables and write hypotheses. Changes in States of Matter Stations: These stations give students practice with the key points of melting, freezing, vaporization, condensation, and sublimation. Genetics and Heredity Stations: These stations give students practice with a variety of genetics topics. They are great to see what students know or to review key concepts. Human Body Organ System Stations: Students practice the important characteristics of the skeletal system, circulatory system, respiratory system, muscular system, digestive system, and nervous system. Properties of Matter/Physical Science Review Stations: I use these stations to review physical science concepts before the unit test. They go over atoms, states of matter, changes in states, physical and chemical changes, law of conservation of mass/matter, homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures, elements, and compounds. Measurement in Science Stations: These stations are all about the tools and units used to measure metric length, volume, mass, and density. Density Stations: My students always need extra practice with density before things really sink in. These stations help them understand. Volume Stations: These stations focus on finding the volume of solids and liquids and measuring correctly. Mass and Weight Stations: Students get practice with the difference between mass and weight with these stations. If you haven’t already, try using stations in your classroom. With the correct implementation, they can really benefit your students. Plus, you don’t have to make a bazillion copies ;) Are you a middle school science teacher? You might be interested in my newsletter. Sign up for my newsletter here. Just for signing up you'll receive an exclusive freebie that you can't get anywhere else.

What are the different types of bilingualism in children, and separating the bilingualism Facts from Fiction

Do you struggle to handle defiance in your classroom? Here's how you can build better relationships with your students and end resistance once and for all.