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Tools to ID Feelings and What You Need :) Zones of Regulation at home

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Tools to ID Feelings and What You Need :) Zones of Regulation at home

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4/13, Home Zones of Regulation and Strategies, TK/K/1

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Tools to ID Feelings and What you need :) Zones of Regulation at Home

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Tools to ID Feelings and What you need :) Zones of Regulation at Home

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4/13, Home Zones and Strategies 2nd/3rd Grade

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Getting Started and Getting Stuff Done! Organizational Strategies

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Getting Started and Getting Stuff Done! Organizational Strategies

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for Younger Kids :)

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Feelings and What is the same and what is Different? 

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Feelings and What is the same and what is Different? 

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Feelings and What is the same and what is different?

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Feelings and What is the same and what is different?

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Feelings and what is the same and what is different?

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Feelings and what is the same and what is different?

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Feelings, Actions, and Emotion Scavenger Hunt

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Feelings, Actions, and Emotion Scavenger Hunt

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Feelings, Actions, and Emotion Scavenger Hunt

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Feelings, Actions, and Emotion Scavenger Hunt

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Feelings, Actions, and Emotion Scavenger Hunt

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Feelings, Actions, and Emotion Scavenger Hunt

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Love this article!!!

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Challenging tasks spur the production of myelin, a substance that increases the strength of brain signals. Here are four strategies to incorporate productive struggle into your lessons.

A. Richard Allen / theiSpot

It was a simple experiment, but it changed the way we understand learning. Two groups of 8-year-olds tossed beanbags at a target three feet away. For the next 12 weeks, half of the kids continued to practice with the same target, while the other half practiced with targets at two and four feet away. At the end of the experiment, both groups completed a final test with the original target, three feet away.

Surprisingly, the group that practiced with targets two and four feet away performed significantly better than the group practicing at three feet. Why did the group that never practiced at three feet perform better than the group that always practiced at three feet?

The answer, it turns out, is the increased difficulty created by productive struggle. Sometimes the learning strategies that are most effective for students can feel like the least effective. Productive struggle leads to better learning, and the reason is due to a white substance in students' brains called myelin.

Smart Brains Are Efficient Brains: The Role of Myelin in Learning

We sometimes treat learning like a switch that is turned on or off-either students learn something or they don't. But learning is a spectrum, with surface learning and a lack of skill on one side and deep learning and mastery on the other. To better understand learning, we need to know what happens in students' brains when they move from surface learning to deep learning.

Learning involves three key components of the brain: neurons, synapses, and myelin. Neurons are nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that have "branches" to receive brain signals and a "wire" to send messages to other neurons. Neurons do not touch each other, and the space separating the wire of one neuron from the branches of another is called a synapse. Learning occurs when experiences connect neurons together. This learning leads to thoughts and behaviors when brain signals travel from neuron to neuron.

Imagine a student's brain as a field. Creating learning through new connections among neurons is like clearing a path and making a dirt road in that field. At first, brain signals can travel, but not quickly or efficiently. But repeated practice-guided by feedback to correct errors-tells the brain that this dirt path is not sufficient. The brain responds by paving the road so that signals can travel faster.

Specialized cells called glial cells are the brain's construction workers. Myelin is the brain's pavement. When brain signals repeatedly travel through neurons, glial cells create myelin, a fatty substance that wraps around the wires (called axons) connecting the neurons. Myelin plays the essential role of making brain signals faster and stronger. The more the brain signal is "practiced," the more myelin gets wrapped around the wire. A well-myelinated brain signal travels over 100 times faster than an unmyelinated brain signal.

When students first learn a skill, the connections between neurons are weak-much like a dirt path. Mastery occurs when those neural connections are constructed into freeways by the accumulation of myelin. So how do you help students go from dirt paths to freeways? By creating desirable difficulty through productive struggle.

Four Strategies for Using Productive Struggle to Enhance Learning

Anytime a student learns a skill or concept, myelin is produced, making brain signals faster and stronger. Four strategies for using productive struggle to enhance learning are retrieval, interleaving, spacing, and mindfulness.

Retrieval: Forgetting is surprisingly a vital part of learning-a by-product of the brain's need to prevent overload. Frequent practice tests force the retrieval of memories, telling the brain to make those signals more permanent. A great way to get students to retrieve is asking them to practice answering problems or performing skills before reteaching lessons. Also, fill-in-the-blank or short-answer questions are better than multiple-choice questions for retrieval, since open-ended questions force students to actually recall the information, instead of simply testing their ability to recognize correct answers.

Interleaving: Why did the group of beanbag throwers that practiced from two and four feet away outperform the group that practiced from three feet? Although mixing up practice (interleaving) may appear counterproductive, it significantly improves long-term performance. The productive struggle created from mixed practice tells the brain to construct better roads.

To use interleaving, do not let students completely move on from previous learning. Include a few questions from past lessons on current tests, and set aside a few moments each day to review previous concepts to help students deepen their learning. Whenever possible, ask students to use their long-term memory instead of solely relying on recent material. Students will make more mistakes, but these mistakes are productive because they build better roads in their brains.

Spacing: Distributing practice evenly over time is one of the most helpful techniques for deepening learning. Because the brain can absorb only so much information at a time, students benefit more from frequent, shorter sessions than from longer ones. In fact, spacing saves time. Research shows that students who space out their learning outperform students who try to learn in longer sessions, even if spacing results in less total time on task. You can use the concept of spacing by touching on important concepts multiple times a week in brief, regular sessions.

Mindfulness: Taking a few minutes to breathe and pay attention to the present moment isn't just relaxing-it's also a skill in itself. Research shows that regular mindfulness sessions can stimulate the production of myelin, increasing connectivity within the brain. Several available apps can help you lead your students in mindfulness sessions that can be as short as a few minutes.

Learning is not about turning on a light. Instead, it's about constructing better and faster roads. Smart brains are efficient brains, and that efficiency comes from myelinating brain wires through repeated practice with specific feedback. Although it makes learning feel more difficult, it's a difficulty that pays off in the long run.

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The Neuroscience Behind Productive Struggle

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Challenging tasks spur the production of myelin, a substance that increases the strength of brain signals. Here are four strategies to incorporate productive struggle into your lessons. A. Richard Allen / theiSpot It was a simple experiment, but it changed the way we understand learning.

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My almost-6-year-old marched down the stairs a couple of days ago holding his baby doll. "My baby has coronavirus," he told me. Then he spiked the (luckily rubber) doll like a football. "So I'm gonna do that to him!"

My 4-year-old is upset that his preschool class trips have been canceled (as of now, the school itself is still open, though that's likely to change soon, as all signs suggest it should). "And it's all because of the stupid virus," he moped as he got dressed this morning.

Coronavirus. COVID-19. Social distancing. A week ago these were obscure, unknown terms. Now our social media feeds are littered with them. We are being inundated with information. And then inundated again, because things change hour to hour. And as they do, we readjust our schedules, our daily routines, our expectations, our plans. The atmosphere is one of uncomfortable uncertainty at best, sheer terror at worst, and most of the time somewhere in between.

Articles about how to parent right now - how to talk to our kids and help calm their fears - abound. I've read many. Contributed to some. And now I'm writing my own. Why? Because what I haven't seen yet is a bulleted list, a set of short and sweet and pragmatic tips you could print out and hang on your fridge as a reference. And so that's going to be my contribution. For today. Here goes:

Be the grown-ups. It's on us to start conversations with our kids. Continue to ask them what new things they've heard about the virus, to correct misinformation, and to answer their questions honestly and using short sentences. Kids get bogged down in words.

Point out things that are different. Birthday parties are being canceled. Mommy is working from home. (Maybe) there's no school. People aren't traveling for spring break.

Point out things that are the same. You're still having Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. You're still watching your favorite shows. We still have to brush our teeth.

Play, play, play. Kids work things out with stuffed animals, dolls, action figures, costumes. Let your little ones be mad at the virus, attempt to control it. Maybe Elsa casts a spell so that it freezes in its tracks. Maybe Ryder and the pups go on a rescue mission to help those who are sick. Maybe you mix a COVID-19 cure potion involving food coloring, glitter, and whatever else.

Put your phone away for set periods of time. Our kids sense, and feel uneasy, when we are distracted. Mumbling "Mmmmhmmm" as your child tells a story, while you simultaneously scroll and swipe, is not helpful. Being intentional and clear about your phone use is. "I am going to play with you right now, so I'm putting my phone on the shelf"; and "I am going to take a few minutes to check my phone right now, so I won't be able to play for a bit."

Structure and routines are your friends. Even more than usual, and particularly as daily life looks less and less familiar. The world may feel chaotic and unpredictable, but your home doesn't have to. Consider making a daily schedule and hanging it up for all to see (use pictures if your kids can't read yet).

Validate feelings of anger and disappointment. It stinks that you had to cancel your spring break travel plans. Or your sleepover party. Or your school play. It's OK to cry, hit the couch, even yell for a bit. Spending time at your local park as opposed to Disney World is not, in fact, a "super fun adventure." Your kids are little, not stupid.

Simultaneously, model reframing and looking on the bright side. Maybe there's a lot more family time now that both parents are working from home. Or maybe your child can finally do that epic art project he's been thinking about. Or maybe he can take on a new job or chore, now that the whole family needs to pitch in, and you can emphasize what a "big kid" he's become.

Emphasize agency. Your family is not just sitting around at home passively waiting for forces out of your control to take shape as they will. No! Frame what you are doing, what we all need to do, as a set of actions. Your family is doing its part by helping to stop the virus, exercising agency by washing hands so thoroughly, working together as superheroes spreading health and safety around the world.

Answer questions with factual knowledge. Then stop. If your children have questions about the virus, answer them honestly. Then stop talking. If they have follow-up questions, they'll ask. And then you can answer again.

If your child asks the same question again and again, point that out. "But are we going to get it?" "Wait, are we going to get it?" "Are Grandma and Grandpa going to get it?" If your child continues to ask the same question, or very similar ones, then he or she is likely reassurance-seeking, which is a sign of anxiety. It's okay to acknowledge that: "Sometimes when we are worried, we ask the same question over and over. The worry fools us into thinking that will help, but it actually doesn't."

Then provide helpful, calming strategies. What does help when we're worried is getting into our bodies ("Let's do some jumping jacks!"), or doing some deep breathing ("Smell the cookies as they come out of the oven, now blow on them since they're too hot to eat"). You know what makes worry get even bigger? Worrying about the worry! ("And then worrying about the worrying about the worry!" your child may say, and suddenly you're in a playful interaction and things don't feel quite as bad anymore.)

It's OK to say "I don't know," or "I have to think about it." Our little ones need us to project a calm, clear confidence. This is not synonymous with knowing all of the answers. Pause. Think. Look something up. Ask a parent friend how they might respond.

Move your body. Jump. Dance. Stretch. Family dance party. The mind-body connection is real. When we feel grounded in our bodies, our emotional state often improves as well.

Focus on community, both local and global. Talk out loud about how you are going to check in on your elderly neighbors to make sure they have all they need. Mention that right now everyone in the world is working together to solve this problem. Guess how many people on your street are washing their hands at the exact same time you are. Your family is not alone in handling these challenges; you are part of a greater whole.

Let your little ones play "Baby." One common way that little kids ask for extra comfort and nurturing is by playing baby, either directly ("Let's pretend I'm your baby") or indirectly (e.g., speaking in baby talk). Don't shut this down right away; rather, play along. "Oh, my little sweet baby, yes, let me pick you up and give you snuggles." Don't you kind of wish you could play baby right about now, too?

Expect regressions. When children have to adjust to a completely new routine, or are sensing anxiety around them, their developing brains can't always handle that shift on top of everything else; internal resources get allocated to the new task at hand, and something else goes. Your potty-trained toddler may start having accidents, or your self-assured kindergartner might start showing some clinginess. That's okay, and to be expected.

Take care of yourself. The number one thing children need to stay calm during difficult times is a parent (or caregiver) who stays calm during difficult times. If you are feeling panicked or overwhelmed, do what you can to regulate yourself before attempting to calm your child. If your attempts to soothe your child are out of sync with your worried demeanor and energy, your child will notice, and this will be even more distressing for them. You're better off being honest than faking it: "I am feeling a bit worried myself right now, and so I am going to take a few deep breaths before answering your questions. Do you want to come sit next to me and we'll take them together?"

Reach out for professional support if needed. As always, if you are worried about, or even just confused by, something your child is doing or saying, please don't hesitate to reach out to a child mental health professional for guidance. We are in uncharted territory, and you don't have to go it alone.

Facebook image: TijanaM/Shutterstock

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My almost-6-year-old marched down the stairs a couple of days ago holding his baby doll. "My baby has coronavirus," he told me. Then he spiked the (luckily rubber) doll like a football. "So I'm gonna do that to him!"

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Understanding the "why" behind teaching practices can help parents create meaningful and effective at-home learning opportunities during the pandemic.

Michael Glenwood Gibbs / theiSpot

As millions of students across the K-12 spectrum shift to at-home learning because of the coronavirus threat in the United States, parents are scrambling to understand their new role as surrogate teachers. It will require equal parts patience and tenacity. "This is going to be messy," wrote educational leadership professor Jennifer Weiner in The New York Times, before giving parents and teachers permission to try and fail "and that is OK."

But messy doesn't have to mean inadequate, nor does it have to be a permanent condition. While you've probably seen a sudden glut of online resources offered by nonprofits and educational institutions-including excellent new opportunities such as Mo Willems leading daily drawing activities or Dolly Parton reading bedtime stories -a library of amazing resources alone won't do the trick. Learning is not just about exposing a child to interesting content.

Here are some basic principles, grounded in research and science, that provide an overarching structure to your approach and make the learning more productive and long-lasting-whatever the learning materials in your home.

Establish a 'Flexible Learning' Space

The fluid, open spaces that allow today's office workers to be more productive can also be useful for students, says teacher Kayla Dornfeld. "Flexible classrooms"-learning environments that provide a variety of choices for how and where a student might elect to learn-have become increasingly common in schools throughout the country. When students can tailor their space to their work, the research suggests that they feel more engaged and are more productive, so encourage students to move the furniture and props to fit their learning needs.

You'll want to maintain some structure. Set clear expectations about how and when a space can be used, says California middle school teacher Laura Bradley. Establish a few parameters for what types of work occurs in different spaces, but give students choice. For example, a student may be at a traditional desk for math practice but can transition to a couch or beanbag chair to watch online math instruction. Be crafty: Common household items can be used to change the dynamics of a space. A cardboard box can become a writing fortress, according to one teacher, while a stack of pillows can transform to an art corner. Create a balance between offering structured space and allowing students to choose where they can learn and engage most comfortably.

If you still think it feels a little risky, one comprehensive study showed that "flexibility" accounted for a quarter of the academic benefits attributable to classroom design, making it about as important as light or temperature to effective learning.

Check In Every Morning-And Throughout the Day

Starting school each morning is about more than laying out the academic benchmarks for the day. Decades of research reveals that a sense of belonging, well-being, and connection is a crucial precursor to learning: If your child is upset or lonely, for example, the research suggests that they simply won't be as productive as learners.

You might consider implementing an at-home version of a " greeting at the door," a fun ritual teachers often use at the start of the day, to check in with your child and ask how they're feeling. Continue the practice throughout the day using lightweight 'checks-ins' and vary the question. According to the Institute for Social and Emotional Learning, asking "If you made or used an emoji that best represents your moods right now, what is it?" or "What color or blend of colors best represents how you're feeling today? Why?" can evoke more nuanced responses than "How are you feeling?"

If your school participates in distance learning, make sure your child regularly engages with other peers through the available technology-or consider snail-mail pen pals to keep your student connected to other young learners.

Allow Frequent 'Brain Breaks'

For parents and students, a back-to-back schedule of activities is overwhelming. The good news? Neuroscience supports frequent "brain breaks," and teachers pepper them throughout the day so students can process the information they've learned more effectively. How do brain breaks work? Studies show that brains at rest-also called the 'default mode'-are still busy processing information below the threshold of consciousness, cleaning up what they've learned and moving critical information from short-term memory to long-term storage.

Generally, younger students need more breaks, but students of all ages benefit from them. For young students, research shows brain breaks improve attention span. Breaking lessons into smaller, more manageable chunks helps students focus. Older students need breaks every 20-30 minutes to maintain focus and energy.

Find a Rhythm That Works

When schools announced closings, a plethora of suggested schedules popped up across the internet, but a rigid, static schedule won't serve a student's needs. Best-selling author and researcher Daniel Pink says 15 percent of people are "larks," or morning people, and another 15 percent are "owls," who perform best later in the day. The rest fall somewhere along the continuum between those poles, so think about customizing schedules to the child-a practice called "differentiation" that teachers use to meet the diverse needs of the learners in their classrooms.

Younger students perform best on analytical tasks earlier in the day, according to research cited by Pink, so parents may want to schedule activities like math in the morning. For the teenage brain, a later start and more sleep can mean better memory and retention. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises starting an adolescent's school day no earlier than 8:30am.

Consolidate Learning

One misconception about teaching is that its primary function is to help students retain information, but retention is just the first step. Effective learning requires that students retrieve information frequently and then make new meaning of it. This process, called consolidation, is often reinforced in traditional classrooms through reviews and quizzes, or through multi-sensory practices like drawing, composing a song, or building a model about what has recently been learned.

At home, prioritize opportunities to engage in active learning through discussion, writing, or producing art, over more passive practices such as re-reading or rote note-taking. Learning requires repeated, active manipulation of the materials being learned.

Finally, many studies reveal that teaching what you've learned to someone else-to a parent or to another sibling-is also a highly effective way to consolidate learning and make it stick. It's called the protege effect, and it works because teaching something requires that you master all the nuances of the topic.

Encourage Productive Struggle

Encourage kids to engage in productive struggle by giving them difficult assignments and praising them for their persistence. Research shows that when students solve problems that are challenging, but still within their abilities, they deepen their learning. Allow students to wrestle with problems before intervening.

When work is completed, try to avoid praising your child for "being smart;" the studies show that praising a child for inherent qualities tends to make them risk-averse and discourages trying new or challenging things. You want your kids to continue to push themselves, and praising hard work is more effective for building endurance and tenacity.

Consider Passions and Play

In many parts of the world, schooling at home will continue for at least several months. Help students move beyond a compliance mindset-"I've completed my work, can I go now?"- by building in time for passion projects and fun. You want kids to have intrinsic motivation to keep working hard, so use school at home as an opportunity for deeper learning where kids use their environment to explore different subjects.

Household activities like cooking or organizing offer the opportunity to develop problem-solving skills. New research shows that music, art, drawing, and dance are highly engaging activities that also improve language skills, mental focus, empathy, and creativity.

Finally, in the hustle of academic work, don't forget the importance of play. Not only does it provide a respite for the brain after taxing analytical tasks like math or science, but decades of research shows that exercise can actually alter brain structure in ways that improve memory, attention, mood, and cognitive function. Unstructured play with few rules and lots of room for imagination is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics because it gives kids a space and time to practice social-emotional skills and creative problem-solving.

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7 Guiding Principles for Parents Teaching From Home

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Understanding the "why" behind teaching practices can help parents create meaningful and effective at-home learning opportunities during the pandemic.

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This is the GREAT strategy to calm down big emotions :)

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I like to ride my bike