I am ready for a new classroom theme! Any suggestions for a theme that is calming and has more muted colors?
Behavior Management
Students enjoy classrooms with a good management plan. In fact, students desire interesting, engaging teachers who create an effective learning environment. Watch a veteran teacher who has strong management skills. Somehow, management becomes nearly invisible, and the teacher seems relaxed and confident while students appear to be engaged and learning. How do they do this? It doesn’t happen by accident. Experience helps, but one difference is a strong management plan that builds on a foundation of good teacher/student relationships, clear expectations with consequences, and thoughtful organization that empowers instruction. A strong, well-thought-out plan prevents management problems before they arise.
What intervention strategies do you use to handle student behaviors?
Have you found any good strategies that keep your absenteeism rates lower?
We introduced a school wide award that is awarded to the classroom in each grade level with the highest attendance rate each month. When our individual classes have attendance above 95% on a daily basis, we get a postcard with our mascot on it to display outside our classroom door (with the date earned). When our classroom earns 10 of them, we get a visit from the Woot-Woot wagon and each student gets to pick a treat!
How do you choose professional development opportunities that align with your teaching goals and the needs of your students?
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How would you plan a lesson for a standard about comparing and contrasting key points from 2 different mediums for older students?
I have a water table in my kindergarten classroom and my students love to use it during literacy and math times for a variety of letter and number activities. I also let them use it during our play time so they can explore how water moves and changes in different containers of different shapes and sizes. What do you add to your water table to keep it fun and interesting for your students?
What are some of your first day “must have” lessons? How do you introduce your routines and procedures to your students?
What strategies could be used to support an upper elementary student with a learning disability and speech language impairment in constructing grammatically correct sentences. Often, for these students on my caseload, I find that they struggle to apply conventions when writing down their ideas. Run-on sentences (or even just seemingly jumbled words) are frequent!
How would you introduce students to plotting points on a coordinate plane for the first time?
Immerse them in the experience. Using painter's tape(much better than masking tape for removing it cleanly) create a coordinate plane on the floor. Then make a game out of it having them move from the x negative and positive to the negative and positive . Have them go back to their seat and provide them drawing paper and have them draw the plane they moved through. Give them a game piece, or using their fingers and have them do the same thing in 2 dimensions. The next day, have them use that same drawing to label their lines with positive and negative numbers and the x and y. (Using graph paper will help them keep the numbers even spaced. Now using colored pencils have them mark dots/points of coordinates within the plane paying particular attention the the 0,0 or 0,-5 point types.
We are trying out Delta Math this summer … do you have any experiences or insight to share for this resource?
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Does anyone have a good resource for science experiments or simulations that allow students to interact with content and data simultaneously?
How do you ensure that your lesson plans are aligned with both state standards and student needs?
How do you teach telling time to students using an analog clock? I like to use this video: https://youtu.be/jGtBYUQKF4M?si=Zh3Uwufj1A1qbykK It has a catchy tune that helps the students with skip counting by 5's and also teaches the students multiplication as she is counting by 5's. This video has helped my students to remember what each number on the clock stands for.
How do you get 2nd graders interested in writing? I like to use pictures and have students write down what they see. I also like to use story starters.
One of my favorite beginning of the year activities was discussing how we would treat each other in our classroom (and how we would treat others who enter our classroom). Unfortunately I don't have a picture of one of our anchor charts, but I found this one. With 5th graders, I had them write ideas on sticky notes and put this on the poster. How do you help establish non-negotiables in your classroom at the start of the year?
"'I'm gathering evidence of learning.'
That shift in language in how I approach the assessment process opened so many doors for how l assess students and what I pay attention to in order to determine
where a student's at in their learning." --Tyler Rabin, educator
I read this quote recently on Edutopia (I went back to try to find the article but unfortunately, I couldn't find it. My notes weren't thorough enough I suppose!) and it helped me figure out how to frame this for teachers. Students don't need to be afraid of assessments and changing how we speak about them could change their mindset. How do you frame assessments for your students? Any tips on how to change teachers' mindsets around assessments or students'?
