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Great before a test

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5 part training series

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April 17, 2018

The goal of this training series is to build the capacity of Washington educators to improve student attitudes and beliefs about math. Specifically, the series will use a train-the-trainer model to support Washington STEM instructional coaches and teacher leaders. Participants will learn how to conduct activities with upper-elementary math teachers that will help them implement strategies and interventions designed to improve students' attitudes about math. Each training session has an accompanying set of materials (agendas, handouts, guides for facilitating interactive activities, and PowerPoint slides) that synthesize research on specific math attitudes; teachers can use the materials to provide customized age- and setting-appropriate instructional support.

Kickoff Meeting

This webinar describes the project and introduces the partnership between REL Northwest and Washington STEM. We give an overview of the content that will be featured in the training sessions and describe how they will be conducted. The audience comprises instructional coaches and teacher leaders participating in the training series.

Webinar recording
Presentation slides
Improving Students' Attitudes and Beliefs About Mathematics

Session 1: Growth Mindset

In this session, REL Northwest defines growth mindset, highlights research on its importance for math outcomes, and offers actionable strategies for instilling a growth mindset for students in math classes.

Session 2: Math Anxiety

In this session, REL Northwest discusses the roots of math anxiety, highlights research on the link between math anxiety and math performance, and provides actionable strategies for decreasing math anxiety.

Webinar recording
Presentation slides
Facilitator's guide
Teacher Guide: Focused Breathing to Reduce Math Anxiety

Session 3: Sense of Belonging

In this session, REL Northwest defines sense of belonging, highlights research on its importance for math outcomes, and offers actionable strategies for promoting a greater sense of belonging for students in math classes.

Webinar recording
Presentation slides
Facilitator's guide
Teacher Guide: Group Membership
A Teacher Guide: Normalizing Belonging Uncertainty

Session 4: Math Self-Efficacy

In this session, REL Northwest defines math self-efficacy, highlights research on the importance of self-efficacy for math outcomes, and provides actionable strategies for increasing students' self-efficacy for math.

Webinar recording
Presentation slides
Facilitator's guide

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educational improvement; excellence in education; educational research; statistics; statistical data; statistical surveys; national center for education evaluation and regional assistance.

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Building Positive Math Attitudes Training Series

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April 17, 2018 The goal of this training series is to build the capacity of Washington educators to improve student attitudes and beliefs about math. Specifically, the series will use a train-the-trainer model to support Washington STEM instructional coaches and teacher leaders.

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3 minutes long

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Two Classroom Strategies to Reduce Students’ Math Anxiety (REL Northwest)

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17 Videos with examples of CRA

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Example from 2nd grade

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Resisting the Urge to Reteach for Mastery document

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Easy to read with examples

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Claims, DOK and Priorities

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2014-2018

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Questions for the path between Tensions and Strategies

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Process used to solve complex issues

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Tips for developing skills

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What's Executive Function—and Why Does it Matter?

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Graphic Organizers-Click on the button below to be redirected to a site with links to various graphic organizers.
Graphic Organizers encourage students to organize their ideas into a logical sequence before they begin to write their first draft. Each graphic organizer serves a particular purpose. Some examples of graphic organizers include main idea and supporting details, cause and effect, compare and contrast, sequence of events, and problem/solution. Many of these graphic organizers require the teacher modeling an example, however once students have become comfortable with a variety of graphic organizers, they can begin to choose the one that best suits their needs.

Split Page Note Taking-Click on the button below to be redirected to a site that contains a detailed PowerPoint presentation on Split Page Note Taking, a Microsoft word template, and an interactive template for Split Page Note Taking.
This strategy promotes students to ask questions about a particular topic and find answers to their questions in the text. Students will complete this activity by folding a blank piece of paper in half; questions will be written on the left hand side and answers will be written on the right hand side. Students should ask questions that identify: who, what, when, where, why, and how and then proceed to look for answers in the text as they read. Split Page Note Taking promotes comprehension of the text.

Progressive Maps-
Progressive Maps essentially track the progress of a unit in the form of illustrations. The map is used to mark the starting and finishing points of a unit while adding illustrations in between to visually organize and represent ongoing learning. When beginning a new unit, students will come up with an illustration to use as a starting point. When new information is learned throughout the unit, students will add illustrations to demonstrate that particular concept until the final concept of the unit is taught.

Plot Chart-
A plot chart can be used in classes when stories or narrative texts are read. Students will be able to complete each step of the plot chart to recreate the sequence of events in the story after the story has been read. Teachers can also read the narrative to students as to further develop their listening skills.
Click on the document below for a Plot Chart template.

Piece O' Pizza-Click on the document below for the Piece O' Pizza Template.
This activity demonstrates how parts of a topic make up a whole. To begin, each student is assigned to read a particular section from the text and are given a cutout of a piece of pizza. The task is to write one important piece of information that they have learned from their assigned reading on the pizza slice. They can decorate their pizza slice with illustrations or diagrams to show their understanding of the text. When students come together as a group, they will share out what they wrote on their slice of pizza and place their pizza slices together to make one whole story or concept.

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Graphic Organizers-Click on the button below to be redirected to a site with links to various graphic organizers.Graphic Organizers encourage students to organize their ideas into a logical sequence before they begin to write their first draft. Each graphic organizer serves a particular purpose.

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Go To Strategies for Supporting EL students

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Go To Strategies for Supporting EL students

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The first part of this doc is info. Scroll to lower part to see specific strategies with teacher and student directions.

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What does it take to help English language learners (ELLs) become successful writers? This section offers a number of ideas and resources from veteran educators and researchers for students of all ages and proficiency levels. For examples of student writing projects, see our Student Voices section.

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What does it take to help English language learners (ELLs) become successful writers? This section offers a number of ideas and resources from veteran educators and researchers for students of all ages and proficiency levels. For examples of student writing projects, see our Student Voices section.

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Using ELD Strategies to Support Content Area Writing

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Edutopia article

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A technique for proactively building the skills and relationships students will need when challenges arise.

Our students come to school with many issues on their minds and in their hearts. As educators, we can help them process their thoughts and feelings so they can better handle their situations and be more present in class.

Restorative circles are a useful practice to do just that. While frequently used to replace punitive forms of discipline, restorative circles are equally important in proactively building the relationships and skills students need to support one another and collectively address the challenges they face.

Restorative circles are most effective when they're an integral part of school culture. After all, you can't "restore" a community that you haven't built or sustained.

7 Steps for Facilitating Meaningful Circles

1. Cocreate a safe, supportive space: Circles work best if teachers invest time up front to build relationships, skills, and practices to draw on throughout the school year-especially if the going gets tough.

Early in the process, teachers and students together explore values-like empathy, patience, kindness, courage, and open-mindedness-that need to be respected for people to be willing to share openly and honestly in circle. They also determine best ways of working together (circle practices). These include honoring the talking piece, which goes around the circle as an invitation to share while everyone else listens (participants may pass if they don't wish to talk). People are encouraged to speak and listen from the heart. And what is shared in circle, stays in circle, though educators should let students know at the outset that we are mandated by law to report when a student threatens to harm themselves or others, or when students divulge abuse.

2. Be prepared: Make sure that you, the facilitator, are well rested, calm, and focused.

To hold the circle space effectively, it's important to be fully present and able to sit with other people's stories and feelings as well as your own. Center yourself. If you're exploring sensitive issues that may require follow up, consider alerting support staff.

3. Plan ahead: Decide together on a topic or theme that sustains students' interest.

Find a relevant opening ceremony to open the circle space, such as a poem, quote, or piece of music. A mindfulness activity can also be used to bring students into the space after a particularly stressful class or noisy hallway experience.

Look for information to ground the conversation, and develop questions and prompts to invite student perspectives into the circle.

Keep in mind that the bigger the circle, the more time you'll need for the talking piece to go around. Think about how things might unfold and be ready to adapt to what comes up.

Make sure to leave time for a closing ceremony, giving students a chance to transition into spaces that may be less conducive to being vulnerable. A closing ceremony can be a commitment to safeguarding the stories shared in circle, or a breathing exercise in which we provide students with prompts and time to put themselves back together again.

4. Invite student experiences into the space: Encourage students to connect with the circle content by sharing stories from their own lives.

Include storytelling rounds by asking students to talk about "a person in your life who..." or "a time when...." Share authentically of yourself. This gives others permission to do the same. Model good listening as the talking piece goes around the circle. Be fully present as others speak. Remind everyone that listening is the key ingredient in circles. True listening can create the kind of welcoming space that encourages even the quietest voices to speak.

5. Acknowledge, paraphrase, summarize, and practice empathy: Listen closely to what students share so that you can build on their experiences.

When the talking piece comes back to you, touch on what you felt, noticed, or heard. If you sense that there's more than surfaced in the first round, send the talking piece around a second or third time, asking students for their connections, reflections, or additions.

If challenging or painful issues come up, model agreed-upon circle practices for students to follow. Listening mindfully and being present with other people's ordeals and hardships can create supportive, healing experiences that strengthen community connections and build empathy.

If needed, let students know you're available to check in with them later in the day or week. You might also have them consider speaking with other supportive adults or students to find solace if they're troubled.

6. Explore what it means to be an effective ally: Beyond creating a supportive listening environment, ask what else, if anything, students need from you and from each other.

Explore how to be better allies in circle so that students know they don't need to face their challenges alone. Invite them to talk about a person in their lives who is a good friend or ally, or a person they'd like to be a better friend or ally. Discuss the qualities these people have (or lack) and how they make us feel. Invite students to talk about a time they've been a good friend or ally themselves, and what gets in the way of being our best selves with one another.

7. Zoom out to promote understanding on the systems level: Explore whether there are larger systemic forces that underlie the challenges students have touched on (such as racism, sexism, or lack of access to resources). Introduce information, stories, and voices that might shed light on how these systems operate. Look for examples of people who took action to interrupt these and other oppressive systems.

Invite students to connect to this information by sharing their thoughts, feelings, and related experiences.

Studying larger, systemic forces in society can help students better understand their situation, and can be a useful starting point for students to become more active themselves. Action and activism can inspire hope, connection, and healing.

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Building Community With Restorative Circles

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A technique for proactively building the skills and relationships students will need when challenges arise.

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Search by topic, grade level or concept.

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Improving Science Education Through Three-Dimensional Learning

Quick Search Next Generation Science Standards

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF SCIENCE LEARNING

Within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there are three distinct and equally important dimensions to learning science. These dimensions are combined to form each standard-or performance expectation-and each dimension works with the other two to help students build a cohesive understanding of science over time.

Crosscutting Concepts help students explore connections across the four domains of science, including Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Engineering Design.

When these concepts, such as "cause and effect", are made explicit for students, they can help students develop a coherent and scientifically-based view of the world around them.

Science and Engineering Practices describe what scientists do to investigate the natural world and what engineers do to design and build systems. The practices better explain and extend what is meant by "inquiry" in science and the range of cognitive, social, and physical practices that it requires. Students engage in practices to build, deepen, and apply their knowledge of core ideas and crosscutting concepts.

Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) are the key ideas in science that have broad importance within or across multiple science or engineering disciplines. These core ideas build on each other as students progress through grade levels and are grouped into the following four domains: Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Engineering.

More about 3D Learning

GET TO KNOW

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are K-12 science content standards. Standards set the expectations for what students should know and be able to do. The NGSS were developed by states to improve science education for all students.

A goal for developing the NGSS was to create a set of research-based, up-to-date K-12 science standards. These standards give local educators the flexibility to design classroom learning experiences that stimulate students' interests in science and prepares them for college, careers, and citizenship.

Get to Know the Standards

IMPLEMENT

The NGSS call for a three-dimensional approach to K-12 science instruction. This represents a significant transition from previous state standards. That's why effective implementation demands a great deal of collaboration and patience among states, districts, schools, teachers, and students.

Thoughtful and coordinated approaches to implementation will enable educators to inspire future generations of scientifically literate students. That is the vision of the NGSS. This website provides a range of high-quality resources that empower educators, administrators, parents, and the general public to help bring this vision to life.

Find Tools and Resources

WHY

Science-and therefore science education-is central to the lives of all Americans.

A high-quality science education means that students will develop an in-depth understanding of content and develop key skills-communication, collaboration, inquiry, problem solving, and flexibility-that will serve them throughout their educational and professional lives.

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Home Page | Next Generation Science Standards

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Improving Science Education Through Three-Dimensional Learning Quick Search Next Generation Science Standards Within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there are three distinct and equally important dimensions to learning science. These dimensions are combined to form each standard-or performance expectation-and each dimension works with the other two to help students build a cohesive understanding of science over time.

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This is gold!

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Multiple videos on the site

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George Lucas Educational Foundation

Build lessons, develop teaching materials, and vary your approach so that all students, regardless of where they are starting from, can learn content effectively, according to their needs.

Sort by:

How math choice boards can enable new elementary teachers to meet the needs of their individual learners while employing mathematical rigor.

Though remote learning during the pandemic has brought many challenges, some students seem to be thriving in the new circumstances. What can we learn from them?

Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each.

Five ways teachers can celebrate and extend the linguistic expertise of young students who speak two or more languages.

Every teacher already has the tools to differentiate in powerful ways for all learners.

Teachers can use artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to generate rich math tasks and differentiate instruction.

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Build lessons, develop teaching materials, and vary your approach so that all students, regardless of where they are starting from, can learn content effectively, according to their needs.

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Differentiating Small Groups

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Station Rotation: Differentiating Instruction to Reach All Students

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Rotation stations allow students to learn in a range of modalities, while making differentiation manageable for one teacher.

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Song by Tom Chapin

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Website w/Curriculum Info

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Our evidence-based curriculum builds emotional resilience through mental fitness

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Process for scheduling a meeting

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Draft, pending board policy updates

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OSPI Menu of Options

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Pg 2 is the best page

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5 Keys to Social Emotional Learning Video

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5 Keys to Social Emotional Learning Video

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5 Keys to Successful Social and Emotional Learning

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Studies show that sustained and well-integrated social and emotional learning (SEL) engages students and improves achievement. Explore classroom practices that make up the most effective SEL programs.

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CASEL program in South Carolina

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Core Competencies

The Collaborative for Social Emotional Learning, known as CASEL, is the leading organization advancing the promotion of integrated academic, social, and emotional learning for all children in preschool through high school. We use CASEL's five core competencies of social emotional learning.

Self-Awareness

Understanding your emotions and thoughts and how they influence your behavior.
Skills include: identifying emotions, self-perception, recognizing strengths, self-confidence, and self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is the belief in your ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplishment of a task.
Self-Management

The ability to regulate your emotions and behaviors in different situations and to set and work toward goals.
Skills include: executive function and self-regulation, stress-management, and self-discipline.
Executive function and self-regulation are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. Our brains need this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.
Responsible Decision Making

The ability to make positive choices and take responsibility for positive and negative outcomes.
Skills include: identifying problems, analyzing situations, solving problems, and reflection.

Social Awareness

The ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others.
Skills include: empathy, appreciating differences, and respect.

Relationship Skills

The ability to establish and maintain healthy and meaningful relationships with others.
Skills include: communicating clearly, listening, cooperation, resisting negative pressure, resolving conflicts, and supporting one another.

The WINGS Way

We take a fun and fresh approach to describe the five core competencies and skills. "I Soar with WINGS!" is the foundation for everything we say, do, and teach - providing a common language that both adults and kids can relate to. Each phrase, a mini-lesson in itself, summarizes one of the core competencies in kid-friendly language and makes it easy to apply the skills to guide behavior, choices, interactions with others, and responses to life's circumstances. We think these are words to live by - at school, at work, and at home! Learn More >

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The Collaborative for Social Emotional Learning, known as CASEL , is the leading organization advancing the promotion of integrated academic, social, and emotional learning for all children in preschool through high school. We use CASEL's five core competencies of social emotional learning. Understanding your emotions and thoughts and how they influence your behavior.

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5-29-19 New Behavior and Discipline Rules

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K-5 ELA

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Standards Based Education / Priority Standards Preschool - 5th Grade

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https://www.fwps.org/cms/lib/WA01919399/Centricity/domain/796/preschool-5th grade/2nd-Grade-Science-Spring-2015-Final-.pdf The priority standards for preschool through fifth grade are listed below, broken down by grade and subject. Click on the blue square to view the corresponding priority standard. All priority standards are in PDF format.

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Aimee shared this with us...

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Discipline 4 - Create Cadence of Accountability

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Discipline 4 - Create Cadence of Accountability

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Great story of improvement

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Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability. People are more likely to commit to their own ideas than to orders from above. When individuals commit to each other, it goes beyond professional job performance to become a personal promise.

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Discipline 3 - Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

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Discipline 3 - Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

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Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. People play differently when they are keeping score. Great teams know at every moment whether or not they are winning. They must know, otherwise, they don't know what they have to do to win the game.

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Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures. While a lag measure tells you if you've achieved the goal, a lead measure tells you if you are likely to achieve the goal. Apply disproportionate energy to the activities that drive your lead measures. This provides the leverage for achieving the lag measures.

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Watch the video! Good stuff!

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Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important. Focus on less in order to accomplish more. Select 1 wildly important goal or WIG, instead of trying to work on a dozen goals all at once.

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Author: Kathy Leeser
October 23, 2014

Goal-setting is a powerful behavior that yields results. We see students as young as four or five years old goal-setting and achieving goals in literacy, math, attendance, behavior, and leadership.

Once a student sets a goal with his or her teacher, the essential question becomes " What will it take to achieve that goal?"

Goal-Setting and Wildly Important Goals® (WIGs®)

One way we can start teaching our students goal-setting is to have them focus on what is wildly important to them. Wildly Important Goals® or WIGs® are the few vital goals that must be accomplished in order for the student to be successful.

When we teach students to set WIGs, we are teaching them that there are a vital few goals that must be accomplished in order to be successful. Another way to think about the "G" in WIG is gap. " In what area is there a gap between where I am now and where I need to be?" That's where a WIG would be created.

A WIG is expressed in a statement that is specific, measurable, and time-bound. For example, "Learn all multiplication facts from the 3's through the 6's by December 15." Having a specific goal helps students see where they need to be and by when.

After a WIG is identified and written, students often don't know where to begin. Breaking a large goal into actionable steps relieves this confusion. We called those actionable steps lead measures.

In the education world, we have formative, interim, and summative assessments. WIG can be compared to summative assessments. They measure performance after the fact. Lead measures are like interim assessments. They help a student assess progress toward the WIG and make course corrections, if necessary.

A potential lead measure for the WIG concerning multiplication facts is "Study my multiplication facts at home for 20 minutes, 5 days a week." This measure would be tracked daily to see if progress is being made.

Goal-Setting and Lead Measures Working Together

Here is a great example of how smaller goals can help students achieve an overall goal or WIG. The goal sheet below comes from a kindergarten teacher in Colorado. If a student's goal is "Read at Level A by the end of Trimester 1," he or she might establish lead measures pertaining to:

Rhyming words

Beginning sounds

Capital or lowercase letters

Letter sounds

Blending sounds

Focusing on these lead measures will help the student stay on track to achieve the overall reading goal and evaluate progress along the way.

Students can sometimes be unsure of how to achieve a long-term goal. When these goals are broken into small steps based on lead measures, it helps them see their progress along the way and ensure success in the long run.

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Goal-Setting: Wildly Important Goals Ensure Student Success

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Author: Kathy Leeser October 23, 2014 Goal-setting is a powerful behavior that yields results. We see students as young as four or five years old goal-setting and achieving goals in literacy, math, attendance, behavior, and leadership. Once a student sets a goal with his or her teacher, the essential question becomes " What will it take to achieve that goal?"

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What We Do

Leader in Me helps educators design lasting solutions to common challenges through the lens of students' strengths and leadership. Leader in Me approaches every goal or initiative with a proven comprehensive model that transforms paradigms, improves behavior, and achieves measurable results. By integrating The 4 Disciplines of Execution® ( 4DX®), educators can use its results-driven formula to address a variety of challenges in the areas of leadership, culture, and academics.

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Leader in Me | Educational & Student Leadership Programs & Curriculum

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Leader in Me boosts development in academics, culture and leadership, with proven teaching methods, classroom techniques, & goal-setting systems that support academic achievement.

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8 Strategies To Improve Executive Functions Of The Brain
by TeachThought Staff

What are the executive functions of the brain, and what can you do as an educator to support their development in students?

That's what the graphic below from understood.org seeks to answer. According to Harvard, "Executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. Just as an air traffic control system at a busy airport safely manages the arrivals and departures of many aircraft on multiple runways, the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses."

Put simply, these are "high order" thinking patterns and skills that allow students to live.

So what can be done to promote their development-and in a way that doesn't require you to turn from teacher to lab-coated neuroscientist? Below are some ideas to get started.
8 Strategies To Improve Executive Functions Of The Brain 1. Impulse Control
What it means: Impulse control helps a student think before acting.

How it looks: Students with weak impulse control might blurt out inappropriate things. They're also more likely to engage in risky behavior.

Strategy to improve: Provide student with a "Wait 5" strategy-counting to five before verbally responding to an input in the classroom, and a "Wait 3" in personal conversations to think before speaking in pairs or groups.
2. Emotional Control
What it means: Emotional control helps students keep their feelings in check.

How it looks: Students with weak emotional control often overreact. They can have trouble dealing with criticism and regrouping when things go wrong.

Strategy to improve: Help students see the relationship between thoughts and feelings. As they are able to control and reframe their thinking, their emotions can benefit in parallel.
3. Flexible Thinking
What it means: Flexible thinking allows students to adjust to the unexpected.

How it looks: Students with "rigid"thinking don't "roll with the punches." They might get frustrated if asked to think about something from a different angle.

Strategy to improve: Create weekly journal prompts that require students to do exactly that-see things from multiple perspectives. A child drops an ice cream cone in front of their friends. A coach screams at a player. A shy student wins an award-describe these situations from the multiple perspectives of different participants.
4. Work Memory
What it means: Working memory helps students keep key information in mind.

How it looks: Students with weak working memory have trouble remembering directions-even if they've taken notes or you've repeated them several times.

Strategy to improve: Use memory games or apps like Fit Brains Trainer or Lumosity, or use memory-based team-building games that require students to remember something as part of a classroom activity-names, colors, favorite things, etc., and then celebrate their success.
5. Self-Monitoring
What it means: Self-monitoring allows students to evaluate how they're doing.

How it looks: Students with weak self-monitoring skills may be surprised by a bad grade or negative feedback.

Strategy to improve: "Stop & look"-periodically call out to the class "Stop and look" so that they can intentionally pause at any given moment and assess what they're doing, how they're feeling, what their engagement level is, and how they are or aren't making progress towards a personal goal.
6. Planning & Prioritizing
What it means: Planning and prioritizing help your child decide on a goal and a plan to meet it.

How it looks: Students with weak planning and prioritizing skills may not know which parts of a project are most important.

Strategy to improve: Have students crate mock projects-video games, music albums, books, businesses, apps, etc.-and then map out how they could accomplish that goal, then pair-share that map to open for feedback from partners in the classroom (which also helps with Emotional Control and Flexible Thinking as well).
7. Task Initiation
What it means: Task initiation helps students take action and get started.

How it looks: Students who have weak task initiation skills may freeze up because they have no idea where to begin.

Strategy to improve: Create daily prompts of various tasks to complete, and have students brainstorm different "starting points," then share out.
8. Organization
What it means: Organization helps your child keep track of things physically and mentally.

How it looks: Students with weak organization skills can lose their train of thought-as well as their cell phone and homework.

Strategy to improve: Organizational apps. Checklists. Planners. Different things work for different students. Experiment, persist, and find what works to help students organize themselves.

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8 Strategies To Improve Executive Functions Of The Brain -

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8 Strategies To Improve Executive Functions Of The Brain by TeachThought Staff What are the executive functions of the brain, and what can you do as an educator to support their development in students? That's what the graphic below from understood.org seeks to answer. According to Harvard, "Executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental ...

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Start with the WHY

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Designing Instruction to Support Executive Function and Retention

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Designing Instruction to Support Executive Function and Retention

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Good for families to know...

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Kids and young adults need extensive practice in strengthening their executive functioning skills. Executive functions are the processes in our brains that help us accomplish all tasks from beginning to end. We use them when we plan our day, organize our materials, begin a chore, focus on important information, use our time wisely, and work through challenges until we accomplish a goal. The specific skills include: planning, organization, time management, task initiation, working memory, self-control, metacognition, attention, flexibility, and perseverance. While all kids could use extra practice with executive functioning skills, the ones who need it the most are often disorganized, struggle to finish assignments, lose items, have difficulty paying attention over periods of time, and give up on tasks that are difficult. These are the kids who could benefit the most from executive functioning skills instruction and practice.

If you're looking for an executive functioning review game you can download and use right away, check out this Executive Functioning Challenge! It can be played as a board game with partners and small groups, or as a whole-class challenge. The game includes over 200 executive functioning cards so you can play again and again!

Simply put, executive functions are often critical to the success of kids and young adults. So, it makes sense to make practicing them fun and engaging! Games are a great way to weave executive functioning practice into your routine. You can choose to play a game on a Friday afternoon, after a big test, or as a class reward.
Here are ten games for practicing executive functioning skills: #1 - BLURT
Skills: self-control, metacognition

How to Play: In this game, the teacher reads a definition of a word and kids have to figure out the word itself. For example, a question might be, "What is a partially dried grape?" When the student answers "raisin", they win that turn. I like to play "around the world" style. All students will sit at desks or chairs around the room. Select two kids to play against each other and have them stand next to one another. Read the card and whoever "blurts" the answer first, wins and gets to move on to the next person. The idea is that only the kids playing can blurt out, and everyone else must have self-control, even if they know the answer. This game can also be played with your own content area questions too, which is great for a review before a test!
#2 - SCRABBLE
Skills: planning, organization

How to Play: In scrabble, kids use random letters to build words and keep score as they go. You can have students play in small groups and even partner kids together who may need extra support with spelling or language. Planning and organization is required because kids need to build off of each others' words as the game progresses. As an extension, have kids look up definitions to the words they create or use the word in a sentence before points are scored.

#3 - PICTIONARY

Skills: flexibility, time management

How to Play: This game has students drawing phrases on paper or a whiteboard that others must guess correctly. Kids need to use time management to best draw their phrase before the time is up. This is such a fun game! I even love taking pictures of some of the drawings that are both hilarious and amazing.

#4 - DISTRACTION
Skills: working memory, attention

How to Play: In this card game, kids work on remembering numbers given to them while encountering distractions, including questions they have to answer. It is a great activity to teach about distractions that can throw us off!
#5 - 5 SECOND RULE
Skills: time management, task initiation

How to Play: Kids must name 3 things that fit a given topic. For example, kids might need to name 3 professional basketball teams or 3 pieces of jewelry. The categories differ greatly so kids have to be on their toes. As an accommodation, I sometimes play as a "10 second rule" to give kids enough time to process the question.
#6 - FREEZE
Skills: self-control, attention

How to Play: Freeze is a game where you play music and allow kids to be silly and dance. Then, at any moment, say "Freeze!" and kids need to stand completely still. It takes a lot of self-control to stop dancing to a song you're into! This can be fun to let kids take the role to freeze the class, too.
#7 - JENGA
Skills: self-control, flexibility, planning

How to Play: In this game, kids pull blocks from a tower carefully. They must plan and be careful so they are not the one who causes the tower to fall over. This is a fun game because everyone likes to see towers get knocked down sometimes!

Skills: perseverance, flexibility

How to Play: Brainteasers are drawings and words that have a special meaning that kids must figure out. For example, when "man" is written on top of "board", it means "man overboard". These type of brainteasers are a great feat in perseverance and flexibility to figure out. They are great for a morning meeting or "do now" when kids walk in the door to start their brains off strong.
#9 - CHESS
Skills: planning, flexibility, working memory

How to Play: Chess requires kids to learn specific rules for different pieces and then use those skills to take out their opponent. This game requires a tremendous amount of planning, flexibility, and working memory to think through your moves ahead of time. It is also a great option when you need a quiet game.

Skills: perseverance, working memory

How to Play: Sudoku is a math puzzle game that allows kids to use critical thinking skills. Each grid has the numbers 1-9. Each row and column must add up to 9 separately, so the numbers need to be arranged correctly. Incorporate this activity for kids to work on in small groups or just for a fun challenge.

I have always loved using games to teach and support critical skills in the classroom, so I put together some games for social emotional learning skills! This set consists of five games focusing on executive functioning skills, social problem solving skills, empathy, social language, and more. You can really maximize learning time in your classroom by making "break time" skill-focused, too!

If you find yourself needing lessons and materials for direct instruction of executive functioning skills, consider this Executive Functioning Bundle. It teaches all ten executive functioning skills, study strategies, and SMART goals with enough materials for the entire year. You really cannot teach or practice EF skills enough!

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Games to Improve Executive Functioning Skills

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Kids and young adults need extensive practice in strengthening their executive functioning skills. Executive functions are the processes in our brains that help us accomplish all tasks from beginning to end. We use them when we plan our day, organize our materials, begin a chore, focus on important

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Executive functions let people plan, organize and complete tasks. Here’s a closer look at the different areas of executive function and the skills they affect.

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What are executive functioning skills? What are examples of executive functions? Learn about different executive skills, and the three areas of executive function.

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with Question Stems

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This page contains the unpacked K-5 Unpacked ELA Standards. You can click the links to download the files.

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Includes videos and rubrics

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Instructional Resources Elem / Grade 3 Performance Tasks

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Auburn School District complies with all federal rules and regulations and does not illegally discriminate on the basis of age; gender; race; color; creed; religion; national origin (including language); sex; sexual orientation including gender expression or identity; honorably discharged veteran or military status; the presence of any sensory, mental, or physical disability; the use of a trained dog guide or service animal; and provides equal access to the Boy Scouts and other designated youth groups.

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TAD checklist for Standards Units

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Checklist for Planning Standards Based Units.pdf

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Habit #1: Be Proactive

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"I Do, We Do, Ya'll Do and You Do" process for learning

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. How would using the, "I do it, We do it, You do it together, You do it alone," model change the way you plan your lessons?

2. How do the post-its hold students accountable and push them to think about their own cognition?

3. Beyond shifting the cognitive load, what are the benefits of structuring lessons in this way?

School Details

Johnston Senior High School
6501 Northwest 62nd Avenue
Johnston IA 50131

Data Provided By:

Teachers

English Language Arts / 10 11 12 / Teacher

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Improving Practice with Sarah Brown Wessling

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National Teacher of the Year explores the instructional model known as gradual release. In this model, the cognitive load shifts to the learners through the lesson. Also known as structuring your lesson with an, I Do, We Do, You Do," format. Sarah shows what this model looks like in her classroom.

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Excellent ways to engage ALL students

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Great resource for differentiating while planning

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Teaching Content and Language Simultaneously

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Teaching Content and Language Simultaneously

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General overview

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Katie McKnight: Content Area Literacy Strategies & CCSS

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Shifting paradigms in the way we think...

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Shifting paradigms in the way we think...

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We need to be open to asking our team for help when we instructionally do not get the results we planned for. Tool— something I need to help my students for this year only. Skill— something I need help with HOW to teach in general. We cannot operate outside of our locus of control. For example— we cannot control kid’s home lives, their parents, etc. We can only control what happens in our school each day and be willing to help ALL students.

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Team meeting non-negotiables

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See Figure 3.1 for Norms created by 4th grade team at White Salmon

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See page 74 for overview. Great clarifying document for our unit plans.

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Teaching is not natural.

The public believes, incorrectly, that classroom instruction is as natural as showing your child how to fish or helping a nephew play Ms. Pac-Man. But those comparisons don't take into account the profoundly specialized discourse of K-12 instruction.

Answering a learner's question with a question, creating a holistic rubric, or (take a deep breath) facilitating a high-level discussion of new content on the Thursday before prom with 35 diverse students (two of whom present ADHD behaviors) while an administrator evaluates you-all of this requires a ridiculous constellation of specialized, unnatural skills.

That alien skill set means that even the most brilliant teachers cannot just wing it. They have to plan.

While the public has no idea how much mental muscle curriculum planning requires, corporations that sell education materials do know. Unfortunately, their support is often in the form of selling a "sure-fire" scripted curriculum that "guarantees" growth (if teachers will just follow directions). There are, however, several reasons why scripted curricula-in-a-box don't work:

What works in one classroom often won't work the next period, so flexibility, intuition, and judgment calls by instructors are needed.

Values and motivations vary by classroom.

Prepackaged curricula undermine teachers' professionalism and agency.

Cultural sensitivity does not come in a package.

All students are not at the same level of development.

Scripted lessons interfere with the all-important teacher-student relationship.

Finally, prepackaged programs are overwhelmingly used with poor minority populations, according to Jonathan Kozol, who argues that this practice is characteristic of a "deeply segregated system in which more experienced instructors teach the children of the privileged." In other words, the rich get quality instruction, and the poor get drill-and-kill worksheets and laminated platitudes. For all these reasons, it is imperative that teachers develop their own unit plans.

Unit Planning

Fortunately, a unit plan can help us master specialized classroom discourse. Don't think of units as just curriculum artifacts. They're also a mapping process that enables teachers to think carefully about research-supported teacher-learner-content interactions that help kids meet standards and grow up to save the world.

Within a unifying theme, a unit guides the sequence and pace of skills and knowledge acquisition described in more granular detail by lesson plans. Its importance should not be underestimated, says education consultant Max Thompson, who identifies bad curriculum design as the cause of widespread achievement gaps. Tangentially, Thompson emphatically states that because it raises achievement and is connected to how people organize their thinking, the "focal point of learning, especially for students impacted by poverty," should be vocabulary.

To assess the quality of an existing unit plan, the four most important questions to ask are:

1. Is the unit aligned with standards, objectives, and guidelines?

2. Is there a balance of teaching strategies, learning strategies, and authentic tasks that engage and meet the needs of diverse learners?

3. Have I sequenced the activities clearly?

4. Do the formative and summative assessments measure the knowledge and skills identified in the objectives?

The next section will help with the necessary, unnatural, invisible, and painstaking process of writing unit plans.

How to Use the Downloadable Unit Plan Document

To help you develop a new unit, overhaul curriculum, or just tweak an existing plan, I created a printable checklist of potential unit elements, broken into eight sequential planning steps:

1. Describe your vision, focus, objectives, and student needs.

2. Identify resources.

3. Develop experiences that meet your objectives.

4. Collect and devise materials.

5. Lock down the specifics of your task.

6. Develop plans, methods, and processes.

7. Create your students' experience.

8. Go!

You may be tempted to save time by skipping steps 1-5 and immediately begin writing your lesson plans, but that will cost you more time and limit the effectiveness of curriculum. Those first five steps will help you map out the learning journey and destination. You're not supposed to do everything on this checklist-think of it as a menu of different formats, features, models, and sequences that you might consider as you develop curriculum.

A universal unit-planning checklist might not support your curriculum development style or suit your grade and content. I hope, however, that the list of possibilities encourages further professional exploration.

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Teaching is not natural. The public believes, incorrectly, that classroom instruction is as natural as showing your child how to fish or helping a nephew play Ms. Pac-Man. But those comparisons don't take into account the profoundly specialized discourse of K-12 instruction.

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Copy this form to collect scores for common formative assessments (CFA) and PLC discourse.

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Insert content and students determine if it is fact or fake.

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Multiple choice requiring student devices

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Watch all students while they are working

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Classkick is used by over 10 million students globally to do all their work - do nows, lessons, guided practice, group work, assessment, and homework. Research shows feedback to students is the #1 driver of learning and that's why teachers love Classkick - they can see all their kids' work and facilitate feedback to support ALL LEARNERS.

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Teachers provide individualized, real-time feedback and grading with an array of tools-directly on the canvas, in the help center or with pointed stickers. Students can even ask their peers for help anonymously.

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Track your students' progress as they work at their own pace. You see what they see.

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Create custom or award preset auto-grading stickers, draw and interact directly on students' canvases, or leave detailed feedback in the Help Center.

Create or customize your own content with an array of tools-or transform an assignment from our library. Lessons that can be open-ended or auto-graded.

Students demonstrate understanding in the ways that work best for them-allowing for freedom of expression through text, drawing and audio.

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Team and individual quizzes

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Kahoot! | Learning games | Make learning awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun to 1+ billion players every year at school, at work, and at home.

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Insert questions into videos

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Video and voice recordings

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We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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Quizizz is now Wayground | Teacher AI and Resources

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Find standards-aligned resources that engage every student. Wayground (formerly Quizizz) helps teachers differentiate instruction with AI and track student progress.

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Login or sign up for free on Socrative - your assessment partner for real-time assessments and instant insights.

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Solution Tree: The Power of PLCs at Work

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Using Common Formative Assessments to Help Teachers Reflect on Their Practice

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As the school year passes the midway point, the pressure builds. From my desk, my curriculum guide scolds me as if I were a student without a hall pass, "Now, where are you going? And, more importantly, where do you need to be?" A calendar taunts me: Standardized tests are mere weeks away. Meanwhile, a few weeks after the holiday break, my middle school students' annual malaise begins to set in.

Where can I turn for help?

To articles like this one, of course-but also to my professional learning community (PLC) of three other middle school teachers. Every Tuesday morning, we brainstorm about ways to work through obstacles together. Sure, we discuss data, assessments, and lesson plans during these meetings, but our fundamental purpose is to support each other in better serving our students.

We didn't start out this way. It took time to develop norms, procedures, and collaborative habits. Here are a few efforts that boosted our work:

Clarifying Our PLC's Goals

As educators, we value the effective use of time, right? For collaboration, buy-in, and trust to take place, PLC meetings must have clear objectives.

During our first meeting of the school year, we jotted down on sticky notes what each of us wanted to accomplish in our weekly meetings. Three main ideas rose to the top and have driven our work together ever since: support for each other, help with pacing an overwhelming curriculum, and detailed plans to implement with our students. Everything we do as a group addresses one or more of these three objectives.

A PLC can complete this activity at any time (not just the start of the year) to help make meetings and collaboration more effective.

Creating a 'Roundtable' Atmosphere

We began by agreeing to a regular schedule for a weekly get-together. We knew supporting one another would require a friendly, open atmosphere for our meetings. The principle lies in creating a trusting, comfortable meeting atmosphere as a foundation for the important work of the group.

Too often, PLCs work it in reverse; they start with data and work toward a collaborative environment. But we felt we needed to create a sharing, collaborative culture before rolling up our metaphorical sleeves.

At the start of each meeting we arrange four student desks in a circle to form, in effect, a roundtable. At each meeting, we go around the circle sharing anything school-related: challenges, discoveries, gripes, successes. Talking about the issues and pressures of teaching-always in a solutions-focused way, of course-is cathartic itself.

Our PLC has also implemented a "Las Vegas" norm for our discussions: "That which is said at the roundtable stays at the roundtable."

Sharing the Work

PLCs must find ways to share the workload, not increase it. Our PLC has committed to a "give one, get three" plan. Each member creates one lesson per month to be implemented with all of our students-meaning that we each get three more plans "free" from the three other teachers.

Of course, we don't create our lessons in a vacuum. We decide together which strategies and standards we want our lessons to address, and we take into account our findings from student assessments.

Action Planning

Effective PLCs must focus on student learning. It's no use becoming bogged down in issues or procedures that are out of our control as classroom teachers.

How do we do make the distinction? Here's one activity: PLC members write down their top five challenges in teaching. (Our foursome narrowed this even further to focus on the challenges of teaching 8th grade language arts at a Title I school.) Then, as a group, we sort the challenges into two categories: things we can affect and things beyond our control. As a PLC, we promise to focus on those things we can positively affect.

To keep ourselves on track, we examine our students' strengths and weaknesses, creating plans that maximize student success. Our collaborative lessons typically are part of an action plan to address standards with which the majority of students are struggling. We update the plan as students make progress and we identify other areas of need.

Selecting Meaningful Data

It's easy to let data bully your PLC. Commit, as a group, to only examine data that is relevant and applicable.

We create or find assessments to measure student progress toward focused learning objectives, and students complete them approximately every four to six weeks.

We have agreed never to give an assessment if we are going to do nothing with the results but record them.

And we make our data as simple as we can, depending on what our goals are. Typically, we use results to sort students into two basic groups: those who have learned the focused concept and those who have not. Then we can look more closely at how best to help those who have not yet mastered a concept and enrich the learning of those who have.

If we allow our instruction to be driven by data, we see learning gains. It's that simple.

(Plus, data from ongoing assessments can offer tangible evidence of our diligent work-always a good motivator!)

As teachers, we cannot remain behind our desks or in our classrooms, isolated and unsupported. It's not good for our students, our teaching, or ourselves.

PLCs give us the opportunity to collaborate and share our expertise, collectively tackling our students' needs. If we use them strategically, they can make a big difference in how we approach our work.

What strategies help your PLC to be effective?

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How to Make the Most of Your Professional Learning Community (Opinion)

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As the school year passes the midway point, the pressure builds. From my desk, my curriculum guide scolds me as if I were a student without a hall pass, "Now, where are you going? And, more importantly, where do you need to be?" A calendar taunts me: Standardized tests are mere weeks away.

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Mike Mattos: How to Get Insanely Clear about Learning Objectives

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Mike Mattos: How to Get Insanely Clear about Learning Objectives

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Mike Mattos on How to get insanely clear about learning outcomes and learning objectives