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Remember, the first 6+/- weeks of school are all about setting up community and student independence i.e. how to "work the room." This is all deeply academic work and will pay off in the long run. 

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Remember, the first 6+/- weeks of school are all about setting up community and student independence i.e. how to "work the room." This is all deeply academic work and will pay off in the long run. 

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Discipline is to teach

Punishment is to shame and control

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Carla Shalaby, a former public school teacher who trains educators at the University of Michigan's School of Education, offers new ways for teachers to think about classroom management. Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by donating ! This episode was reported by Nimah Gobir.

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Want more meaningful classroom management? Here are 8 questions teachers can ask themselves. - MindShift

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Educator Carla Shalaby provides back-to-school strategies for teachers who want to manage their classrooms more effectively.

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The First Six Weeks of School [Responsive Classroom] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The First Six Weeks of School

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Sheri's work on setting up your room. GREAT resource with many examples

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Sheri's work on setting up your room. GREAT resource with many examples

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Every part of the room is constructed together and therefore holds deep meaning for students. When they have investment, they care about it and also know how to engage with it. In my classroom, some of this looked like deciding how we'd take turns talking, then making talking sticks together once students came up with that idea, then learning how to use them. Now the students could manage that independently. I never brought a toy/work/activity out and onto a shelf that I didn't first take time to explain and experience with my class.

Tip: Everything within reach of a child should be open to them. You can't get mad at a kid for using something that appeared to be within reach and for their use. If it's not for them, put it up/away.

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Every Friday a student would bring something to share to teach us about them, their life or interests or family, etc. Sometimes it was something they made/drew in class, photos of family (often), a toy, etc.

Standard alignment: presentations, speaking and listening skills, social studies (various standards). In this example, you can see alignment to writing standards as well, as she was working to add letters to communicate her message and that held meaning for her.

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Learning to Trust by Marilyn Watson

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With framework and student examples

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Oldie but goodie

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Doing Morning Meeting:  Responsive Classroom

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Morning Meeting example with standard alignment possibilities 

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Morning Meeting example with standard alignment possibilities 

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Ways we want our classroom to be examples from Sheri

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Ways we want our classroom to be examples from Sheri

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The Magnificence of Getting in Trouble by Leafgren

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The Magnificence of Getting in Trouble by Leafgren

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Morning meetings at Symonds Elementary are a school-wide practice that originated from the Responsive Classroom model, which is based on the idea that students' social-emotional growth is just as important as their academic growth. Symonds teachers adapt the Responsive Classroom model of a morning meeting to fit their classroom needs, using it to create a classroom culture where students feel safe, supported, and ready to learn.

Four Key Components of Morning Meetings

Every day at Symonds Elementary starts with morning meetings. Teachers use their first 20-25 minutes of class time to check in with their students, develop their social-emotional skills, and prepare them for the learning ahead.

Developed as a part of the Responsive Classroom (RC) model, morning meetings have four key components:

Greeting: Students and teachers greet and welcome each other.

Sharing: Students share something about themselves or their lives, and the rest of their peers listen, then ask follow-up questions or offer comments.

Activity: The group completes an activity that encourages teamwork while re-emphasizing social or academic skills.

Morning message: Students read a short message from their teacher, usually describing what is to come in the day ahead.

According to Responsive Classroom, the goal of these four components, and the meeting as a whole, is to "set the tone for respectful learning, establish a climate of trust, motivate students to feel significant, create empathy and encourage collaboration, and support social, emotional, and academic learning."

"The reason these... techniques are exceedingly effective for us is because they are followed in every classroom every day," Principal Richard Cate says. "All school staff are involved in morning meetings, so that everyone has a similar baseline for the management of their instruction. Kids become used to being listened to and teachers to 'whole body listening' themselves. This forms the foundation of our respectful community and creates a positive school culture."

Laying the Groundwork for Success

1. Adapt It to Your Classroom: While the RC model lays out a clear structure and order to the components of the morning meeting, Symonds teachers adapt the practice to fit what's best for their classrooms. Third-grade teacher Alli Carr found that she needed to change the morning message to fit the needs of her students and her schedule. She now goes over the calendar during the meeting instead, and puts the message on what she calls the Learning Board so that her students and other staff members know what the objectives are for the day.

Fifth-grade teacher Gretchen Hoefer decided to move the sharing section of her meeting to another time in the day, because she had limited time in the first part of the morning before students left for extracurricular activities like music or art. To make it work, she simply moved that component to a time later in the day when she knew that she would have everyone back in the classroom.

Teachers can also adapt on the fly if they see a need, such as choosing an activity that might calm students down if they come in energized, or choosing an energetic activity if there will be a lot of sitting that day in class.

2. Ensure Structure: But while teachers adapt the meeting to fit their needs, maintaining a structure is important. "The order of the meeting is set by me, but I never change it during the year," Carr says. "I think the structure is super important... it also allows the kids to know what is coming."

3. Set Expectations: Teachers hoping to start using morning meetings in their classroom will need to spend some time setting expectations. "You do a lot of modeling at the beginning of the year," Carr says. "Everything from how to greet each other, how to ask questions and how to respond to questions. Sometimes you feel like you are being a stickler on the little things, but in the long run, it really works." And taking the time to teach students those social-emotional skills, she said, ultimately means that teachers "will have more time to teach as the school year moves forward."

Scaling to Encourage Growth

Once the groundwork is laid, students are comfortably and successfully participating in morning meetings, and the classroom community is established, teachers at Symonds often scale the activities or greetings to be more challenging.

"As the kids get older, you can challenge them a bit more with your expectations," Carr says. Instead of a typical greeting such as, "Good morning Alli, I hope you have a great day," she might ask them to use an adjective other than great or good, or ask them to ask a question as a part of their greeting. Then, to add another challenge, Carr might have the questioner ask a follow-up question once he or she gets a response to the initial greeting question. "Adding these little tweaks can help promote good listening skills," she says.

The morning meeting also scales across grade levels, so that the higher grades are building upon the foundation laid in the lower grades. Fifth-grade teachers like Hoefer work to raise the bar and introduce new greetings and activities that their students haven't yet experienced. Teachers in the higher grades also start incorporating new skills, such as leadership and public speaking, by giving students the opportunity to lead morning meetings either by themselves or with a partner.

The sample greetings and activities below are from fifth-grade teacher Gretchen Hoefner.

Sample Greetings and Activities for Fifth-Grade Students

Simple Good Morning Greeting: One student starts and greets the student next to them by saying, "Good morning, _____." They make eye contact and face each other when doing this. The next student returns the greeting and then greets the person on their other side. You can add a handshake or high five to the simple greeting.

Different Languages Greeting: Same as above, but using a greeting from a different language.

Introduce Your Neighbor: Each student interviews a partner by finding something out about them (favorite book, favorite food, favorite activity) and then sharing that with the rest of the class. "This is my friend _____, and his or her favorite activity is _____."

Ball-Bounce Greeting: Everyone stands in the circle. Using a 10-inch inflated ball, the first student says, "Good morning, _____," to another student and then bounces the ball to them. After they have greeted someone and passed the ball, the student sits down.

The Warm Wind Blows: Each person needs a clearly marked spot in the circle (rug square or chair). One person starts in the middle of the circle and completes the statement, "The warm wind blows for everyone who likes to _____" (play soccer, eat pizza, go skiing, etc.). Everyone who agrees with this statement has to find a new spot in the circle (including the person in the middle). They cannot move to the space right next to where they were standing. Whoever is left without a spot in the outer circle stays in the middle of the circle and is the next one to say, "The warm wind blows for _____."

Group Juggle: The goal of this activity is to pass an item around the circle with as few drops as possible. Start with one ball. I have used four-inch Nerf balls or stuffed Beanie Babies. Set up a passing pattern for the ball/item so that everyone in the group receives it once and then passes it on to someone else. Pass to someone across the circle, not right next to you. One person starts the sequence and will get the ball/item back after everyone has had it. Once you have your order, start at the beginning again and see if you can pass the ball/item around to everyone without dropping it. You can add in more balls/items to increase the challenge of the activity.

Colored Dot Game: Put a colored sticker dot on the forehead of each student. The child does not get to see what color it is. Have four or five different colors of one-inch dots available. Without talking, each student needs to find other students that have the same colored dot.

Coseeki: One student volunteers to be "it" and leaves the circle to stand in the hallway for a minute. Another student is chosen to be the leader. The leader leads other students in different movements (hand clap, foot wiggle, head nod, etc.). The students watch the leader closely and imitate his or her actions. The "it" person comes back into the room and has three chances to guess who the leader is.

Resources

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Creating a Culture of Trust and Safety in Every Class

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Morning meetings at Symonds Elementary are a school-wide practice that originated from the Responsive Classroom model, which is based on the idea that students' social-emotional growth is just as important as their academic growth. Symonds teachers adapt the Responsive Classroom model of a morning meeting to fit their classroom needs, using it to create a classroom culture where students feel safe, supported, and ready to learn.

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Sheri examples

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Sheri examples

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I used this so heavy in kindergarten!

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Marilyn Burns is one of today's most highly respected mathematics educators. Over the course of almost sixty years, Marilyn has taught children, led professional development sessions, spoken at conferences, contributed to professional journals, written a dozen books for children, and created more than twenty professional development publications for teachers and administrators.

In 1984, Marilyn founded Math Solutions, dedicated to improving math teaching in Kindergarten through Grade 8. Soon after, Marilyn wrote About Teaching Mathematics, now in its 4 th edition. Her other professional books include Welcome to Math Class; Math and Literature; Teaching Arithmetic; Lessons for Algebraic Thinking; Writing in Math Class; and more.

Marilyn has been the recipient of numerous honors, including an honorary doctorate degree from Bank Street College of Education in New York in 1991, the Ross Taylor/Glenn Gilbert National Leadership Award from the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics in 1996, the Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education from the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1997, and induction in 2010 into the Educational Publishing Hall of Fame by the Association of Educational Publishers. In 2019, Marilyn received the Walter Denham Memorial Award from the California Mathematics Council in recognition of her advocacy for math education at the state and national levels.

Working with Math Solutions colleagues, Marilyn has developed several important school resources. , published in 2007, is a supplemental instructional program for building numerical reasoning. In 2012, was published to help teachers use children's literature for teaching mathematics. Also in 2012, Math Reasoning Inventory (MRI), a digital interview tool funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was made available to help teachers assess students in Grades 5 and up. In 2021, Listening to Learn was published, a digital interview tool that expands MRI to help teachers of Kindergarten and up learn how their students reason numerically.

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Marilyn Burns is one of today's most highly respected mathematics educators. Over the course of almost sixty years, Marilyn has taught children, led professional development sessions, spoken at conferences, contributed to professional journals, written a dozen books for children, and created more than twenty professional development publications for teachers and administrators.

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My BIBLE for how to navigate mandates that try to control curriculum/what I teach

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This engaging book shows how teachers and schools are creating emergent, democratic, progressive education amidst the current context of high stakes accountability. In this follow-up to his bestseller, Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way , Schultz explores how today's rhetoric and restrictive mandates result in curriculum that fails to capture the attention of students. For meaningful learning that develops transferable skills and engages students, teachers and sometimes whole schools need to find spaces to "teach in the cracks" so that students can connect with issues relevant to their lives. Teaching in the Cracks provides both a theoretical and practical foundation for incorporating an action-focused curriculum that meets academic standards and provides students with opportunities for agency and to use their voices in their own learning.

Book Features:

Specific tools and strategies to help teachers engage students in democratic participation and action.

Examples from varied teaching contexts, including elementary and secondary classrooms and independent, charter, and public schools.

Recommended organizations and resources for integrating justice-oriented civic engagement in classrooms.

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Teaching in the Cracks: Openings and Opportunities for Student-Centered, Action-Focused Curriculum

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Teaching in the Cracks: Openings and Opportunities for Student-Centered, Action-Focused Curriculum [Schultz, Brian D., Ayers, William, Meier, Deborah] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Teaching in the Cracks: Openings and Opportunities for Student-Centered, Action-Focused Curriculum

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Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall (HQ)

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When students didn't want to put things away, we had two options: we had a dedicated shelf to saving things. As a class, we decided you could save one work per person, or until the shelf was full. The other option was to take a picture of it to share with parents, or to use to reference later to rebuilt. Ronan decided to send his mom this picture then happily deconstructed and put away his work.

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We had a class saying that we had printed onto shirts, via donation, and used to create a sense of class belonging. Students each wrote one word on the shirt.

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To celebrate diversity and appreciate ourselves/one another, we made I am poems (following draft, revision, final process).

1st line: I am (name)

2nd line: I am (adjective for their skin color)

3rd line: I am (adjective about them as a person)

Then we made self portraits using skin color paint and talked about how everyone used/mixed multiple colors to get their skin color the right shade, and how we're all many colors, unique, and beautiful.

This was powerful for the white students to see there is no such thing as a skin with only "white" and we all have varying shades of color.

For older kids this could stem into conversations about the cultural construct of race. When does "white" stop being white and become "black"? It's all made up.

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I Am Poems with community wall and our class Moto

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I Am Poems with community wall and our class Moto

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No more "HEY! THAT'S MINE!"

All supplies were "class supplies." They belonged to the community. When students brought supplies in at the start of the year, they all went into one group. There were no individual supplies. We spent much time at the beginning teaching them how to share class supplies, get supplies, put them away, etc.

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Every other week or so, sometimes every week, students would make their own books (scaffolded) and then present them to the class. This is a page from one student's book. By the end of the year, we had a shelf full of class books about one another. Multiple times a student would have a question about a classmate and would run to the shelf to investigate for themselves by reading that students book.

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Anytime students were working really hard or learning something new (or struggling with something and needed a confidence boost) we would take a picture of what they had done and send home to parents via dojo messages. Students were always so proud to show their parents what they learned!

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At the writing area, students had a LOT of freedom. Pretty much anything to do with writing was free game and we always had a few rotating options. These might be making books, writing letters to friends, making comics (fan fav), or drawing pictures and labeling them. We had flip books of pictures with labels and students who struggled with literacy would sometimes copy the picture and label then would eventually venture out to do their own with inventive spelling.

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We got a weekly produce donation from a local farmer (you'll always get more support than you realize when you involve community members) and would use Friday afternoons for a practical life lesson that involved cooking/preparing the food into a snack. Students learned really important life skills.

The farmer donated pumpkins at halloween so we practiced getting the seeds out, students arranged them to be roasted in the cafeteria, then they seasoned them, roasted them, had them for snack, and we decorated the pumpkin at our halloween party.

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How Elementary School Students Found Their Voice and Became Changemakers
It's a bright spring morning in the park, where a group of McGuffey Montessori Elementary students stand proudly beneath their posters. These 1 st - 3 rd graders are here as part of a gallery walk, and they are eager to speak as changemakers about the problems they wish to solve.

Many express concern about the environment and animal rights. Others hope to end inequality, homelessness, racism, bullying, and more. Kieran, one of the students present, is alarmed about the many detrimental effects of pollution.

"We should replace normal cars with electric cars, and plant more trees, and make factories more sustainable because they are one of the main problems," Kieran says. "Pollution is killing the environment. It's harder to breath and polar bears are dying. I don't think enough people are worried about polar bears because they say, 'Oh well, it's not us.'"

The issues are diverse, but they all have one thing in common. They are part of a project that was driven almost entirely by the children themselves. Their only parameter was to identify a problem in their world. And their teacher, Alli Huff '18, '20, a McGuffey Montessori educator and Miami University teacher education alumna, is thrilled with the depth and initiative her students have displayed.

"Originally, we thought they would choose something small like, 'I want a bigger backyard,'" Huff says. "But they chose these global problems, and we realized that they were getting really passionate about it. Of course, it's at a developmentally appropriate level, but they do really care. They chose some incredible topics, and they clearly can do amazing things."

The gallery walk began as part of a unit on changemakers, which covered people like Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Jane Goodall, and Harriet Tubman, and how their desire to change the world began when they, too, were young children.

"It was about teaching them to advocate for something that mattered to them and how they can use their voice to do it," Huff says. "I could have just contained it to a classroom conversation, but I worked under incredible teachers at Miami like Sheri Leafgren and Brian Schultz. They taught me how to take these moments to go farther by following them and saying, 'Okay, well, what do you want to do?' Then I just helped plan what they had already envisioned."

What they wanted to do was to stand up for what they believed in, to spread awareness, and to make a difference. So Huff used the gallery walk as an opportunity to help students both build knowledge and to become engaged, active citizens.

"Just talking to people about what we're doing today is a way to help," says Max, while pointing to his poster about discrimination. "Discrimination hasn't been good to the world. It's not fair or equal. So I decided that I should talk about how bad discrimination is."

By taking such an active role in the process, Huff says her students also became co-curriculum creators, and she credits Schultz's book, Teaching in the Cracks, as another inspiration behind this student-centered approach.

"What we often miss with young children is that they have interests and curiosities and questions, and that can be the starting point for curriculum," Schultz says. "They not only have the ability to name a problem that concerns them, or their community, but also have the potential to work on solving that problem. And when we provide space for students to engage in co-construction of curriculum alongside their teachers, they rise to the occasion."

This also aligns with what Schultz calls "inverting the curriculum," which allows educators to move beyond standard worksheets or memorization assignments, and instead use student interests and curiosities by organically weaving in additional subjects.

Leading up to the gallery walk, Huff also integrated creative writing and language lessons into the project. As students were becoming changemakers and advocates, they also learned how to craft speeches, give effective presentations, answer interview questions, and interact with the public.

While this approach is more common in a Montessori environment, it is possible in public schools and even in settings where teachers can sometimes feel constricted by standards and mandates from the state, district, or local school level.

"Oftentimes, there is an interpretation of mandates and standards that is quite narrow," says Schultz. "But curriculum can be mapped back to those mandates through projects that honor the children by listening to their voices. So it's not disregarding some mandate. It's focusing curriculum on their questions, and then thinking about how to address reading and writing, math and science, and social studies through that curriculum."

It can also generate a far more impactful learning experience that will resonate with students long after they leave the classroom.

"They feel so capable, which is the most incredible part," Huff says. "And we want them to know that they are capable, amazing humans who are going to go do incredible things in the world."

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How Elementary School Students Found Their Voice and Became Changemakers

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A group of McGuffey Montessori Elementary students stand proudly beneath their posters. These 1st - 3rd graders are here as part of a gallery walk, and they are eager to speak as changemakers about the problems they wish to solve.

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Changemakers | McGuffey Montessori School

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The students were interested in animal habitats, so we got outside and studied them after learning about habits of scientists and scientific method. SO MANY STANDARDS MET WITH THIS. ALWAYS integrate your work!

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This is a presentation about PBL Toria and I gave at a district conference in Hamilton. It lays out the basic framework we followed for PBL in our classroom.

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After reading Not a Box by Antoinette Portis students illustrated prototypes of wha they would turn their box into. Next, in phases, they made an artist statement that followed the theme of the book: "This is not a box, this is a _____."

Phase 1: draw prototype and draft statement

Phase 2: revise statement (teacher feedback, elaborate, fix grammar/spelling.. mini lesson in small groups or single here)

Phase 3: Final. Big emphasis on making it look good because others would be reading it and we take pride in our work, and what is the point of writing if not to convey a message and people can't read your message if it's messy/doesn't make sense.

Phase 4: Using various materials, create their prototype in real life out of a box

Phase 6: Practice presentation skills/public speaking with partners

Phase 5: Art show where they present their work to school members (we invited everyone on the morning announcements)

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The last couple months of school, all of our curriculum revolved around hatching and caring for our baby chicks!

Books, morning work, stations, all of it was about chicks/chickens.

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I created this book with my student teaching class as a multistep literacy project. We came up with a story by everyone brainstorming, then we edited it, and published it through a scaffolded approach. Students who were writers took turns writing sentences down, others wrote partial sentences or traced, and everyone created illustrations to match the words. By the time they were done they had a fully published book and multiple papers that showed the creation/production process that they went through.

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This was our largest/longest lasting PBL in Kinder in Hamilton

1. community walk around school

2. students named problems they noticed

3. students decided on a problem to solve as a class

4. Students brainstormed ways to solve that problem/created a plan

5. Teacher facilitated curricular spaces to work on the plan

6. implement plan/productive end