Explore practical ways to foster humor, mindfulness, resilience, curiosity, and gratitude for a positive classroom that engages students and enhances their learning.
Classroom management may be the hardest part of being a teacher: fraught with power struggles, it often leaves teachers feeling stressed and drained and students feeling mutinous or powerless. Most familiar classroom management practices reflect a dissonance between the rapid pace of change in our culture and the decades-old instruction and management techniques that still form the foundation of our educational system.
According to award-winning author and classroom management expert Jane Bluestein, it's long past time for our strategies to catch up to the kids we're teaching. In Managing 21st Century Classrooms, she * Identifies seven of the most prevalent classroom management misconceptions. * Discusses the tried-but-not-so-true practices that result from them. * Offers positive, research-based alternatives that take into account how students learn today.
This timely, practical publication, which is perfect for novice and veteran teachers alike, also includes a quick-reference chart contrasting ineffective, destructive approaches with effective, proactive strategies.
A collection of engaging 10-minute strategies for teaching content vocabulary across content areas.
Just as all teachers know what it's like to teach students who struggle to set goals, follow rules, stay on task, and stay motivated, all teachers can recognize students who are able to self-regulate. They are the ones who approach challenge with confidence, plan their learning tactics, maintain focus, work well with peers, monitor their progress, seek help when they need it, and adjust their approach for next time. They are the ones who succeed in school. Fortunately, self-regulated learning can be taught–in every content area and at every grade level, from preK through high school. In this resource, Carrie Germeroth and Crystal Day-Hess of Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) present instructional strategies and specific ideas you can implement in your classroom today to put all your students on the path to positive, empowered learning and greater academic success.
Strategies and resources for using technology to teach students 21st century skills.
Teachers deserve to get the feedback and support that are necessary to make learning as powerful as possible–for both their students and themselves. Based on research from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the experiences of nearly 3,000 teachers across the United States, Vicki Phillips and Lynn Olson reveal multiple ways to identify effective teaching and provide teachers with actionable, reliable information they can trust to continuously improve their performance. Teachers and administrators will learn how and why it's critical to (1) measure effective teaching, (2) ensure high-quality data, and (3) invest in improvement. Armed with practical ideas for getting started at both the school and district levels, Phillips and Olson remind us that the best way to evaluate teaching performance is to use a balanced approach that includes multiple measures.
This publication offers clear and positive strategies that empower teachers and administrators to develop effective rules and consequences.
There's never enough time. Sound familiar? This might be the most common lament voiced by school principals today. How can we find time to meet students' and teachers' needs, foster ingenuity and innovation, and apply best practices when so much is demanding our attention right this minute? School leadership expert and former principal William Sterrett comes to the rescue with practical advice on how principals can make the most of their time to achieve real success. Learn how to * Balance district, instructional, school, and community events and responsibilities. * Communicate about the work of the school in timely, innovative ways. * Maximize instructional time by making smart use of transitions and recruiting teachers to build the school schedule. * Cultivate professional growth by running effective, efficient faculty and PLC meetings and promoting collegial learning through peer observations and collaborative partnerships.
In the few short years since tablets were introduced, they have become a popular addition to classrooms across all grade levels and content areas. By putting this device in the hands of students and teachers, we can grab hold of their interest, interact with content on a more personalized level, and monitor real-time learning. But how we use tablets in the classroom needs thoughtful planning to ensure that the technology actually improves the teaching and learning process. Nancy Frey, Doug Fisher, and Alex Gonzalez offer practical advice on how to effectively use tablets as part of the gradual release of responsibility from teacher to student. You’ll learn how to ensure that tablets are integrated into high-quality instruction, including strategies for using tablets for modeling, guided instruction, collaborative learning, independent learning, and formative assessment. Filled with examples of teachers successfully using tablets in their classrooms, this resource will help you maximize the potential of tablet technology to facilitate student understanding.