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The Mindset of a Champion | Carson Byblow | TEDxYouth@AASSofia - YouTube

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The Mindset of a Champion | Carson Byblow | TEDxYouth@AASSofia - YouTube

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The Mindset of a Champion | Carson Byblow | TEDxYouth@AASSofia

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A Simple but Powerful Class Opening Activity | Edutopia

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A Simple but Powerful Class Opening Activity | Edutopia

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At the start of a recent class, my students gathered a bouquet of good news: a trip to Ireland, an end to recent car troubles, an upcoming visit with a friend. These were highlights they shared during our start-of-class routine, the rose and thorn check-in.

In this quick activity, students participate by sharing roses-something positive going on for a student that day-and thorns, which are negative, or at least less than positive.

Students can choose their level of vulnerability: A rose can simply be "the weather is nice today." A low-stakes thorn might be "I feel tired." Yet many students choose to share more personal items: "My rose is that even though I'm stressed out, I got all my homework done" or "My thorn is that my dog is sick and I'm really worried about her."

Going around the classroom, each student states one rose and one thorn. I share mine too. The whole process takes five minutes or less. Yet though this fast activity may seem simple, the rose and thorn check-in is an essential part of my classroom community-building.

Benefits of the Check-In

Students know that every voice matters: The rose and thorn check-in gets every student's voice into the room at the start of each class. Although students can always say "pass" instead of sharing, each student has the opportunity to be heard, every single day. The check-in is also a great opportunity to practice active listening, turn-taking, and following group norms.

Students develop awareness of others' emotions-and how to respond to them: When students share their roses and thorns, they give their classmates a snapshot of their emotional state. And if I hear a student say that their thorn is "I didn't sleep much last night" or "I feel like I can't focus today," I can adjust my interactions with that person accordingly.

Students increase their comfort with vulnerability: Rose and thorn check-ins are opportunities for students to practice being emotionally vulnerable with their peers. This comfort level translates directly into the ability to share opinions and take academic risks in other contexts.

Facilitation Tips

Acknowledge each person's contribution: My colleague John Milton Oliver, who also uses this strategy, suggests saying "thank you," followed by the student's name, and then turning your attention to the next person in the circle. This models acceptance while also keeping things moving.

Discuss how emotions impact learning: Before or after the check-in, invite students to consider how their roses and thorns might affect their ability to participate in class that day. Ask students to brainstorm how they might support a classmate who shares a big thorn or how to celebrate a friend's exciting rose.

Model authenticity: While remembering your role and professional boundaries, try to authentically share: "My rose is that my class last period went really well," or "My thorn is that I'm a little behind on giving feedback on your papers, and it's stressing me out." Show students that it's OK to be vulnerable.

Tending to Challenges

Here are some tips for making this activity go smoothly:

Practice, practice, practice: Depending on the skill level and existing cohesiveness of your group, it can take many tries to get the hang of the routine. Don't give up-and make sure to keep it quick and consistent.

Monitor time: My younger students are often eager to negotiate with me: "Can I please have three roses and two thorns?" Give students think time to write or draw what they will share.

Make a plan for following up on concerns: Occasionally, students may share something concerning. Make a plan for how you and the class will respond. Many times, this simply means following up individually with a student to offer support. For topics that could use a whole-class discussion, consider building in opportunities for group processing, such as a weekly community-building circle.

Help Your Garden Grow

When your class gets the hang of the rose and thorn check-in, feel free to modify it. For example, I taught one group of students who reframed it as Harry Potter and Voldemort. Let your students take ownership over how to make the check-in feel meaningful to them.

As students get better at sharing, you can add a third part to the share: the rosebud, something that they're looking forward to in the near future. Students can develop other variations or components as well.

If your group is too big to do a full share, my colleague John suggests a lightning round, in which the roses and thorns are condensed to two or three words: "Thorn: sick dog! Rose: sunshine!" You could instead create small groups of three or four students each who share their full check-ins with one another instead of the whole class.

As teachers know, there's never enough time in a class period to accomplish everything we'd like to. The rose and thorn check-in may feel like "one more thing," but I see it as an investment in my classroom community. Making time to hear each student's voice demonstrates that I care enough to prioritize listening.

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A Simple but Powerful Class Opening Activity

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At the start of a recent class, my students gathered a bouquet of good news: a trip to Ireland, an end to recent car troubles, an upcoming visit with a friend. These were highlights they shared during our start-of-class routine, the rose and thorn check-in.

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I wish my teacher knew ~ a gamechanger - Suburban Snow White

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I wish my teacher knew ~ a gamechanger - Suburban Snow White

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A colleague shared the "I wish my teacher knew" phenomenon with me this year. She'd tried it with her class, and I was anxious to try it with my own. When I did, I was amazed and humbled. I wished I had done this from the beginning.

The whole movement was started by Kyle Schwartz, a third grade teacher in Colorado. She asked her kids to finish the sentence "I wish my teacher knew ..." on an index card. Her students opened up to her and shared some very personal and surprising facts that you can find on her website. She later published a book about her experience. (I haven't read it yet, but it looks fascinating.)

The whole point of the exercise, of course, is to get to know your kids. To find out what they're like: what they love, what scares them, what they need help with. Anything really. They hold so much in those little heads, and it's rare for anyone to ask them to bare their souls.

Setting the stage

I wrote my own fourth grade version of a letter to introduce the lesson to my class. I included three things I wanted my teacher to know about me, being vulnerable but also having fun with it so that they could see the possibilities of what they might include in their own letter. Here is the letter I shared with them on the projector:

There is a lot to me, so it's hard to narrow it down to three things. You'll get to know me as the year goes on, but there are three main things I think you should know about me now. First, I had an accident to my eye, and I'm really uncomfortable when people stare at me. Second, I really love horses. And finally, I am pretty shy and have trouble speaking up.

My accident happened early this year. I accidentally cut my eye with a knife. To answer the usual questions, yes it hurt, no I can't see much, and no it doesn't hurt anymore. But the important thing I want you to know is that it really bothers me when people stare at me. This happens a lot. When I go with my Mom to the supermarket, or to CVS, or anywhere, people will either stop and stare, or will look at me and then give me an embarrassed smile. I know they don't mean to be impolite, but it makes me really uncomfortable and I wish I could walk somewhere and not have people gaping all the time. It's actually really annoying. I know you can't do anything about this, but it's just something about me that I feel is really important.

On a less serious note, I love horses. You could say I'm obsessed. My next door neighbors have a horse, and I visit it every day and feed him bits of grass from my yard. His name is Patches, and he's a real sweetie and he follows me around when I go over to his fence. I've taken out all the books in our library on horses, both fiction and non-fiction. I can't seem to get enough. I'd love to get riding lessons, but Mom says we can't afford that right now. I hope to get a horse someday, though. My Dad says they are a lot of work and money, but I think I could do it. I love animals and I think I'd do a really good job of taking care of a horse. I've learned how to comb them, and where to stand so you don't get accidentally kicked. If you know of any horse books around that I haven't discovered yet, I'd love to see them!

The last thing you should know about me is that I'm really shy. I feel like every year in school, the teachers are always telling me to speak up and repeat things. They say I mumble and talk too soft. I've tried speaking as loud as I can, but it doesn't seem to help. I have lots of ideas, but I've kind of stopped sharing them, because I always end up having to say stuff over and over so they can hear me. With this shyness, I don't feel comfortable just walking up to people and starting conversations. I have a best friend, Mary, and I can talk to her about anything, but she's not in my class this year. I tend to only have a couple of friends, rather than a whole bunch, but I kind of like that better. Anyway, if I don't talk a lot in class, it's not because I don't know the answer all the time. It's usually just the shyness.

So those are the three things I want to leave you with. I had an eye accident that affects how people act around me, I love horses, and I'm on the shy side.

As any teacher knows, when you get real with kids, there's an energy shift in the room. Nobody goofs off. All eyes are on you. Writing your own fourth-grade version letter is one of the most powerful things you'll do all year. Don't be afraid to to show your warts - if it's all rainbows and lollipops, that pretty much all you'll get in return. If it's all deep stuff, it will scare some kids away. But if you have a good balance, they'll feel more comfortable with their options.

Parameters

We told our kids to write about three things they wanted us to know. These wouldn't be corrected. We weren't worried about spelling or sentence structure. It could be one big paragraph or, if they knew how, they could divide it up into smaller paragraphs. We left the whole thing pretty loose on purpose.

We also said that these letters were just for us teachers. They would not be shared with other students.

Plain lined paper works great, but you can Download this pdf if you like a little more flair. If you have a very resistant writer, you can try index cards instead so they won't get overwhelmed by a large blank page. (And if they use up one, just keep handing them index cards. Those bite-sized pieces will embolden them to write more. Index card templates are included in the free download.)

Writing the "What I wish my teacher knew" letters

Let your kiddos know how much time they'll have (we did 45 min - 1 hour). Make sure they have what they need. And then let them go at it.

If you have private work space dividers, you can use those. You can also scatter your kids about the room in different areas, so they have space to think and write without worry someone might read their work.

And if it helps, you can put on some unobtrusive wordless music in the background.

While I can't share individual letters here, as they were very special and private, I can say that the kids took this very seriously. Topics that came up included bullying and even a presidential election. They shared what made them feel good - gymnastics, reading, video games - and what they struggled with either at home or in school. New babies in the family. Recent deaths. It ran the gamut.

Most important, it gave us a more three-dimensional view of our new charges. It was a delightful shortcut in getting to know them. And as any teacher worth her salt knows, with a solid relationship in place, students can make incredible academic and personal growth.

If you try this, you will learn things about your kiddos that you never suspected.

Download this pdf and try this out with your own classroom!

And/or tell us in the comments below ...

Have you tried the "I wish my teacher knew" letters in your classroom? What happened?

What do you wish your fourth grade teacher had known about you?

What do you wish other people today knew about you?

If you found this valuable or if you know someone who would love trying this out in their room, please share it on social media below.

Have a great week!

~Katrina

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A colleague shared the "I wish my teacher knew" phenomenon with me this year. She'd tried it with her class, and I was anxious to try it with my own. When I did, I was amazed and humbled. I wished I had done this from the beginning.

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How Schools Can Make Advisories Meaningful for Students and Teachers - Education Week

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How Schools Can Make Advisories Meaningful for Students and Teachers - Education Week

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Middle and high schools often favor setting aside a block in students' schedules for something a little less structured-and a lot less academic-than a traditional class period.

The reoccuring blocks-often called advisories-are adopted as a way to strengthen relationships and help students weather the challenges that may keep them from succeeding academically, including a lack of routines, social isolation, and out-of-school issues that can bleed into the school day.

But problems in the way advisories are designed and carried out can keep them from being a meaningful part of a student's school experience, educators and researchers say.

If a school wedges an advisory into its master schedule as "just another thing to do" or a panacea for its school climate problems, students aren't likely to experience the level of vulnerability necessary to have meaningful conversations or shared experiences there, said Rachel Poliner, a Massachusetts consultant who helps schools design advisory programs.

And teachers themselves need direction and training to support their students in those efforts, a task that can also make adults feel vulnerable at times, she said. Otherwise advisories are likely to look like academic class periods without the academics-desks in rows, teachers leading discussions and activities, and students lacking interest.

"As adults we have a lot of routines and rituals in our lives that keep us organized, healthy, connected to family and friends, and eating the right things, and kids don't have those yet," Poliner said. "So if advisory could be a place where you actually figure out the routines and rituals that would make their lives better, and involve students in crafting them, and then practice them a lot, wouldn't that be more authentic?"

Getting It Right

Done well, advisories are designed around the needs of students, giving them the freedom to shape their experiences and the space to express their fears, hopes, and needs, she said, and that kind of model takes planning and resources. To get advisories right, schools need to offer ongoing professional development and support to teachers who may be uncomfortable with the format, and they need to integrate them into larger school strategies, Poliner said. And they need to be thoughtful about what they're hoping to accomplish by adopting advisories-allowing that purpose to drive decisions about issues like the duration and frequency of advisory periods and how long cohorts of students remain grouped together.

The staff at Wayland Middle School in Wayland, Mass., went through such a planning process in designing its current version of advisories. Administrators lengthened the scheduled time from 25 to 40 minutes, put two adults in every classroom, and integrated advisory groups into academic and social-emotional learning themes that drive projects and activities. The groups emphasize BERT, which stands for Belonging, Empathy, Respect, and Trust.

The center of the strategy, called TAG groups, lets students drive decisions-from how to handle difficult discussions about current events to what kind of rituals they create together to build shared experiences that can form the foundations of friendships.

"Our aim is always to let kids take the lead," said Principal Betsy Gavron, who co-leads a TAG group of 6th-grade students. Administrators and other staff members help lead TAG groups with classroom teachers, sharing responsibility for the program.

Those little rituals-like playing a certain song on a classmate's birthday-help students feel more comfortable when more serious issues come into play, Gavron said. TAG groups have discussed broad social issues like justice, and they've dropped everything to give students a chance to process their emotions the day after a mass school shooting made headlines.

Each grade level at Wayland has a "house mentor," which is a historic figure to center their studies, and students also go on a related field trip with their TAG groups. For example, 6th graders study Henry David Thoreau and take a 10-mile bike ride to nearby Walden Pond, 7th graders study conservationist Rachel Carson and do field experiments together at Cape Cod, and 8th-grade groups take a trip to Washington, D.C., as part of their studies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and justice issues.

Sixth grader Lila Berg said her group's bike trip helped ease her feelings about her transition to middle school. "You know someone really well because they are in your TAG group," she said.

Wayland has about 640 students, which can be intimidating for young students. "We think about it as another way to make a large school feel smaller," Gavron said.

Addressing Multiple Concerns

Advisories are not uncommon and they aren't new. Private prep schools have used them for decades to provide intensive support and academic guidance to their students. And nonacademic student meetings were popular with the growth of the middle school model. But some of the purposes of the student meetings have changed over time.

Advocates for "whole-child education" pitch advisories as solutions to a range of school concerns-from safety and suicide prevention to bullying and academic support.

And more districts have adopted comprehensive social-emotional learning plans, designed to boost student skills in areas like solving problems and building relationships. While those strategies are often more intuitively integrated into elementary school classes, secondary schools often add advisories as a way to "do SEL."

Curriculum companies have taken notice of the trend, offering packaged advisory programs that include discussion prompts and workbooks. But Poliner says schools shouldn't lean too heavily on off-the-shelf solutions without giving teachers flexibility to customize their own approaches and students the freedom to take ownership of their experiences.

That's because the less-structured class periods are often set up as a systemic solution to the individual, sensitive experiences adolescents face, and those students can seem almost allergic to approaches that seem impersonal.

Researchers say students' learning can be stifled if they feel like they don't belong at school or if environments don't seem designed for them. And data support the idea that many students feel isolated or disengaged at school.

A 2017 Gallup Education poll on education described 24 percent of respondents as "actively disengaged in school." Twenty-nine percent of the national pool of 733,471 students in grades 5 to 12 were described as "not engaged," while the remaining 47 percent were considered engaged.

The poll derived its engagement scores by combining student responses to a range of questions about the importance of their schoolwork, whether they feel safe at school, if they "have a best friend at school," and whether they believe "the adults at my school care about me."

But teachers can feel daunted, or even cynical, about schools' efforts to address those issues, and that's especially true if they have fatigue from years of programs that are quickly adopted and discarded before they have a chance to prove their value.

And some teachers feel ill-equipped to talk to students about their emotions or how to build personal skills like self control and setting goals. That's especially true of some secondary teachers, who may have been drawn to the field because of an interest in a given academic subject, like math, principals say.

In some districts, there has been pushback from parents who would prefer lessons on issues like respect and tolerance take place at home. And some have said schools should focus more energy on academic issues instead.

Poliner said schools need to make the case for advisories and other social-emotional learning programs with teachers and invite them into designing how they work. And they need to make it clear that the teacher's role is to facilitate conversations, not to take the place of school counselors, psychologists, and social workers.

Audra Connolly, a 6th grade teacher in Nampa, Idaho, said leading her students in open discussions comes more naturally for her because she recently worked in an elementary school, where "circle time" and daily questions were the norm. She still uses those questions to help start conversations with her advisory students in middle school. And sometimes the conversations turn to harder topics, too. After a gunman attacked a Pittsburgh synagogue in October, she gave students time and freedom to grapple with their understanding of the incident.

"Every kid needs adults and people to build relationships with them," she said. "I'm not just a math teacher. I'm here to help these kids be successful."

In Wayland, having two adults in each advisory allows one to take the lead when the other feels less comfortable handling a conversation or leading an activity, Gavron said. The majority-white district is part of a voluntary school desegregation program that brings in black students from neighboring areas. Before advisory leaders led conversations about issues like bias, they spent a year and a half preparing through professional development, reading, and staff conversations.

But the advisories at Wayland aren't just intense conversations. Sometimes the groups award stickers to peers who showed character strengths and play wacky games that seem perfectly in place in a middle school.

Teachers have a variety of online resources, including a menu of tested group activities they can choose from and space to discuss what's working, and what's not, with their peers who also lead advisories.

"We take care of one another," Gavron said. "The adults can only be good for the kids if the adults are in good shape."

Published in Print: March 13, 2019, as Schools Explore Ways to Forge Student Bonds

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How Schools Can Make Advisories Meaningful for Students and Teachers

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Middle and high schools often favor setting aside a block in students' schedules for something a little less structured-and a lot less academic-than a traditional class period. The reoccuring blocks-often called advisories-are adopted as a way to strengthen relationships and help students weather the challenges that may keep them from succeeding academically, including a lack of routines, social isolation, and out-of-school issues that can bleed into the school day.

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Post by KidPresident.

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Best Growth Mindset Books for Kids, As Chosen by Teachers

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Best Growth Mindset Books for Kids, As Chosen by Teachers

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One easy way to encourage growth mindset is through engaging, purposeful read-alouds. Here are some of our favorite growth mindset books for kids, all of which can help jumpstart conversations about failure, risk-taking, and persistence.

In this story, a child discovers that it takes courage to take chances and say yes to new opportunities. But in the end, taking chances can lead to incredible experiences.

Little Jabari is absolutely, maybe, pretty sure that he's ready to jump off the high dive. After much observation and lots of stall tactics he finally works up the courage to face his fears and take a leap.

Sometimes things that look like smudgy messes actually evolve into the most beautiful pictures. Beautifully illustrated, this story teaches us that creating (art and life) is a process that requires patience and faith.

This charming story is chock-full of helpful practical tips to help children (and all of us, really) build a strong mind.

Sophie is frustrated when she can't solve a puzzle and comes to the conclusion that she just isn't smart. But with the help of her wise teacher, she learns with patience and perseverance she can solve any problem she sets her mind to.

A tale that teaches the importance of the word 'yet' in developing a growth mindset. The main character imagines all of her potential future selves and realizes with hard work and dedication she can reach any goal she desires.

In this inspirational story, a young stargazer wishes to catch a star of his very own. Despite his many creative attempts, he learns in the end that sometimes having your dreams come true requires a little flexibility. A great story for encouraging kids to dream big and never give up.

"Oh, how Willie wished he could whistle ..." begins this beloved classic. Young Willie longs to be able to whistle for his dog, but try as he might, he just cannot figure out how to do it. We follow along as Willie goes through his day, trying, trying and trying some more until finally his efforts are rewarded with a tweet!

This sweet tale follows the course of a little one trying to learn to ride a bike, a milestone to which younger students will surely relate. With determination and practice, as well as a fair share of frustration, her trials ultimately lead to triumph.

Penguin has big dreams of soaring through the sky with the seagulls. Although his body is not remotely designed for flight, Penguin's creativity and ingenuity, not to mention his persistence, lead to the fulfillment of his dreams. A wonderful story for encouraging kids to think outside the box.

This beautiful retelling of "Humpty Dumpty" imagines what the fragile egg would do to regain his courage after falling from the wall.

This whimsically illustrated story tells the tale of a talented artist who grows up immersed in the joy of creating art until he is tragically injured in a war. Very patiently, with great determination, he slowly regains some of the control in his injured right arm, and although his abilities aren't exactly the same, he goes on to become a celebrated artist.

When Rosie's attempt to build a flying contraption for her aunt doesn't turn out quite as she plans, she feels like a failure but learns that in life the only true failure is giving up. A story of pursuing one's passion with perseverance.

Although he was born with one misshapen leg, Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah pursued life with a tenacity that helped him accomplish all that he set his mind to. Encouraged by his mother, who told him to pursue his dreams regardless of his handicap, this story is an inspiring true story of triumph over adversity.

Irene, the loyal young daughter of a dressmaker, must forge through a dreadful storm to deliver her mother's work to the duchess. She must brave the howling wind, the freezing temperatures and many dangerous obstacles in order to complete her mission. An inspiring story that teaches that with proper motivation, there are no age restrictions on accomplishing great things.

An inspiring true story about a girl who dared to dream of being a drummer in a culture that said girls could not. She practices in secret and never gives up on her dream. Ultimately, her perseverance and belief in herself change a culture and reverse a long-held taboo.

Hana's worried about playing her violin in the talent show. She longs to play beautiful music like her grandfather in Japan, but she's only a beginner. She is determined to play her best though, so she practices every day. This inspiring story offers hope and confidence to all children who are yearning to master something difficult and teaches that sometimes there is more than one way to be successful at a task.

18. Ruby's Wish by Shirin Yim Bridges

Ruby is a young girl filled with curiosity and a hunger for learning in a time when schooling is traditionally a boy's privilege. Her hard work and courage result in her skills being recognized by her powerful grandfather, who breaks with tradition and clears the way for Ruby to further her education. This is a great story for inspiring kids to break down barriers in their pursuit of the love of learning.
Teachers, what are your favorite growth mindset books for kids? Come share in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE! group on Facebook. Also, get our free poster "8 Phrases That Nurture Growth Mindset" for your classroom here!

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18 Perfect Read-Alouds for Teaching Growth Mindset

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One easy way to encourage growth mindset is through engaging, purposeful read-alouds. Here are some of our favorite growth mindset books for kids, all of which can help jumpstart conversations about failure, risk-taking, and persistence. In this story, a child discovers that it takes courage to take chances and say yes to new opportunities.

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350 Good Questions to Ask - The only list of questions you'll need.

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350 Good Questions to Ask - The only list of questions you'll need.

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A ridiculously long list of good questions to ask. Lots of fun, creative, thought provoking questions to choose from.

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Three Brain Teasers to Spur Logical Thinking and Collaboration | MindShift | KQED News

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Three Brain Teasers to Spur Logical Thinking and Collaboration | MindShift | KQED News

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There are lots of ways to stretch student thinking and get them talking to each other about ideas. One fun way is through riddles that require inductive reasoning, critical thinking and hopefully some good collaboration around student ideas. The three brain teasers below created by TED-Ed have fun visuals and include an explanation at the end. All the videos also include lesson plan ideas to deepen the conversation and start discussion.

In this first video about prisoners' hats the problem set-up ends at 1:35, so stop the video there if you want kids to work on the problem before learning how to solve it.

In this zombie bridge problem the set-up ends at 2:00.

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Three Brain Teasers to Spur Logical Thinking and Collaboration

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There are lots of ways to stretch student thinking and get them talking to each other about ideas. One fun way is through riddles that require inductive reasoning, critical thinking and hopefully some good collaboration around student ideas. The three brain teasers below created by TED-Ed have fun visuals and include an explanation at the end.

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Remediation Vs. Intervention (In Practical Terms)

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Remediation Vs. Intervention (In Practical Terms)

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In a previous post, I discussed remediation and intervention are different. The difference between these two concepts is so great and so important that I feel it necessary to explain this difference matters.

To illustrate these differences, let's look at two different students.
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Melissa has always been an A/B student. Though she has never been in the top of the class, she has always managed to get by. She doesn't love math, but she realizes its importance in her life. Melissa's parents are available to help her with her homework, and she feels comfortable receiving extra help from her teachers. When Melissa got to middle school, however, she was struggling to keep up. The concepts were moving too fast for her, and switching classes made it difficult for her to get the help she needed. The problems were now requiring her to integrate several math concepts at one time, whereas Melissa had previously only needed to memorize a few ideas at a time. Melissa now has a C in math.

Jason has always hated math - since Kindergarten, when all the other students made it in the "100 club," and he would get flustered counting past 19. He still adds on his fingers, as do his parents, and he only has the 2's, 5's and 10's times tables memorized. Even when he tries really hard to focus in math class, his teacher skips steps and moves too fast. The rest of the class has moved on while he is still trying to figure out 4x8. His teachers have told him he is lazy - he doesn't even do his homework; he doesn't even try. Jason believes trying is pointless, because he won't understand anyway. He has to keep a C to play sports, so by copying homework, turning in notes, and re-taking tests, he manages to barely make a C.

Both students have the same grade and both are struggling in math, but the approach in helping them MUST be different.

Melissa needs remediation. She needs time to work extra problems. Her teacher should be available for Melissa to ask questions. Additionally, the teacher should spend class time presenting math concepts in different ways. Melissa will need support with the new concepts, and will likely need to revisit previously taught concepts. Mnemonics will aid her in memorization and graphic organizers will help her make important connections.

Jason also needs remediation, but most importantly, he needs intervention. Remediation will not be effective without a systematic intervention plan. In a prior post, I discussed how math concepts build upon themselves, similar to a Jenga game. Jason is missing many, many pieces and his tower will crumble very soon. Jason cannot understand new complex topics, because he does not have the supports in place. He needs explicit instruction in number sense, fact fluency, and computational skills. Without this, he will not be able to pass high school math. This effort will take, at a minimum, a year of daily instruction and practice.

In reality, Melissa will likely get the help she needs to be successful. Jason's case is so difficult and complex, that he will likely never receive the solid foundation he needs to be successful in math.

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Intervention, Remediation, Special Education....What is the Difference? Intervention is not reteaching or special education. It is the intentional instruction of targeted skills. This is for the student who is multiple grade-levels below.

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Remediation Vs. Intervention (In Practical Terms)

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In a previous post, I discussed remediation and intervention are different. The difference between these two concepts is so great and so important that I feel it necessary to explain this difference matters. To illustrate these differences, let's look at two different students. ﻿ ﻿﻿﻿ ﻿ Melissa has always been an A/B student.

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Empowering Students to Curb Bullying | Edutopia

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Empowering Students to Curb Bullying | Edutopia

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Bullying among school-age children is on the decline. This is a promising trend; however, 28 percent of all young people in the U.S. experience online bullying, and almost one in four experience bullying in person.

Bullying often takes place where there are no adults around, in transitional spaces like hallways and stairwells. It also occurs during recess, in the cafeteria, on the way home from school, or online when a child is alone in their room. Despite these conditions, less than 40 percent of young targets of bullying notify an adult-a percentage that decreases as kids get older.

Obviously, schools and school staff need to do their part to prevent and address bullying, including establishing policies that reflect district/state guidelines, assessing bullying at their school, monitoring hot spots, encouraging reporting, and educating the school community.

But another approach is to empower students to prevent and interrupt bullying by teaching them how to act as allies.

What It Means to Be an Ally

When we think of the word ally, we often picture someone who directly challenges the person doing the bullying. But most young people find confrontation difficult because it takes a lot of self-confidence and assertiveness. Many kids-like many adults-are not going to speak out against aggressors.

Young people need to learn specific actions they feel they can realistically take when faced with bullying. These are effective and less risky than confrontation, and can be used by those students who want to do something but feel unsure in the moment.

Support the target. This can be as simple as encouraging the targeted person to report the incident, and/or accompanying them to tell an adult. It can also include reaching out to the targeted person face-to-face or via text and saying something like, "Hey, I'm sorry that's happening," or "What they did wasn't cool." Research demonstrates that support strategies like these are more likely to lead to positive outcomes for the targeted student.

Don't participate. This may sound like passive bystanding, but is actually an effective form of active nonparticipation. For example, if a group of kids in the cafeteria are laughing at someone, a nearby student can make a point not to laugh, or say something like "Let's not go there," and change the subject. In doing this, the nonparticipating student sends a powerful message to counter the bullying behavior while sending a message of support to the targeted student. Further, if one child takes the initiative to voice support, it can give others the courage to follow suit. This creates a groundswell of nonparticipation, which can stop bullying in its tracks.

Tell a trusted adult. Many students don't notify adults because they don't think it will do any good or they think it could even make things worse. A key to creating an environment where students feel safe to report bullying is to make adults more approachable by taking the issue seriously, letting students know you are available to talk, really listening when they come to you, and remaining discreet. Confidentiality can go a long way toward preventing retaliation. Encourage students to tell a trusted adult in their lives about bullying or harassing behavior they experience or witness. Make sure your school has safe and confidential procedures in place for reporting bullying incidents, and communicate these to all students.

Get to know people instead of judging them. This is an important one. Especially during the tween and teen years, many bullying episodes are identity-based, which means students are targeted based on aspects of their identity (e.g., appearance or body size, race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, etc.). To create a safe classroom climate, it is critical to explicitly teach about identity, diversity, and bias.

Be an ally online. When young people see bullying happen to someone online, they can explicitly not contribute and leave the group-it will be noticed. Students can support the target by reaching out with a message of support. Students can also take a screenshot of a bullying conversation and report it to an adult. Finally, young people can spread their own inclusive, nonbiased, and respectful messages, either by responding to bullying comments or by creating original ones.

Teaching Strategies

Educators can teach these strategies in a few ways:

1. Turn a bullying or name-calling incident into a teachable moment by discussing what happened and how one can act as an ally.

2. Use children's and young adult literature that provides examples of ally behaviors and how they made a difference.

3. Teach explicit lessons that explore identity-based bullying, prevention strategies, empathy-building, and activities that help students practice the skills of being an ally with role-plays and scenarios.

The Anti-Defamation League has some helpful real-life examples in a 20-minute online course for educators.

In 100 years, we may not be remembered by the subject matter we taught, but those generations of young people will remember whether they felt like they belonged, whether they felt safe and included, and whether all aspects of their identity could be shown in school and elsewhere. We can stop bullying once and for all by creating a compassionate cadre of allies among our students.

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Empowering Students to Curb Bullying | Edutopia

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Bullying among school-age children is on the decline. This is a promising trend; however, 28 percent of all young people in the U.S. experience online bullying, and almost one in four experience bullying in person. Bullying often takes place where there are no adults around, in transitional spaces like hallways and stairwells.

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Rejecting the ‘Mean Girl’ Framework | Edutopia

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Rejecting the ‘Mean Girl’ Framework | Edutopia

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Ideas for guiding girls toward positive interactions with each other.

©Shutterstock.com/Syda Productions

Responding to our male students' fights, sexual misbehavior, or general misconduct with the comment "boys will be boys" is widely recognized as unhealthy and unacceptable. But when faced with name calling, rumor spreading, exclusion, and social sabotage among female students, the phrase "it's just girl drama-don't worry about it" is so widely used that sometimes it's replaced with just an eye roll, a shrug, or a sigh-the phrase itself doesn't even need to be expressed in words.

Girls Will Be Girls-and Girls Will Be Mean

I wonder what would happen if we challenged the notion that "girls will be girls-and girls will be mean" in the same way that we currently challenge "boys will be boys." What if attributing bad behavior to the "mean girl" phenomenon-which can be defined as "publicly humiliating and spreading nasty rumors about each other, pitting friend against friend, excluding or rejecting former friends, and even engaging in physical aggression"-is an easy way out of a complicated situation? What if what we're really seeing and not understanding is girls learning about their own social power just as society finally allows them the space to do so? As researcher Lyn Mikel Brown says, "It's no coincidence that just as girls were exercising their power and challenging gender roles we saw more concern about meanness and aggression among girls. While they're feeling powerful and in control, girls are up against new pressure to act like traditional nice girls or risk being labeled mean. As a result, many take their strong feelings and competitive urges underground or at least out of sight of adults who might be watching."

What if, instead of rolling our eyes and telling girls to "be nice," or ignoring fraught situations altogether, we talked with girls early and often about power-their own and that of others-and helped them recognize that they have more power than they realize and that they can use it for good or to hurt? "Mean girls" are able to wield more than their share of power by co-opting the power of others. We need to help girls claim (or reclaim) their power.

1. Name what we see when girls engage in "mean girl" behaviors. Take the time to process it. Encourage young women to pay attention to how they feel as they gain and lose power through their social-emotional experiences. What could be gained by recognizing the power in their words, their energy, and their relationships? Use what they see in the media, from the Disney Channel to Real Housewives, as case studies. What do they notice in the shift of power when sarcasm, put-downs, exclusion, and even physical aggression become part of the story?

2. Use mindfulness techniques and self-compassion-defined by the three components of self-kindness, sensing oneself as part of a common humanity, and maintaining perspective in challenging circumstances-to help girls stay centered in the moment.

3. Teach girls to use social power for good. Organizations like Fearlessly Girl, Because I Am a Girl, Girl Talk, and Girls Inc. are just a few of the many that can help girls find ways to be "sheroes" in their schools and communities.

4. Encourage girls to claim academic autonomy by differentiating instruction based on interests and passions. "Voice and choice" is just one way to begin.

5. Understand that "girl" isn't a singular identity. When a girl is black, Latina, trans, lesbian, queer, disabled, autistic, poor, immigrant, etc.-or any combination of these-her relationship to power is different. Do the work to understand that and your role in supporting her.

6. Take a look at our dress codes and the systemic oppression that lives within them. Dress codes that target girls as potential distractions and force them to adhere to arbitrary rules around knees, shoulders, and collar bones teach them that their physical selves are something to be ashamed of, disempowering them at a time when they are most vulnerable.

7. Push back against traditional gender expectations that encourage girls to be nice at all costs. Pay attention to what we're modeling for our girls in our language and our behavior-and the cost of what we're teaching. Powerful, brave girls don't always fit into traditional roles, and we have to be mindful of our responses when girls behave in unexpected ways. Make space for the full range of human emotions and the myriad ways that femininity is expressed.

8. Help boys understand the roles they play. Emerging sexuality for heterosexual and bisexual girls can add a new dimension to power struggles between boys and girls, and between girls competing over boys. And slut shaming and sexual misbehavior change the power dynamic between girls no matter their sexual identities. By giving boys new ways of relating to the girls around them in terms of consent and bodily autonomy, we make room for them to generate new, healthier rules for relationships.

9. Most importantly, however, we as educators must begin by refusing to accept that "girl drama" is unavoidable. This work begins with us, but it can serve all of the students in our care.

A Few Ways We Can Help

For more ideas on how to help girls, read " 12 Ways to Prevent Girlfighting and Build Girl Allies."

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Rejecting the 'Mean Girl' Framework | Edutopia

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Ideas for guiding girls toward positive interactions with each other. ©Shutterstock.com/Syda Productions Responding to our male students' fights, sexual misbehavior, or general misconduct with the comment "boys will be boys" is widely recognized as unhealthy and unacceptable.

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Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/ . Make your own animated videos and animated presentations for free. PowToon is a free tool that allows you to develop cool animated clips and animated presentations for your website, office meeting, sales pitch, nonprofit fundraiser, product launch, video resume, or anything else you could use an animated explainer video.

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08 October 2017 ITS Newsletter.pdf - Google Drive

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08 October 2017 ITS Newsletter.pdf - Google Drive

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How to Develop a School Culture That Helps Curb Bullying | MindShift | KQED News

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How to Develop a School Culture That Helps Curb Bullying | MindShift | KQED News

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Bronxdale doesn't track bullying rates, but Quintana said that students are now more conscious of the forms bullying takes, and are more apt to express concern for their peers and to sign agreements with one another. Some students who didn't like to come to school because of bullying now do, she said. Further, students who misbehave are still held accountable.

"Restorative practices don't get rid of discipline," Quintana added. Rather, they supplement other discipline, so that kids who are suspended, for example, learn what they did wrong and why it matters. "It's the restorative practices that will prepare kids for the world beyond high school," she said.

Treating bullying as a hurtful act that violates shared values, rather than as a character defect, encourages kids to understand why their behavior was wrong, and to apologize and make amends, according to James Dillon, a retired school principal and author of Reframing Bullying Prevention to Build Stronger School Communities.

"Bullying shouldn't ever be acceptable, and students should be held accountable-but also learn how and why what they did is wrong, and not just suffer the pain of consequences," Dillon says.

This restorative justice model, where kids are coaxed to accept responsibility, figure out ways to remedy the harm and restore the damaged relationship, helps them learn from their actions and internalize a moral code.

"Punishment makes things worse," said danah boyd, author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. "Schools have to start from a place of empathy. Why is a student doing something harmful to other students?" she added. Zero-tolerance policies toward student misbehavior have been shown to have the opposite effect of what was intended by their adoption: A task force set up by the American Psychological Association to study the issue found that zero-tolerance policies in schools worsened school climates, provoked more student misbehavior and led to higher expulsion and suspension rates for minorities. And no-questions-asked penalties against kids who mistreat their peers stunts the growth of personal conscience; the punished child will instead fixate on his "unfair" penalty rather than the harm he committed.

And when it comes to social media, ugly exchanges among kids can feel like a scourge to school administrators. But the customary ways schools have responded, including some variation of assemblies, lectures, and disciplinary action, seem to have had little effect.

"The current rules and punishment-based approach that schools are using is not working to address the concerns of bullying in school," says Nancy Willard, director of Embrace Civility in the Digital Age. "And it certainly will not be effective in addressing hurtful acts via social media, because schools are not making the rules for social media."

What can schools do to reduce bullying among students on school grounds and online?

Drawing from social science research and experience in schools, some experts on bullying, learning and social media have fresh ways of thinking about and responding to the problem.

Build the right culture. "It is easier to think that the problem is because of character flaws in a few students or to blame parents for not doing a better job of raising their kids," says Dillon.

In fact, to reduce aggression among kids, school leaders need to start with the climate within the building. Schools with an authoritarian and hierarchical ethos teach kids that obeying rules as decreed by the grown-ups in power is what counts; this only exacerbates jockeying for status among the students, which inspires bullying. A better approach would have school officials and teachers talk with students about what matters and then rally around the collective values and beliefs on which they agree. When adults try to influence rather than control kids, the grown-ups are more likely to be heard. "Real accountability should be toward those commonly held and articulated values of the school community," Dillon said.

Encourage influential kids to take the lead in changing the culture. In an ambitious yearlong study of 24,191 middle school students during 2012 and 2013, social scientists Betsy Levy Paluck, Hana Shepherd and Peter Aronow found that kids with abundant social connections were effective in changing school norms. Anti-bullying messages created and propagated by these influential students reduced conflict in school by a statistically significant margin. Notably, the student body, rather than the teachers, identified the well-connected kids.

Introduce social and emotional learning for students and teachers. "What's been missing from school is the affective dimension of learning," says Janice Toben, who heads up the Institute for Social and Emotional Learning in Menlo Park, California. For 27 years, Toben taught elementary and middle school children how to self-regulate and handle conflict, and now educates teachers on best practices for social and emotional learning.

"We challenge teachers to engage in the social and emotional dynamic of their students, because learning is social and emotional," she said.

Schools could make space for more face-to-face interactions among students, and encourage all teachers to ask reflective questions and focus on students' personal or social insights. Sharing responses like these builds empathy and develops emotional skills in children; they learn how to construct an emotional vocabulary, communicate honestly and directly, and resist online retaliation.

One method she designed is called "Open Session," where adolescents share their worries and challenges with one another; in return, they receive support and real-life wisdom from their peers, and clarify for themselves the real source of worry. Regular meetings like this, along with mindfulness practices and even improvisation, can give kids the tools to understand themselves better, react less impulsively, and show more compassion for others. Teachers, too, need social and emotional support, Toben adds, and would benefit from Open Sessions with their colleagues. What's essential to making this kind of learning work? "Time," Toben said.

Work with the majority of kids who don't bully and don't approve of it. Fellow students are well-situated to deflate a bully's barbs, but few kids intervene when they see abusive behavior directed at their peers. Student witnesses to bullying are more likely to stand up for peers in schools with caring and inclusive climates because bullying violates school norms. But how can school leaders get those kids to step up? First, don't alienate them with language that seems to blame them for a behavior - bullying -t hat they didn't commit. Instead, tell them how important they are in building a stronger school; they are leaders and allies in constructing a better school environment, and should be told so repeatedly. "The most important belief driving positive change and reframing bullying prevention," Dillon writes, "is that students are the solution to the problem not the cause of it."

Ensure that teachers, coaches and school administrators aren't modeling bullying. When kids see adults at school mistreat one another, they can't help but conclude that such conduct is actually OK, regardless of what they're told. Of even greater harm is when teachers and coaches oppress the kids they're instructing; screaming at athletes for making mistakes, for example, or humiliating kids in the classroom, underscores a message that harsh interpersonal behavior is the way of the world.

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How to Develop a School Culture That Helps Curb Bullying

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Bronxdale doesn't track bullying rates, but Quintana said that students are now more conscious of the forms bullying takes, and are more apt to express concern for their peers and to sign agreements with one another. Some students who didn't like to come to school because of bullying now do, she said.

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Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices | Edutopia

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Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices | Edutopia

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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9 TED Talks recommended by students, for students |

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9 TED Talks recommended by students, for students |

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Which TED Talks do students love? We asked TED-Ed Club Members around the world to share their favorites. Below, check out 9 great talks recommended by and for young people:

7. Casey Neistat: High school stories
Californian high school student Nathan Cao says that Casey Neistat's TEDx talk influenced his outlook on life: "Casey Neistat's talk taught me that as I am fortunate to live in the United States and go to a great school, I must seize this opportunity to help someone else who does not receive the same luxuries that I do. This has fueled my love for community service and helping others. I often volunteer at the senior home and the homeless shelter. At the moment, I am starting a club at my school that will help the refugees who are in dire need of our support. There is so much that I can do to improve the lives of people who need it most."

To celebrate and amplify youth voices in your community, start a TED-Ed Club.
Author bio: Annie Brodsky is a university student and occasional intern at TED-Ed. We at TED-Ed Blog think she's fabulous. Art credit: iStock. To learn something new every week, sign up for the TED-Ed Newsletter here >>

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9 TED Talks recommended by students, for students

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Which TED Talks do students love? We asked TED-Ed Club Members around the world to share their favorites. Below, check out 9 great talks recommended by and for young people: 7 .

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Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices | Edutopia

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Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices | Edutopia

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When presented with new material, standards, and complicated topics, we need to be focused and calm as we approach our assignments. We can use brain breaks and focused-attention practices to positively impact our emotional states and learning. They refocus our neural circuitry with either stimulating or quieting practices that generate increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, where problem solving and emotional regulation occur.

Brain Breaks

A brain break is a short period of time when we change up the dull routine of incoming information that arrives via predictable, tedious, well-worn roadways. Our brains are wired for novelty. We know this because we pay attention to every stimulus in our environment that feels threatening or out of the ordinary. This has always been a wonderful advantage. In fact, our survival as a species depended on this aspect of brain development.

When we take a brain break, it refreshes our thinking and helps us discover another solution to a problem or see a situation through a different lens. During these few minutes, the brain moves away from learning, memorizing, and problem solving. The brain break actually helps to incubate and process new information. Consider trying these activities with your class:

1. The Junk Bag

I always carry a bag of household objects containing markers, scrap paper, and anything that one would find in a junk drawer -- for example, a can opener or a pair of shoelaces. Pick any object out of the junk bag and ask students to come up with two ways this object could be reinvented for other uses. They can write or draw their responses. Once students have drawn or written about an invention, they can walk the room for one minute sharing and comparing.

2. Squiggle Story

On a blank sheet of paper, whiteboard, or Promethean Board, draw one squiggly line. Give students one minute to stand and draw with their opposite hand, turning the line into a picture or design of their choice.

3. Opposite Sides

Movement is critical to learning. Have students stand and blink with the right eye while snapping the fingers of their left hand. Repeat this with the left eye and right hand. Students could also face one another and tap the right foot once, left foot twice, and right foot three times, building speed they alternate toe tapping with their partner.

4. Symbolic Alphabet

Sing the alphabet with names of objects rather than the letters.

5. Other Languages

Teach sign language or make up a spoken language. In pairs, students take turns speaking or interpreting this new language for 30 seconds each.

6. Mental Math

Give a set of three instructions, counting the sequence to a partner for 30 seconds. Example: Count by two until 20, then count by three until 50, finishing with seven until 80. Switch and give the other partner another set of numbers to count.

7. Invisible Pictures

Have a student draw a picture in the air while their partner guesses what it is. You could give them categories such as foods, places, or other ways to narrow the guessing.

8. Story Starters

A student or teacher begins a story for one minute, either individually or with a partner. The students then complete or continue it with a silly ending.

9. Rock Scissors Paper Math

With the traditional game, the last call-out is "math." With that call, students lay out one, two, three, or four fingers in the palm of their hand. The best of three wins.

Focused-Attention Practices

A focused-attention practice is a brain exercise for quieting the thousands of thoughts that distract and frustrate us each day. When the mind is quiet and focused, we are able to be present with a specific sound, sight, or taste. Research repeatedly shows that quieting our minds ignites our parasympathetic nervous system, reducing heart rate and blood pressure while enhancing our coping strategies to effectively handle the day-to-day challenges that keep coming. Our thinking improves and our emotions begin to regulate so that we can approach an experience with variable options.

For the following practices, the goal is to start with 60 to 90 seconds and build to five minutes:

1. Breathing

Use the breath as a focus point. Have students place one hand close to their nose (not touching) and one hand on their belly. As they breathe in, have them feel their bellies expand. As they exhale, they can feel the warm air hit their hand. Students will focus on this breath for only one minute. Let them know that it's OK when thoughts sometimes come into the mind uninvited. Tell them to exhale that thought away.

2. Colors

Visualize colors while focusing on the breath. Inhale a deep green, and exhale a smoky gray. Have the students imagine the colors as swirling and alive with each inhale. If a student is de-escalating from an angry moment, the color red is a great color to exhale.

3. Movement

For younger children, direct students to stand and, as they inhale, lift an arm or leg and wiggle it, exhaling it back to its original position. For younger grades beginning these focused-attention practices, it's good to include an inhale and exhale with any type of movement.

4. The Deep-Dive Breath

We inhale for four counts, hold for four, and exhale slowly for four counts. You can increase the holding of breath by a few seconds once the students find the rhythm of the exercise.

5. Energizing Breath

We pant like a dog with our mouths open and our tongues out for 30 seconds, continuing for another 30 seconds with our mouths closed as we take short belly breaths with one hand on the belly. We typically take three energizing pant breaths per second. After a full minute, the students return to four regular deep inhales and exhales.

6. Sound

The use of sound is very powerful for engaging a calm response. In the three classrooms where I teach, we use rain sticks, bells, chimes, and music. There are many websites that provide music for focus, relaxation, and visualization. Here is one of my favorites.

7. Rise and Fall

As we breathe in and out through our noses, we can lie on the floor and place an object on our stomachs, enhancing our focus by watching the rising and falling of our bellies.

When we are focused and paying attention to our thoughts, feelings and choices, we have a much greater opportunity to change those thoughts and feelings that are not serving us well in life and in school. When we grasp this awareness, we see and feel the difference!

How do you stimulate or quiet your students?

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Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices

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When presented with new material, standards, and complicated topics, we need to be focused and calm as we approach our assignments. We can use brain breaks and focused-attention practices to positively impact our emotional states and learning. They refocus our neural circuitry with either stimulating or quieting practices that generate increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, where problem solving and emotional regulation occur.

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45 Riddles and Brain Teasers for Kids - EverythingMom

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45 Riddles and Brain Teasers for Kids - EverythingMom

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45 Riddles and Brain Teasers for Kids

What starts with the letter "t", is filled with "t" and ends in "t? You'll hear this question and many other riddles being tossed around at the dinner table in our house. The kids can't get enough of them. I love that they get the kids thinking differently which is always a great skill to learn. Here are 45 of our favourite riddles to share with your family.

In addition to the 45 brain teasers and riddles we gathered below, our readers tried to stump us. We share 6 reader submissions for you to try in the video below:

Q: In a one-storey pink house, there was a pink person, a pink cat, a pink fish, a pink computer, a pink chair, a pink table, a pink telephone, a pink shower- everything was pink! What color were the stairs?
A: There weren't any stairs, it was a one storey house.
For Additional Reading: 50 Tongue Twisters for Family Fun Additional Reading: 51 April Fools Prank Ideas Additional Reading: 50 School Lunch Box Ideas
If you liked these riddles, you might enjoy our list of 50 tongue twisters for the family. These are just a handful of the riddles and brain teasers we've enjoyed being stumped over. Do your kids enjoy a good riddle? Do they have a favourite?

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45 Riddles and Brain Teasers for Kids - EverythingMom

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What starts with the letter "t", is filled with "t" and ends in "t? You'll hear this question and many other riddles being tossed around at the dinner table in our house. The kids can't get enough of them. I love that they get the kids thinking differently which is always a great skill to learn.

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Social Skills Lesson Plans for Middle School

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Social Skills Lesson Plans for Middle School

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Basic . . . .
. Accepting Criticism
Accepting "No"
.American Table Manners
Apologizing
.Dealing with Fear
Expressing Feelings
Following Directions
. Introducing Yourself
. Passing in Hallways
.Proximity
.. Accepting Consequences
.Children's Rights
.Controlling Anger
.Dominance & Submission
.Following Rules
.Good Sportsmanship
.Learning to Disagree
.Responding to Defeat
.Using Self-Control Reading Body Language
.Showing Respect
. Solving a Problem . Talking With Others. The Most Magical Words . Using Humor
. Waiting Your Turn

Disciplinary

. Adhering to Dress Codes
.Appropriate Langua
.Willingness to Try New Tasks ge .
Asking Questions
. . Being on Time. Netiquette
.. Staying on Task
.Tolerance of Differences Being in a Group Discussion
. Resisting Peer Pressure
Setting Goals

. Brainstorming
.Complying with Requests
. Getting Teacher's Attention
. Ignoring Distractions
. Listening to Others

Self-Esteem
. Accepting Compliments
.Changes in Adolescence
.Exchanging Gifts
.Expressing Success
.Giving Compliments
.Handling Embarrassment
.Helping Others
.Knowing Strengths
.Self-Defense
.Self-Improvement
.Trigger Points & Buttons

. Accepting an Apology

.Asking a Favor . Being a Good Listener . Arguing Respectfully

.. Conversational Skills
. Dealing with Bullying
.Declining an Invitation
. Expressing Empathy
.Expressing Grief
.Get Someone's Attention
.Interrupting
. Maintaining Friendships
.Making New Friends
.Media Models
. Offering Assistance
.Reacting to Rumors
. Refusing Requests . Responding to Prejudice . Responding to Teasing
.Showing Appreciation
.Teen Violence
.Visiting a Sick Friend Conflict Resolution

Teacher Recording Form

Vision Statement

. Accepting Disciplinary Actions
.Completing Agreements
.Determining Time for a Request
.Following Safety Rules
.Following Verbal Directions
.Greeting a Dog and Its Owner
.Making a Suggestion
.Reporting Emergencies
.Reporting Inappropriate Actions
.Shopping
.Showing Respectful Submission
. Theater Behavior Prevocational Skills
. Doorway Etiquette
.Interacting with Opposite Sex
.Internet Safety & Courtesy
. Interviewing Skills
.Introducing Others
.Introducing Yourself
.Making An Appointment
.Managing An Angry Person
.Personal Hygiene
.Professional Conduct
.Relaxation Strategies
.Riding an Elevator
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Social Skills Lesson Plans for Middle School

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Basic . . . . . Accepting Criticism Accepting "No" .American Table Manners Apologizing .Dealing with Fear Expressing Feelings Following Directions . Introducing Yourself . Passing in Hallways .Proximity .. Accepting Consequences .Children's Rights .Controlling Anger .Dominance & Submission .Following Rules .Good Sportsmanship .Learning to Disagree .Responding to Defeat .Using Self-Control Reading Body Language .Showing Respect .

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50 Writing Prompts for All Grade Levels | Edutopia

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50 Writing Prompts for All Grade Levels | Edutopia

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Sometimes students need a little push to activate their imaginations.

The collection of prompts below asks young writers to think through real or imagined events, their emotions, and a few wacky scenarios. Try out the ones you think will resonate most with your students.

As with all prompts, inform students that their answers should be rated G and that disclosing dangerous or illegal things they're involved in will obligate you to file a report with the administration or school counselors. Finally, give students the option of writing "PERSONAL" above some entries that they don't want anyone to read. We all need to let scraggly emotions run free in our prose sometimes.

If your class uses daybooks (an approach recommended in Thinking Out Loud: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning), wait for composition notebooks to go on sale at Target, the Dollar Store, or Walmart for $0.50 a piece. To organize the daybook, direct young writers to leave the first three pages blank and number and date each entry-adding these entries to a table of contents that they create as they work so they can return to specific entries later.

Should cameras on drones watch all public spaces to prevent crime, or is that a violation of privacy?

Do Americans have it too easy? Why do you think that?

What causes racism?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hires you as a consultant to determine how best to use $20 billion to save the world. What's your plan?

What's the worst thing about the internet?

Would you rather be very beautiful or very smart? Explain.

You can save one object before your house burns down. What is it? What makes that object important to you?

How much control over your life do you have? What makes you say that?

Describe your ideal life 15 years from now. What is something you can do every day to reach that goal?

What would your friends say is your most lovable quality? Describe that quality.

What is something scary that you would like to try? What makes it scary for you? How might you overcome that fear?

What things do you conscientiously do to feed your brain?

What are three of your most profound learning experiences? Where and when did they occur?

By age 18, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders. What is it about television violence that is so compelling to people?

Would you rather be loved or respected? Because?

Does social media represent individuals authentically? Explain with examples.

Imagine that it's the last day of high school and you've been asked by a teacher to say a few words that summarize the events that have occurred over the last four years that are most meaningful to you. What do you say?

High School Prompts

Which classmate would be the best to lead us through a zombie apocalypse? Why?

What real-life situations would work out better for you if you were a different gender? Why?

How can you tell when someone your age is feeling insecure? Are most people more insecure or anxious than they let on?

If the internet were to crash forever, what would the benefits be for you? The drawbacks?

Write a scene that features a) a classmate, b) $100 million, and c) magical shoes.

What three features should your future house have? Why?

If you starred in a television show about your life, what would the show be called? What genre would it be? (Examples: comedy, drama, thriller, romance, action-adventure, fantasy, superhero, soap opera, reality, game show, space adventure, Western, tragedy, etc.) Summarize the plot of an episode.

In the future, what extreme sports will people be talking about?

Is your ethnicity an important part of your identity? How so?

You get to take one book, one food item, and one famous person (living or dead) to a deserted island. What and who do you take? Why?

Write a powerfully supportive email to yourself 10 years from now. Send that email to yourself using FutureMe.org.

You have been selected to be king or queen of your school. What are five rules that every kid should follow at your school? What should the punishment be for rule breakers?

What do the five friends you hang out with most have in common? How are you most like them? How are you different from them?

What contributes to someone becoming a bully? What can help stop someone from bullying?

Do you make friends slowly or quickly? Describe how one of your important friendships evolved.

Should we fear failure? Explain.

If a wizard could tell you anything about your future, what would you most like to know?

Do you believe in luck? Are you superstitious? How so? If not, why do you think some people are?

Middle School Prompts

I wish my teachers knew that . . .

What's the most beautiful person, place, or thing you've ever seen? Share what makes that person, place, or thing so special.

Which is better, giant muscles or incredible speed? Why?

What is your most difficult subject in school? Why is it difficult? What can you do to get better at that subject?

Rewrite "Hansel and Gretel" from the witch's perspective.

Describe a scary situation that you've experienced.

What is your first memory? Describe it.

You wake up tomorrow with a silly superpower that makes you famous. What is that silly power? How does it lead to your becoming an international superstar?

Are you a good loser? Explain.

What are examples of things you want versus things you need?

Last Friday, you were given one wish by a magical panda. You tried so hard to make the wish positive, but after the whacked-out events that unfolded over the weekend, you regret ever meeting that tricky panda. What did you ask for, and what happened?

I wish my friends . . .

Describe a routine that you often or always do (in the morning, when you get home, Friday nights, before a game, etc.).

What things do all kids know that adults do not?

What TV or movie characters do you wish were real? Why?

Elementary School Prompts

After they've finished an entry, ask students to read their work aloud or exchange daybooks for a read-around. If you give the entries written feedback, show that their work is respected by using a sticky note or scratch paper.

Don't forget to write along with your students. Why should they have all the fun?

What are your students' favorite writing prompts?

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Sometimes students need a little push to activate their imaginations.

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How to Get Students to Slow Down and Think

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How to Get Students to Slow Down and Think

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A MiddleWeb Blog

Porcupines and Castles: Help Your Kids Slow Down and Think

It's hard to love a porcupine. I know this because in 6th grade I had a teacher that reminded me of one.

Whenever we crossed paths in the hall or in class, she grew agitated, tense, and seemed to 'bristle.' I'm pretty sure that her reaction was due to my "total disregard for manners and politeness." ...Her words - not mine.

Despite our 'prickly' interactions, there was one particular aspect of her class that I loved. Instead of spending all of our class time on triple-digit multiplication and greatest common factors, 'Mrs. Porcupine' would often start class with a collaborative, competitive, thinking challenge that she called a 'brain stretcher.'

Though it was decades ago, I can still vividly remember the day that she introduced the 'castle problem.' It went like this...
An army is trying to take over a castle that is surrounded by a moat. The moat is square in shape and is 20 feet across. It is also full of crocodiles and other dangerous beasts that will attack if the water is disturbed. The only equipment brought by the army (other than their swords and shields) is several planks of wood that are 19 feet long. How can the attacking army best get across the moat to take over the castle?
My brain lit up. Castles...attacking armies...moats with crocodiles!?! This was my kind of problem. Immediately my classmates and I went to work planning, sketching, and scribbling. After a few minutes, Mrs. Porcupine stopped the class, asked us to pair up, and to discuss two things. First we were to share our 'plan' for getting the army across the moat. Second, we were to explain any potential problems with our plan.

Our teacher then asked us to stop our planning...and to start again. 'This time..." she said. "...We are going to practice thinking more slowly." She then proceeded to walk us through each aspect of the problem.

Over the next 10 minutes, our teacher modeled several helpful steps for us. She started by asking us to describe the 'goal' of the castle problem. Immediately, my friend Jeremy called out, "To get across the mote and kill the other army!" Mrs. Porcupine thanked Jeremy, then paused and asked for additional details about the 'goal' of the problem. Other students started to chime in. They mentioned the moat, the monsters in the water, and the limited supplies. The class finally decided on the following:

GOAL
To get across the moat with as many live soldiers as possible using only the stuff we have.

The teacher then asked us to identify any barriers or constraints that might affect how we went about solving the problem. The class talked about the width of the moat, the length of the wooden planks, the crocodiles, not being able to disturb the water, and the potential difficulty of trying to build something using no nails.

'Good," Mrs. Porcupine declared. "Now...over the next 8-10 minutes, I want you to try to come up with not just one, but two potential solutions to the castle problem. Be prepared to share your ideas and explain what potential drawbacks might exist with what you have come up with."

We got back to work, and when 10 minutes was over, began discussing several of our classmates' ideas. Then, in groups, we worked to identify which solutions were the most likely to work.

Getting Students to Take the Stairs Instead of the Elevator

Now, decades later, I look back at the castle problem and see the benefits of slowing students down so that they engage in each step of the problem-solving process. After all, real-world problems are rarely - if ever - solved quickly. They require a variety of skills including interpreting information, planning and methodical implementation, checking results, and trying alternative strategies (Muir, Beswick, & Williamson, 2008).

In my current role as an educator (Mrs. Porcupine might be surprised!), I often notice that students seem impatient when presented with an opportunity to engage in evaluative, strategic or extended thinking. They would rather rush to 'take the elevator' instead of working to 'climb the stairs.'

This common tendency of wanting to take the elevator also pops up in current educational research. Studies suggest that when students are presented with authentic challenges that require them to explore multiple solutions, rarely is enough time spent framing or examining the problem to be solved (Svihla & Reeve, 2016).

As a result, I now spend quite a bit of time designing/developing open-ended problems that have good, better, and best solutions. I also work with students in the early stages of problem solving to explore and interpret information and to brainstorm different problem-solving approaches.

We work individually, in pairs, and in groups to look for multiple solutions and then spend time evaluating the accuracy and/or effectiveness of what we have come up with. Over time, students grow less concerned about finding a quick, correct answer - and more comfortable and confident with the slow, cognitive wrestle that problem-solving requires.

Problem-Solving Tools and Tips for Your Classroom

A variety of resources and tools exist to help facilitate better problem-solving in the classroom. Several sites such as FitBrains, Braingle, and SharpBrains put together brain-teasers and logic problems for students to solve.

One of my favorite sites is PuzzleFry. Using the 'sort by category' feature, teachers and students can sort through dozens of problem types that include logic puzzles, pictorial puzzles, investigations, mysteries, visual puzzles, riddles, and much more.

One my class's recent favorites was one titled " Who killed the gardener? " Students have the option of submitting their own answers and/or viewing answers submitted by other students as well.

Although the site is useful, since many of these puzzles and brain-teasers have a single correct answer, I try to revamp the problems to be more open-ended. Doing so seems to encourage students to develop and rework multiple solutions to a problem; it also allows our class to examine and evaluate other students' solutions on a continuum of 'likelihood of success' ....rather than just as right or wrong.

Other teachers are also finding it useful to design their own problems for their students to solve. In Dan Meyer's Ted Talk, he offers suggestions on how take problems found in existing curricular materials and transform them into real-world challenges.

Meyer has also developed a number of real-world challenges for other teachers to use in their classroom to help their students thinking strategically and critically.

Helping Students to See the Steps

Despite decades of experience in walking, jumping, running, and playing sports, I still occasionally trip when going up and down the stairs. It happens for a variety of reasons. Either I am trying to go too fast, I miscount the number of stairs, or sometimes I'm just not paying attention. While it is fairly common for many of us to do this, it is still pretty embarrassing.

The same thing happens in the classroom. After years of working with students and teachers, I believe that the effectiveness of any problem-solving activity depends largely - if not entirely - on our students' ability to identify and utilize the steps involved in higher, deeper thinking.

I mean, we use terms like creation, evaluation, synthesis, strategizing, evaluation...etc. to describe what we are doing in class. But...that doesn't ensure that students know and employ the steps required for deep, extended thinking.

That's why I find it helpful to work with students to identify the steps that are unique to each kind of task. Doing so keeps students from rushing the problem-solving process and helps ensure that that they engage in cognitive step necessary to the task.

The Need for More Problems and Problem Solving in Schools

Not all of what we do in the classroom can - or even should - involve castles, moats, and alligators. But there seems to be room for much improvement in how we go about challenging our students to think slowly, methodically, and deeply about real-world problems.

We might not feel as confident as Mrs. Porcupine or Mr. Meyer about facilitating fantastic problem-solving. But I would wager that each one of us wants to develop students who are able to think deeply about real-world challenges. After all, in a decade or two, it will be them running this world...not us. The least we can do is seek to provide students with better problems to solve and the support and scaffolding needed to do so.
References
Muir, T., Beswick, K., & Williamson, J. (2008). "I'm not very good at solving problems": An exploration of students' problem solving behaviours. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 27(3), 228-241.

Svihla, V. v., & Reeve, R. r. (2016). Facilitating Problem Framing in Project-Based Learning. Interdisciplinary Journal Of Problem-Based Learning, 10(2), 113-130.

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How to Get Students to Slow Down and Think

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A MiddleWeb Blog Porcupines and Castles: Help Your Kids Slow Down and Think It's hard to love a porcupine. I know this because in 6th grade I had a teacher that reminded me of one. Whenever we crossed paths in the hall or in class, she grew agitated, tense, and seemed to 'bristle.'

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Mess With Their Minds – Laura Randazzo – Solutions for the Secondary Classroom

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Mess With Their Minds – Laura Randazzo – Solutions for the Secondary Classroom

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Laura  Randazzo – Solutions for the Secondary Classroom

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Time to add some challenging fun to your classroom routine with Brain Teasers for teens! First, give these head-scratchers a try:

When you're ready, scroll down for the answers.
Now, did you really give yourself time to think through the answers?

Challenging, no? There are many different ways you might want to use these slides in your classroom, including:

1. Use as a routine bell-ringer activity to begin class one day each week. I use these as Brain Teaser Tuesdays (I enjoy alliteration), but they'll work great any day of the week.

2. Use them to soak up those occasional last few minutes of a class period when a daily lesson wraps up more quickly than you planned.

3. Use them as part of an ongoing team activity/contest that runs a full nine-week quarter. Each nine weeks, one of my colleagues sorts her classes into teams of three students. Then, students occasionally compete against the other teams throughout the quarter in review games, grammar skill-builders, and these sorts of brain games. She keeps a running tally of the teams' names and earned points, updating her website each week with the class standings. As the quarter rolls along, her room starts to feel a little like Hogwarts ("Ten points for Gryffindor!") and the teens really love it. To keep every team engaged, she uses makeshift whiteboards with page protectors, a piece of white paper, and a dry erase marker, which gives all of the teams time to formulate their answers before the answer is revealed. This helps encourage buy-in for all players since the game is not a race - the first team to answer doesn't earn more points than any other correctly answering team. At the end of the quarter, the winning team wins a prize or bonus points in the gradebook.

4. Use the slides as a reward for classes that hit certain benchmarks or goals.

There are 38 questions (and answers) in each volume, allowing you to use two questions per weekly session or one question two times a week in a semester. (Note: Questions #1 and #2 above are from my Vol. 1 bundle, while #3 and #4 are from Vol. 2.) Most semesters run 18 weeks but I threw in a couple of extra questions just in case there's one or two you don't like/want to skip.

In my class, I use just one question to begin class every Tuesday, but I switch up the question for my later classes because my teens love to blab the answer at lunchtime to their friends in my afternoon classes. (Don't they have anything better to talk about than my class? Sheesh.) You also could work from the beginning of the bundle with one class and work from the end of the bundle with a different class, just to keep students on their toes.

However you choose to use these slides, I hope they find a place in your teacher's toolbox of activities as you work to help your teens develop word sense, lateral thinking, and those oh-so-important logic skills.

Teach on, everyone!

UPDATE: By popular demand, a third and fourth volume of Brain Teasers are also now available. Click here for Vol. 3 and here for Vol. 4. Enjoy!

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Time to add some challenging fun to your classroom routine with Brain Teasers for teens! First, give these head-scratchers a try: When you're ready, scroll down for the answers. Now, did you really give yourself time to think through the answers? Challenging, no? There are many different ways you might want to use these slides...

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The Most Successful Apologies Have These 8 Elements |

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The Most Successful Apologies Have These 8 Elements |

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I'm pretty good at apologizing and I think it's primarily because of two reasons:

1. I've been married for over 28 years.

2. I mess up a lot.

That means I get a lot of practice apologizing. I've logged way more than 10,000 hours perfecting my craft, so by Malcolm Gladwell's measurement, I'm pretty much the world's foremost expert on apologies. The fact my wife is a loving and forgiving woman doesn't hurt, either.

More than 28 years experience has shown me there are eight essential elements of an effective apology:

1. Accept responsibility for your actions - If you screwed up, admit it. Don't try to shirk your responsibility or shift the blame to someone else. Put your pride aside and own your behavior. This first step is crucial to restoring trust with the person you offended.

2. Pick the right time to apologize - It's a cliché, but true - timing is everything. You can follow the other seven guidelines to a tee, but if you pick a bad time to deliver your apology, all of your hard work will be for naught. Depending on the severity of the issue, you may need to delay your apology to allow the offended person time to process his/her emotions. Once he/she is mentally and emotionally ready to hear your apology, make sure you have the necessary privacy for the conversation and the physical environment is conducive to the occasion.

3. Say '"I'm sorry," not "I apologize" - What's the difference? The word sorry expresses remorse and sorrow for the harm caused the offended person, whereas apologize connotes regret for your actions. There's a big difference between the two. See #4 for the reason why this is important.

4. Be sincere and express empathy for how you hurt the other person - Along with saying I'm sorry, this step is critical for letting the offended person know you acknowledge, understand, and regret the hurt you caused. Make it short and simple: "I'm sorry I was late for our dinner date. I know you were looking forward to the evening, and being late disappointed you and made you feel unimportant. I feel horrible about hurting you that way."

5. Don't use conditional language - Get rid of the words if and but in your apologies. Saying "I'm sorry if..." is a half-ass, conditional apology that's dependent on whether or not the person was offended. Don't put it on the other person. Just man up and say "I'm sorry." When you add the word but at the end of your apology ( "I'm sorry, but...") you're starting down the road of excuses for your behavior. Don't go there. See #6.

6. Don't offer excuses or explanations - Keep your apology focused on what you did, how it made the other person feel, and what you're going to do differently in the future. Don't try to make an excuse for your behavior or rationalize why it happened. If there is a valid reason that explains your behavior, it will likely come out during the apology discussion. But let the other person go there first, not you.

7. Listen - This is perhaps the most important point of the eight and one that's often overlooked. After you've made your apology, close your mouth and listen. Let the offended person share his/her feelings, vent, cry, yell, laugh, scream...whatever. Acknowledge the person's feelings ( "I understand you're upset"..."I see I disappointed you"..."I know it was hurtful"), but resist the urge to keep explaining yourself or apologizing over and over again. I'm not suggesting you become an emotional punching bag for someone who is inappropriately berating you; that's not healthy for either party. But many times the awkwardness and discomfort of apologizing causes us to keep talking when we'd be better off listening.

8. Commit to not repeating the behavior - Ultimately, an apology is only as effective as your attempt to not repeat the behavior. No one is perfect and mistakes will be made, but a sincere and earnest apology includes a commitment to not repeating the behavior that caused harm in the first place. Depending on the severity of the offense, this may include implementing a plan or process such as counseling or accountability groups. For minor offenses it's as simple as an intentional effort to not repeat the hurtful behavior.

So there you go. The Great 8 of giving effective apologies, honed from years of groveling...err...apologizing for my mistakes. What do you think? Are there other tips you would add? Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

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The Most Successful Apologies Have These 8 Elements

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I'm pretty good at apologizing and I think it's primarily because of two reasons: I've been married for over 28 years. I mess up a lot. That means I get a lot of practice apologizing. I've logged way more than 10,000 hours perfecting my craft, so by Malcolm Gladwell's measurement, I'm pretty much the world's foremost expert...

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Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices | Edutopia

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Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices | Edutopia

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When we take a brain break, it refreshes our thinking and helps us discover another solution to a problem or see a situation through a different lens. During these few minutes, the brain moves away from learning, memorizing, and problem solving. The brain break actually helps to incubate and process new information. Consider trying these activities with your class:
1. The Junk Bag
I always carry a bag of household objects containing markers, scrap paper, and anything that one would find in a junk drawer -- for example, a can opener or a pair of shoelaces. Pick any object out of the junk bag and ask students to come up with two ways this object could be reinvented for other uses. They can write or draw their responses. Once students have drawn or written about an invention, they can walk the room for one minute sharing and comparing.
2. Squiggle Story
On a blank sheet of paper, whiteboard, or Promethean Board, draw one squiggly line. Give students one minute to stand and draw with their opposite hand, turning the line into a picture or design of their choice.
3. Opposite Sides
Movement is critical to learning. Have students stand and blink with the right eye while snapping the fingers of their left hand. Repeat this with the left eye and right hand. Students could also face one another and tap the right foot once, left foot twice, and right foot three times, building speed they alternate toe tapping with their partner.
4. Symbolic Alphabet
Sing the alphabet with names of objects rather than the letters.
5. Other Languages
Teach sign language or make up a spoken language. In pairs, students take turns speaking or interpreting this new language for 30 seconds each.
6. Mental Math
Give a set of three instructions, counting the sequence to a partner for 30 seconds. Example: Count by two until 20, then count by three until 50, finishing with seven until 80. Switch and give the other partner another set of numbers to count.
7. Invisible Pictures
Have a student draw a picture in the air while their partner guesses what it is. You could give them categories such as foods, places, or other ways to narrow the guessing.
8. Story Starters
A student or teacher begins a story for one minute, either individually or with a partner. The students then complete or continue it with a silly ending.
9. Rock Scissors Paper Math
With the traditional game, the last call-out is "math." With that call, students lay out one, two, three, or four fingers in the palm of their hand. The best of three wins.

Focused-Attention Practices

A focused-attention practice is a brain exercise for quieting the thousands of thoughts that distract and frustrate us each day. When the mind is quiet and focused, we are able to be present with a specific sound, sight, or taste. Research repeatedly shows that quieting our minds ignites our parasympathetic nervous system, reducing heart rate and blood pressure while enhancing our coping strategies to effectively handle the day-to-day challenges that keep coming. Our thinking improves and our emotions begin to regulate so that we can approach an experience with variable options.

For the following practices, the goal is to start with 60 to 90 seconds and build to five minutes:
1. Breathing
Use the breath as a focus point. Have students place one hand close to their nose (not touching) and one hand on their belly. As they breathe in, have them feel their bellies expand. As they exhale, they can feel the warm air hit their hand. Students will focus on this breath for only one minute. Let them know that it's OK when thoughts sometimes come into the mind uninvited. Tell them to exhale that thought away.

Visualize colors while focusing on the breath. Inhale a deep green, and exhale a smoky gray. Have the students imagine the colors as swirling and alive with each inhale. If a student is de-escalating from an angry moment, the color red is a great color to exhale.

For younger children, direct students to stand and, as they inhale, lift an arm or leg and wiggle it, exhaling it back to its original position. For younger grades beginning these focused-attention practices, it's good to include an inhale and exhale with any type of movement.
4. The Deep-Dive Breath
We inhale for four counts, hold for four, and exhale slowly for four counts. You can increase the holding of breath by a few seconds once the students find the rhythm of the exercise.
5. Energizing Breath
We pant like a dog with our mouths open and our tongues out for 30 seconds, continuing for another 30 seconds with our mouths closed as we take short belly breaths with one hand on the belly. We typically take three energizing pant breaths per second. After a full minute, the students return to four regular deep inhales and exhales.

The use of sound is very powerful for engaging a calm response. In the three classrooms where I teach, we use rain sticks, bells, chimes, and music. There are many websites that provide music for focus, relaxation, and visualization. Here is one of my favorites.
7. Rise and Fall
As we breathe in and out through our noses, we can lie on the floor and place an object on our stomachs, enhancing our focus by watching the rising and falling of our bellies.

When we are focused and paying attention to our thoughts, feelings and choices, we have a much greater opportunity to change those thoughts and feelings that are not serving us well in life and in school. When we grasp this awareness, we see and feel the difference!

How do you stimulate or quiet your students?

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Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices | Edutopia

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When presented with new material, standards, and complicated topics, we need to be focused and calm as we approach our assignments. We can use brain breaks and focused-attention practices to positively impact our emotional states and learning. They refocus our neural circuitry with either stimulating or quieting practices that generate increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, where problem solving and emotional regulation occur.

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Strategies for Students With Scattered Minds | Edutopia

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Strategies for Students With Scattered Minds | Edutopia

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Imagine a team without a coach guiding players toward working together to execute a winning strategy. Imagine a company without a leader to make sure that employees across departments are equipped and organized to collaborate on continually improving products and increasing sales. Imagine a marching band without a drum major to lead musicians through their complicated maneuvers while staying on beat.

The brain's executive function network performs in the same capacity as a coach, CEO, or drum major: directing one's thinking and cognitive abilities toward setting goals and planning to achieve them, establishing priorities, getting and staying organized, and focusing attention on the task at hand. Now imagine trying to perform those abilities if your brain's executive functioning system wasn't working effectively -- no coach to develop a game plan, no CEO to help you organize your resources for accomplishing your goals, no drum major on which to maintain your learning focus.

That's the challenge facing students with attention deficit disorders, who in effect struggle with executive dysfunction. As a former classroom teacher and school psychologist, Donna worked with many youth who had great difficulty with various executive functions, including:

The ability to inhibit behavior, which often resulted in impulsivity, an abundance of movement, and difficulty following instructions

Initiation and planning behavior, the lack of which made it hard for students to get started on classroom work and assignments and maintain their focus on learning tasks for the duration required to complete them

Working memory and the ability to selectively maintain attention on information needed to complete a learning task

Cognitive flexibility, or the ability to recognize when it may be useful to adjust one's thinking and action based on new information

As we noted in our post Strategies for Strengthening the Brain's Executive Functions, children and youth can be taught to develop their executive functioning to become more successful self-directed learners. Explicit instruction about executive function and how to improve it is especially useful for students with learning challenges, as they can benefit the most from learning to rein in and consciously direct their "scattered minds."

Executive Function "Workouts"

Practical instruction to help struggling students hone executive function offers potential dual benefits. First, students will be better prepared to improve their performance in school and, later, on the job. Second, you can reduce classroom management issues by teaching these students strategies to avoid distractions -- and to create fewer distractions for classmates. If you need to guide youth with attention deficits, put these strategies to work in your classroom:

"Just a moment, let me think." Students who exhibit poor impulse control often benefit from additional adult support, including one-on-one strategizing about ways to overcome habits like blurting out an answer without thinking it through or behaving in ways that distract other students. For example, you might suggest that an impulsive student repeat the question either out loud or silently before answering. Maybe you'll agree on a "secret word," a password that you can say to remind the student about using his or her executive function abilities. Incorporating regular opportunities for movement into lessons can also help students reduce impulsive behaviors and stay focused on learning.

Start with the end in mind. Initiative, defined as readiness and skill in taking action, applies many aspects of executive function to maximum impact in school, work, and life. To help students develop initiative, guide them to establish their clear intent for a learning project as the first step in setting out a concrete plan to complete the task. Then if they start to go off task, they can revisit their clear intent: "Is what I'm doing now helping me to achieve my goal?" Breaking down learning tasks into a series of instructions is another useful strategy that models for students a step-by-step approach to direct their attention toward a small, discrete action that will move them closer to accomplishing their clear intent. Each little success along the way -- clicking another item off the to-do list -- can help keep students focused on big goals.

Learn to remember. Researchers working with students with attention deficits found that training to improve working memory (PDF) helped them avoid distractions and improve school outcomes. A variety of strategies have been developed to bulk up working memory. We've found that teachers and students alike enjoy and find useful a recall activity that we call Memory Pegs, which employs association to enhance memory. To help students recall the names of the first ten U.S. presidents in order, for example, guide them to say the names as they tap "pegs" on their body in descending order: George Washington (head), John Adams (shoulders), Thomas Jefferson (heart), all the way to number ten, John Tyler (toes).

Consider more options. Cognitive flexibility is a form of higher-order thinking that students can apply in creative problem solving and in weighing the pros and cons of multiple alternatives. Students with ADD may grab on to the first idea or answer that comes to mind. You can teach students to map their options with a graphic organizer that places the problem or question in the middle and encourages them to surround it with two or more solutions -- and the more the merrier. Option mapping reinforces that there is often more than one way to solve a problem or think about a concept. That in itself is a useful example of executive function at work!

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Strategies for Students With Scattered Minds | Edutopia

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Imagine a team without a coach guiding players toward working together to execute a winning strategy. Imagine a company without a leader to make sure that employees across departments are equipped and organized to collaborate on continually improving products and increasing sales.

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Advice for students so they don't sound silly in emails (essay)

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Advice for students so they don't sound silly in emails (essay)

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Dear College Student,

If your professor has sent you a link to this page, two things are likely true. First, you probably sent an email that does not represent you in a way you would like to be represented. Second, while others might have scolded you, mocked you or despaired over the future of the planet because of your email, you sent it to someone who wants to help you represent yourself better.

In part, because only a click or swipe or two separate emails from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and texting, the lines between professional emails and more informal modes of writing have become blurred, and many students find the conventions of professional emails murky. We think we can help sort things out.

In the age of social media, many students approach emailing similar to texting and other forms of digital communication, where the crucial conventions are brevity and informality. But most college teachers consider emails closer to letters than to text messages. This style of writing calls for more formality, more thoroughness and more faithful adherence (sometimes bordering on religious adherence) to the conventions of Edited Standard Written English -- that is, spelling, punctuation, capitalization and syntax.

These different ways of writing are just that -- different ways of writing. The letter approach to emails is not always and forever better (or worse) than the texting approach. Knowing how and when to use one or the other -- based on why you are writing and whom you are writing to -- makes all the difference. So, if you use emojis, acronyms, abbreviations, etc., when texting your friends, you are actually demonstrating legitimate, useful writing skills. But you aren't if you do the same thing when emailing professors who view emails as letters.

Effective writing requires shaping your words according to your audience, purpose and genre (or type of writing, e.g., an academic email). Together these are sometimes called the rhetorical situation. Some of the key conventions for the rhetorical situation of emailing a professor are as follows:

1. Use a clear subject line. The subject "Rhetorical Analysis Essay" would work a bit better than "heeeeelp!" (and much better than the unforgivable blank subject line).

2. Use a salutation and signature. Instead of jumping right into your message or saying "hey," begin with a greeting like "Hello" or "Good afternoon," and then address your professor by appropriate title and last name, such as "Prof. Xavier" or "Dr. Octavius." (Though this can be tricky, depending on your teacher's gender, rank and level of education, "Professor" is usually a safe bet for addressing a college teacher.) Similarly, instead of concluding with "Sent from my iPhone" or nothing at all, include a signature, such as "Best" or "Sincerely," followed by your name.

3. Use standard punctuation, capitalization, spelling and grammar. Instead of writing "idk what 2 rite about in my paper can you help??" try something more like, "I am writing to ask about the topics you suggested in class yesterday."

4. Do your part in solving what you need to solve. If you email to ask something you could look up yourself, you risk presenting yourself as less resourceful than you ought to be. But if you mention that you've already checked the syllabus, asked classmates and looked through old emails from the professor, then you present yourself as responsible and taking initiative. So, instead of asking, "What's our homework for tonight?" you might write, "I looked through the syllabus and course website for this weekend's assigned homework, but unfortunately I am unable to locate it."

5. Be aware of concerns about entitlement. Rightly or wrongly, many professors feel that students "these days" have too strong a sense of entitlement. If you appear to demand help, shrug off absences or assume late work will be accepted without penalty because you have a good reason, your professors may see you as irresponsible or presumptuous. Even if it is true that "the printer wasn't printing" and you "really need an A in this class," your email will be more effective if you to take responsibility: "I didn't plan ahead well enough, and I accept whatever policies you have for late work."

6. Add a touch of humanity. Some of the most effective emails are not strictly business -- not strictly about the syllabus, the grade, the absence or the assignment. While avoiding obvious flattery, you might comment on something said in class, share information regarding an event the professor might want to know about or pass on an article from your news feed that is relevant to the course. These sorts of flourishes, woven in gracefully, put a relational touch to the email, recognizing that professors are not just point keepers but people.

We hope that these rules (or these and these) help you understand what most professors want or expect from academic emails. Which brings us back to the larger point: writing effectively does not simply mean following all the rules. Writing effectively means writing as an act of human communication -- shaping your words in light of whom you are writing to and why.

Of course, you won't actually secure the future of the planet by writing emails with a subject line and some punctuation. But you will help your professors worry about it just a little less.

With wishes for all the best emails in the future,

PTC and CHM

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Advice for students so they don't sound silly in emails (essay)

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Dear College Student, If your professor has sent you a link to this page, two things are likely true. First, you probably sent an email that does not represent you in a way you would like to be represented.

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Digital Promise Challenge Based Learning

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Digital Promise Challenge Based Learning

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We are surrounded by Challenges: large, small, local, global, short and long term. Some we choose, some choose us; some we look forward to, some we dread; some we address, some we try to ignore. Ultimately, how we individually and communally respond to Challenges will determine our future. As problems become increasingly complex and pressing, the need to develop a generation of engaged Learners equipped to identify Challenges and develop innovative and sustainable Solutions is crucial.

Using Challenges to frame learning experiences originated from an exploration of reality television, conversations with individuals who's lives center on Challenges, and reflection on personal learning experiences inside and outside of the classroom. When faced with a Challenge, successful groups and individuals leverage experience, harness internal and external resources, develop a plan and push forward to find the best solution. Along the way, there is experimentation, failure, success and ultimately consequences for actions. By adding Challenges to learning environments the result is urgency, passion, and ownership - ingredients often missing in schools.

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Challenge Based Learning | Take Action. Make a Difference.

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We are surrounded by Challenges: large, small, local, global, short and long term. Some we choose, some choose us; some we look forward to, some we dread; some we address, some we try to ignore. Ultimately, how we individually and communally respond to Challenges will determine our future.

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Classroom Community Ideas and Restorative Practice

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Classroom Community Ideas and Restorative Practice

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Find and save recipes, parenting hacks, style inspiration and other ideas to try.

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Team building games, team games, team challenge, team work games - Youth Group Games

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Team building games, team games, team challenge, team work games - Youth Group Games

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Team Building Games, Team Games, Team Challenge, Team Work Games | Youth Group Games | Games, ideas, icebreakers, activities for youth groups, youth ministry and churches.

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8 Fun and Effective Team Building Activities - Youth Group Games

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8 Fun and Effective Team Building Activities - Youth Group Games

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8 Fun and Effective Team Building Activities. Youth Group Games, ice breaker games, team building activities and other ideas for Youth Groups

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Fun Team Building Activities For Teens:Games & Exercises

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Fun Team Building Activities For Teens:Games & Exercises

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There is no 'I' in a team. A team must work together or perish together. But getting teens working together is a recipe for disaster, especially if they can't identify with one another. Whether you are coaching your daughter's basketball team or your son's football team, it is imperative that they bond as a close-knit and productive team to be successful. So what can you do to break the ice? Team building activities for teens is the answer. But, what kind of activities should you organize, and how will it help your teen. Read on and learn more about team building for teens including benefits, types, games, activities and exercises today.

Benefits of Team Building Activities For Teens:

Team building exercises and activities for youth are constructive and fun ways to help your teenager get to know each other, build trust, communicate comfortably, develop relationships and most importantly, learn to work together to accomplish a goal. Besides, teenage team building activities also help them hone their communication, leadership and problem-solving skills. They evoke the best from each teenager.
[ Read: Group Activities For Teenagers ]
1. Improves Communication:

As stated by the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP), your core ability to communicate with your mates is an important skill to master in sports psychology. Encouraging your teen to engage in team activities that involve communication with team players can develop realistic expectations for performance and cultivate the right behavior. Improving the communication skills can bring in a healthier environment for other teammates too. Teens who lack social skills get a great chance to communicate with team members.

2. Enhances Motivation:

Athletes draw motivation from various sources - some internal while some external. For a few, motivation comes from the fellowship generated by team members rallying around a common cause. Team building exercises are a great way of knowing what is important in terms of sports participation and what is not. It is also important to know that some teen team building activities can cause cliques and alienate team-mates, having a negative impact on overall performance. To improve the team's motivation, you should consider activities that are constructive and inclusive.

3. Creates A Productive Environment:

Team building activities are known to create a productive and cohesive environment where teens realize the full potential of participation. If the team's environment is not cohesive and every team member's goal is differing, your overall productivity of the team will suffer. To boost productivity, consider taking up team building exercises that can recognize each member's individual contribution to the group's success. The more productive the team, the more you will enjoy, and the more you can improve your team's performance and your quality of life.

4. Other Benefits:

Helps your teen learn about cooperation
[ Read: Social Skills Activities For Teens ]
Helps those who face trouble in organizing, planning, and flexible thinking

Positive interaction boosts the self esteem of your teen

Types of Team Building Activities For Teens:

There are four major types of team building games and activities for young people.

1. Communication Activities:

These activities help teens learn that expressing their ideas and listening to other team members is one of the best ways to resolve a problem. The best example of communication activity is a game known as 'the human knot' in which the team members hold hands and disentangle limbs to form a circle.

2. Problem Solving Activities:

These type of activities will help your teens work collectively to find a solution to any problem. Hot lava is one such activity, where the players pretend as if there is lava on the ground and move around without touching it. They focus on planning, organizing, and critical thinking.

3. Planning and Adaptability Activities:

They teach teens on how to change their plans if the first one doesn't work. Egg drop activity is one good instance. The primary goal is not to break the egg when dropped from a height. The team should figure out some ways to protect the egg.

4. Trust-Building Activities:

They work on building a relationship among team players. One excellent example is 'Blindfold obstacle'. In this, one member is blindfolded and should completely trust the partner's directions to get out of the obstacle.

So, here are our top 25 team building games, activities, and exercises for teens.
You Will Need:
Select one person from the group to be the captain. The captain has to stand on one side of the room, facing the hall.

The rest of the players have to stand on one limb, touching the opposite wall. The objective of the game is to touch the captain.
[ Read: Fun Party Games For Teenagers ]
The players can move freely, but have to maintain complete silence. If the captain turns around, the players have to freeze still. If the captain catches anyone moving, then the whole team will have to return to the starting position.
You Will Need:

Three different colored balls

Two goals

Set up a soccer field with goals at each end.

Divide the teens into two teams.

One soccer ball will represent the boys, the other ball will represent the girls, and the third soccer ball will be co-ed. Tell each player clearly which balls is for which group.
You Will Need:
20 or more items like bowling pins, balls, etc.

Divide the teens into two teams. Make three dividing lines on the ground.

Put an equal amount of objects behind both baselines.

Now each team has to steal as many objects as it can.
You Will Need:
Players need to make it successfully to the other team's baseline without being tagged to steal the object.

Make the first group stand, facing the second group. The second team has to set an amount of time to look at the appearance of the opposing team.

Once the time is up, the second group has to leave the room and change ten things about them. The things must be noticeable. They cannot change things that are out of view.
[ Read: Outdoor Activities For Teens ]
When the second group returns, the first team has to observe and write down the changes. You set an amount of time for noting down the chances.
You Will Need:
Announce to all the teens to make a queue by their birth date. But the catch here is that they cannot talk.

Once the players have lined up, ask them their birthdays.

You can play the same game with the height, birthday month or shoe size.
You Will Need:
This game is a cross between charades, Pictionary, and sculptionary.

Make a list of Pictionary words that are easy to draw, act and sculpt.

1 and 2 for charades.

3 and 4 for Pictionary.

5 and six sculptionary.

Give the player the first word from the list. The player will go back to his group and draw, act or sculpt out the word.

If the team guesses the word correctly, he gets a second chance to roll the dice and get a new word.
You Will Need:
Divide the teens into four teams and hand each team a some pens, paper and a tray of play-doh. Also, select a leader for the teams.

Give each group 12 straws and 18 inches of masking tape.

Give the kids ten minutes to build a container that can catch a golf ball dropped from a height of ten feet. Let the player select the 'ball dropper'.
You Will Need:
Balloons in two different colors (the number of balloons depends on the strength of the team.

The 'ball dropper' has to stand on a chair, holding the golf ball at the eye level. The group leader or player will place the container on the ground where he thinks the ball will land. Give each team three to five attempts.

Divide the teens into two teams.

Handover a balloon to each player and tell them to blow it up.

After they have blown up the balloons, have the teams to stand at the opposite ends of the room.
You Will Need:
Place the cups in the middle of the room. Half should be upside down, and the other half should be right up.

Divide the teens into two teams and name one team 'up' and other 'down'.

The 'up' team has to turn the right way cups down, and the 'down' team has the flip the upside down cups. Assign a specific time to complete the task.
You Will Need:
You can play this game with one or multiple groups.

Give a cloth napkin to each group of 10 participants. One player from the team has to demonstrate the use of the napkin, but without speaking. The demonstration must be original, and the player needs to stand while describing.

After the allotted time gets over, count the cups.

At the call of 'go', the players have to launch the balloons into the air by hitting it.
You Will Need:
Have the teen make a circle.

Now tell them to put their hand in the middle and grab two hands without looking at each other.

Now the teens have to talk to each other How To untangle without letting go of the hands. It may involve climbing over arms or crawling under.

The players will become more tangled if they don't communicate with each other.
You Will Need:
The game requires teens to figure out 'How To' cross an imaginary stream of lava.

The players have three rocks that they can use to get across the lava stream. But before that, they need to follow some rules and regulation.
You Will Need:
Divide the group into two or more teams.

Give each team papers, tape, and one egg. Tell them that they have to build a rocket that will be thrown up in the air or dropped from the height. The rocket has to protect the egg from smashing.

Once the kids have made the rockets, put the egg in the rocket.
You Will Need:

Scarf to blindfold the kids.

Objects to create the obstacles.

Stopwatch.

Now drop or throw all the rockets from the same height.

Divide the teens into groups of 5.

Now let the kids create an obstacle course. They can create either one or two obstacle course.

Blindfold the kids and let one member of the team guide the blindfolded kids around the course.

Assign a time for this activity, the maximum should be 3 minutes.
You Will Need:
Have each player introduce themselves by telling their name and one truth and lie about themselves.

After each participant has introduced himself/herself, allow the players to question each other on their two statements. The primary objective of the game is to convince the other participants that their lie is the truth. They even have to guess the truth and lies of other participants.

After the questioning session is done, tell the players to vote on each statement.

Each correct guess will earn 1 point.
You Will Need:
The game is ideal for a group consisting of more than ten players.

Have the team stand in a circle, facing counter-clockwise. Each player must meet the participant back in front of him or her.
You Will Need:
Now tell the players to put their right leg in, towards the circle.

Tell every player to put his hand on a Nerf ball. Now throw the ball up in the air.

If someone grabs the ball, tell him to take just two steps. After the second step, the player has to throw the ball to another player in the dodge ball style.
You Will Need:
If the ball hits the player, he will sit right down where he is. He can still play, but cannot move from the seated spot.

Divide the players into two teams and tell them to write their name on a paper chit and put it in the bowl.

Now tell the players to come forward and pick a name. The name will become the player's game name. But remember, the names have to be a secret. They players cannot share it with anyone.
You Will Need:
Place a red-hot poker in the middle of the room.

Tell the children to stand around the red-hot poker holding hands.
You Will Need:
Divide the teens into two teams.

Hand each team an end of the rope.
You Will Need:
Divide the children into three or four teams, depending on the strength of the players.

At the leader's signal, each team has to huddle and come up with a sound and action to perform for the other teams. Each time must perform for other teams at least twice.
You Will Need:
Make the teens stand in line with one kid holding the hula-hoop over his arm.

Now tell every player to join the hands and try doing the shuffle, shove, and shimmy together.

They have to shuffle the hula-hoops over the shoulders, arms, legs and pass it to the partner next to him without breaking the chain.
You Will Need:
Divide the team into pairs.

One teammate will play the role of the driver, and the other has to play the role of the wheelbarrow. The driver needs to hold the 'wheelbarrow's ankles as he walks with his hands.
You Will Need:
Divide the children into two teams.

Now line the players, shoulder to shoulder with one hand and palm up and pointer finger straight out.

Place a rod so that it sits on each player's finger.

The game will be played in rounds.

Divide the participants into two teams.

At the beginning of round one, the players will get just a short amount of time to place their chairs in a position. They cannot move their spot after placing the chairs.

Then the teammates have to pass the ball to each other, without being intercepted by the opposing team.

After making the pass, the player has to toss the ball to the basket.

The team that makes the maximum baskets will be the winner.

On the count of three, the teammates have to place the rod on the ground or floor, without dropping it.

This classic game will not just get the teens moving, but moving together to reach the end of the race.

The goal for all the teams is to make the same sound and do the same action at the same time.

The game will continue until all the groups perform the same sound and movement combinations.

At the blow of the whistle, the teams have to pull the ropes to bring down the opposing team. Or you can even mark a distance where the teams have to bring the rope against the force of the opponent's pull.

You can even team the strongest against the weak. Take ten high school students and place them on 20 middle school students.

The teens then have to push, drag and pull one another into the red-hot poker. If any player touches or breaks it, then he will be disqualified.

The game will end when every player gets out except one.

The player to the left of the couch has to call out a name. The player has to switch the name with the person who called out his name. Repeat the process.

So the players have to try to get to the empty couch and call their original names to get their team members on the sofa.

If the player catches the ball; the thrower has to sit down. The sitting players can snag the ball if it comes to them and can then throw it and the standing player. The aim of the seated player should be to get the standing players out.

The game will end when just one player is standing.

Now tell them to move in and shrink the size of the circle. The players have to keep moving closer until each player is touching the other player's side.

On a count of three, the players have to put their hands on the shoulders of the player in front of them.

Then tell them to sit down slowly. If the kids do it correctly, they will end up sitting on each other's lap.

When they get back to the starting point, either let them swap or select another pair.

The egg that is in the best condition will win.

If none of the eggs break, then throw again to decide the winner.

The players cannot step on the floor. They can stand on the furniture or anything, but the floor.

The players cannot remain still. They have to move from one piece of furniture to the other. You can even set up obstacles to make the games more challenging.

The game will improve problem-solving capabilities in teens. They will learn to work together to find a solution to the problem.

The balloon will be eliminated if it hits the ground. Make sure the team members collect the sunken balloon.

The first team to knock down the opposing team's balloons will be the winner.

The group that can get the ball in the container the most times will be the winner.
The game will encourage healthy competition and cooperation.

Each team has to send a volunteer to the leader to get the giant dice. The teams will take turns at rolling out the dice.

Give each teen a number and tell them to arrange themselves in the numerical order without talking to each other.

Neither can they hold up the fingers. But do not prohibit them from using or making up their sign language or sublanguage.

Now swap the roles of the group and continue with the game.

Once they have reached the opponent's, the players can steal one object and release one captive player.

If a teammate is tagged, he has to wait at the opposition's baseline until he is rescued.

If the player touches the wrong ball purposely, pull him/her out of the game for 2 minutes.

You do not need to restrict the game to soccer only. You can even try it with netball or AFL.

You can even split the group into two teams who have to compete to touch the captain first. Or let each participant touch the captain individually. If he is caught, he can return to the start, but the other players will stay where they are.

Team Building Games For Teens:

1. Creeping Closer:

It is one of the excellent team building exercises for teens, as everyone has to work together and communicate effectively.

2. Three Ball Soccer:

This is the fun team building games for teenagers will keep the teens as much involved as possible. With this soccer team building activities, they are more likely to spend time with each other.

3. French v/s English:

This game will encourage a competitive spirit in teens.

4. Spot The Difference:

Divide the teens into two groups.

The game will improve focusing ability in children.

5. The Mute Organization:

The game will improve the communication skills within the teens.

6. Actionary:

Designate the following numbers to the dice-

The first team that gets the most numbers of words in the list will be the winner.

7. Drop The Ball:

The game is best for small groups.

8. Balloon Frenzy:

The objective of the game is to knock down or burst the opposition's balloons while keeping your own in the air.

We'd recommend you to play the game in three rounds as its super fun This is a super exciting team building games for your teenage son or daughter.

9. Cups And Downs:

The team that has the most up turned cups will be the winner.

10. The Game Of Responsibilities:

The game will not only let the kids learn about the plethora of ways to use a napkin but will also stimulate ideas, conversation and laughter.

Team Building Activities For Teens:

1. Human Knot:

The human knot is an excellent team building activity for teens. It will help teens express their ideas and opinions and listen to others.

[ Read: Social Skills Activities For Teens ]

2. Hot Lava:

3. Egg Rocket:

The game will encourage kids to strive for the best. The players will look and think about different solutions if the first one does not work.

4. Trust Me:

This game is ideal for kids aged 10 and above.

This game will help the kids develop trust in each other.

[ Read: Indoor Activities For Teens ]

5. Truth And Lie:

This teen team building activity will let the team members know each other better by interacting and communicating.

Team Building Exercises For Teens:

1. Lap Sit:

2. Scatter Ball:

Scatter ball is a dodge ball with a twist. It's best played with a group of more than 10 people.

3. Four On The Couch:

The objective of the game is to get four people on a team on the same couch.

4. Red-Hot Poker:

5. Tug-Of-War:

6. The Consensus Exercise:

7. Pass The Hula Hoop:

[ Read: Physical Activities For Teens ]

8. Wheelbarrow Race:

9. Helium Stick:

10. Seated Basketball:

Basketball team building ideas are a fun way to interact each other.
You Will Need:

We hope these team building games, exercises, and activities help your teen bond with his playmates. Remember to award the winners with a chocolate or anything you think they'll like. What team building activities and exercises did you use to help the teams get to know each other and trust one another? Share with us by commenting below!

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Fun Team Building Activities For Teens:Games & Exercises

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There is no 'I' in a team. A team must work together or perish together. But getting teens working together is a recipe for disaster, especially if they can't identify with one another. Whether you are coaching your daughter's basketball team or your son's football team, it is imperative that they bond as a close-knit and productive team to be successful.

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Games by Age - Group games, team games, ice breakers

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Games by Age - Group games, team games, ice breakers

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Whether you're young or simply young at heart, everyone enjoys a group game. Here are instructions, sorted by age.
Games for All Ages (Kids, Teens, College, Adult) Games Especially for Kids Games Especially for Teens and College Students Games Especially for Adults
When playing games with kids, be sure to provide adequate supervision. Some games that are for "all ages" involve messy situations or a lot of running - dress appropriately and be prepared!

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Games by Age - Group games, team games, ice breakers

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Whether you're young or simply young at heart, everyone enjoys a group game. Here are instructions, sorted by age. Games for All Ages (Kids, Teens, College, Adult) Games Especially for Kids Games Especially for Teens and College Students Games Especially for Adults When playing games with kids, be sure to provide adequate supervision.

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Lesson Plans - Character Education - Life Skills - Middle School

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Lesson Plans - Character Education - Life Skills - Middle School

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Lesson Plans - Character Education - Life Skills - Middle School

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Character education and life skills teaching guides for middle school.

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Teambuilding Activities - Waite Advisory Curriculum

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Pass the Clap

Focus: Having fun, Visual communication

Stand in a circle. One person has the "clap" in their hands and turns to face a pers

on next to them. About when they make eye contact or just when they are facing each other, they clap simultaneously. Then, that next person has the clap and turns to pass it on. After it has been passed around once and everyone has the hang of it, begin to time him or her. Encourage people to move around, jump into a different part of the circle, and reverse it.

Focus: Get to Know One Another

Divide everyone into two groups. Have one group make a circle facing outward. The second group then makes a circle around the first group and faces inward. Everyone should be facing someone from the other circle. Each person can talk to the person across from them for a minute or two before you yell, "SWITCH", and have one circle move to the left or right a few steps. If participants seem shy, give them a topic to talk about each rotation, such as movies, DECA, college, food, etc.

Move It Buddy

Focus: Memorizing Names

Stand in a circle, with one person in the middle. When the person in the middle says so, participants will be given 30 seconds to one minute to memorize the first, middle, and last name of the person to their left and right. After the minute is over, the person in the middle will point to somebody and say "left" or "right". If he or she pauses or stumbles saying the full name, he or she is then in the middle. If everyone seems to know each others names right away, the person in the middle can call out, "Move It Buddy!" and everyone must rush to a new space and begin memorizing names again.

Highs and Lows

Focus: Getting Personal (create school related questions for students to follow)

An activity like this is good for a small group or a group that is coming to the close of a year. Hand out pipe cleaners to each participant and begin by doing the activity yourself. Start by tying a knot on one end and saying where you born, when, and to whom. Then, go through your past and identify the highs and lows you've experienced, while moving the pipe cleaner to display the ups and downs. Other variations that can make people more comfortable with the activity include describing only high school or this past year.

Build a Shelter

If you're working with a large group, split them up into groups of four or five. Give each group a pipe cleaner, a piece of paper, toothpicks, tape and string. Give each group 20 minutes to construct a shelter that has to withstand the assault of three tennis balls being dropped on it from above. The groups will have to communicate and problem solve in order to build the structure to the standards required. Typically, group members will take on clear roles. You may see the leader, the builder, the thinker and so on. After testing each structure with the tennis balls, discuss what worked well and what didn't work as well when it came to group cohesiveness, roles, problem solving and communication.

Construct a Tale

Stand in a circle with a tennis ball or bean bag. The first person holding the ball or bag begins to tell a story, but he can only say 10 words. He then tosses the item to another person in the circle, who continues the story with 10 additional words. Each person may only add to the story one time, so the players must listen carefully and consciously note how many players remain to wrap up the story. After every player has contributed, discuss with the group what went well and how the story could have come together better. Play the game a second time to see if communication, listening skills and teamwork improve.

Elephant, Palm Tree, Monkey

Station the group in a circle and stand in the center of the circle to start the game. As the facilitator, you start by pointing at one of the players while calling out "elephant," "palm tree" or "monkey." If you call out "elephant," the person you point to must cross his arms in front of him like an elephant's trunk, while the players to the left and right of him must form a "C" with their arms to form the elephant's ears. If you call out "palm tree," the person you point to must raise her arms above her head, while the players to her right and left mimic hula dancing. And if you call out "monkey," the central individual puffs out his cheeks, while the players surrounding him scratch their arm pits. The last of the three participating players to react to the command becomes the next facilitator, while you take her position on the circle. Continue playing the game for five minutes. Discuss with the players afterward how it felt to take on the different roles and what roles were hardest for them.

Birthday Line-Up

Instruct the group to line up according to the order of the players' birthdays. Players need only consider the month and day of the birthdays, not the year. To make the challenge more difficult, require the group to complete the task without talking at all. Players will have to use sign language to indicate their birthdays.

Hula Hoop Pass

Large, open indoor spaces can accommodate the hula hoop pass activity. Have all members of the group stand in a circle facing each other. Place a hula hoop around one player's arm, and then have all the players join hands. The group must work together to move the hula hoop around the entire circle without letting go of each other's hands. Once the group accomplishes this task, make it more difficult by imposing a time limit. See how fast the group can move the hula hoop around the circle.

Alphabet Pockets

Divide into teams of 4 or 5. Everyone on the team searches through their own pockets, wallets, pocketbooks, etc. The group tries to come up with one possession which begins with each letter of the alphabet. The winning team is the one to have objects representing the most letters.

Big Bad Wolf

Supplies: LOTS of newspaper and LOTS of tape.

Wanna see how well your group does building something together? Try this fun exercise.

Divide students into teams of 4-6. Give each team enough newspaper and tape to build a newspaper shelter of some kind. It must be big enough to get three team members inside. Set a time limit on how long you want to give teams to work on the project.

The Big Bad Wolf (youth leader) then attempts to blow the shelter down. Award prize to the best construction job.

Afterward, have a giant paper fight.

Blind Square

This is a quick, but effective teambuilding activity.

Supplies:

1.) As many blindfolds as you have team members

2.) 1 large rope, at least 40 feet in length

Simply blindfold all your team members and throw a rope on the ground next to them. Tell them to make a square, using the full length of the rope lying on the ground next to them. Give them no further instructions.

There is no trick. It's just great to see who takes charge, how they organize the corners, if one person facilitates from the middle, etc.

Don't Let It Drop

Divide your group into teams of 6-8 people. Give each team a balloon. At 'go' each team tries to keep their balloon aloft. There are 3 rules: #1 players cannot use their arms or hands, #2 a player cannot touch the ball twice in a row and #3 everybody on the team must touch the ball at least once. If your team's balloon touches the ground you are out and must sit down on the ground. Last team standing wins.

Trashbag Create-a-Game

Supplies: Large, black trash bag filled with random items for every team.

Description:

Get some large trash bags together (preferably black ones that hide the contents of the bag). Have one for each team of 4-5 kids. Fill the bags with a half dozen of the most random items you can find.

Give each group a bag and tell them they have ten minutes to create a game from the contents of the bag.

Get the groups back together and have them "play" the game for everyone else to demonstrate what they created.

The wackier the items, the better. You'll be amazed at what they can come up with.

Give your squad different supplies such as newspaper, scissors, construction paper, glitter, straws, tape, string, etc. and tell them to create a sculpture that represents their school's spirit. Have them explain the significance. If the school's spirit is low, use this opportunity to discuss how they can improve their school's spirit.

Ball of String

While standing in a circle; pass a ball of string from one member to another. The rules are only the person with the string can talk. After everyone has had their turn to speak and share their feelings, there will be a web of string. This web illustrates the interconnected nature of group process. Everything they do and say affects the team. Now toss a balloon in the middle and have them try to keep it. They are not allowed to touch it. This symbolizes "teamwork".

Divide the group into 2. Each team will compete against each other to see who can get the challenge done faster. Challenges could be" line up according to birthdays, alphabetically by first name or last name, age, etc. Try the same challenges without talking.

Divide the group into teams (3 or more teams). Assign each group to build a certain machine with their own bodies such as a toaster, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, lawn mower, television, etc. Give them time to work it out. Then they build the machine and the other teams guess what it is.

Have group discuss things that are detrimental to functioning as a group. For each characteristic/action, throw an object into the playing space, the "minefield." Have group choose partners. One partner is blindfolded at one end of field. The non-blindfolded partners stand at the opposite end of the field and try to talk their partners through the minefield without running into any of the obstacles.

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Pass the Clap Focus: Having fun, Visual communication Stand in a circle. One person has the "clap" in their hands and turns to face a pers on next to them. About when they make eye contact or just when they are facing each other, they clap simultaneously.

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Advisories hold great potential for realizing many school objectives and being part of the school improvement effort of Small Schools and Small Learning Communities. William Glasser (1986) estimates that schools fail to engage more than half the students because they fail to fulfill four basic human needs for students: to belong and love, to gain power, to be free, and to have fun.

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Middle School Group Games | Great Group Games

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Middle School Group Games | Great Group Games

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Middle School Group Games | Great Group Games

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Find FREE middle school group games now. Great Group Games has free group game ideas to help you plan your activity.

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Creating a Culture of Connectedness through Middle School Advisory Programs

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Creating a Culture of Connectedness through Middle School Advisory Programs

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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In the middle of an ordinary day in an ordinary Los Angeles school, four middle school students shared fascinating insights in response to the question, "Does advisory help you feel connected to school?"

Without advisory school would be more distant. It would not be as cheerful. We would not be as connected to everybody.

-seventh grade girl

Everyone in the school shares that bond that everyone has an advisor. So, from 6th sixth grade to 12th grade, everyone shares that connection with one teacher, and I think that everyone throughout the day has opened up to someone. It gets you into the state of mind that school is not only about work, but that it is a place where teachers really know you and understand you. So, I think, as a school, having advisory connects everyone.

-eighth grade boy

I totally agree with that. It is, like, at least you go to school and know that at least there is one person who you are comfortable to talk to. Normally, for me there is more than one teacher, but, um, at least there is always one so you are not nervous about going to school.

-eighth grade girl

I think in 6th grade, around that period we can all, um, agree that is when you have violence problems or drug problems or even academic problems or personal problems. You get more independent. It is, like, you go to school, and you do not care that much about academic work, but, um, with your advisors and the things that the advisories provide do make you feel more close. ... It is, um, a place where you can get stuff off your chest. And once you do, you rethink what you are doing and think, like, um, is this right? So that helps with your school work.

-seventh grade boy

These four middle school students recognize the connection between having meaningful relationships with an adult and a group of peers and thriving academically. An advisory program facilitates these kinds of relationships and provides the structure that creates "connectedness" in a middle school. Connectedness is a characteristic of school cultures in which students have meaningful relationships with adults within the school, are engaged in the school, and feel a sense of belonging to the school. School connectedness is linked to higher grades, higher test scores, and lower dropout rates, regardless of students' socioeconomic status (Blum & Libbey, 2004; Jackson & Davis, 2000; Klem & Connell, 2004; Mac Iver & Epstein, 1991; McNeely & Falci, 2004; National Association of Secondary School Principals, 2006). Moreover, schools intentionally organized to promote personalization and the development of communities of learners better prepare adolescents for later success as adults (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989). It is particularly urgent for middle school educators to improve school connectedness, because the roots of alienation take hold during early adolescence.

Advisory

Middle school reformers have widely promoted advisory programs as a way to strengthen connectedness at the middle level. Broadly defined, advisory programs are configurations in which an adult advisor meets regularly during the school day with a group of students to provide academic and social-emotional mentorship and support, to create personalization within the school, and to facilitate a small peer community of learners (Cushman, 1990; Galassi et al., 2004; Galassi et al., 1997; Juvonen et al., 2004; National Association of Secondary School Principals, 2006; Stevenson, 1998).

While advisory programs have been promoted in the literature, and middle grades practitioners have intuitively recognize their value, up to this point there has been limited empirical evidence to support advisory programs. Additionally, there has been no accepted basis for identifying best practices in advisory programs (Galassi et al., 2004; Galassi et al., 1997). Thus, when schools have developed advisory programs and trained faculty and staff to serve as advisors, they have relied upon intuition and anecdotal evidence rather than empirical data. This article addresses the need for reliable information about successful advisory programs.

This article defines the qualities of advisory programs and advisors that foster connectedness based on research at three diverse middle schools with successful advisory programs that can serve as models for other schools. We gave every advisor and student in each school a questionnaire designed to establish which advisories fostered high levels of student connectedness. The questionnaire helped us determine which students felt most connected, which advisories reported high levels of connectedness, and which advisors perceived the same levels of connectedness as their advisees. We selected the three advisories at each site with the highest levels of connectedness, and we interviewed the advisors, observed their advisories, and conducted focus groups with their student advisees. We discovered seven salient characteristics about advisors and advisory programs that fostered connectedness at all three sites (see
Figure 1). These characteristics are discussed in detail through the remainder of this article.

Characteristics of effective advisors and advisory programs
Strong advisory programs address issues of community
Advisories with high levels of connectedness actively worked on creating a healthy community by addressing the way students related to one another. Advisors consciously helped students in their advisories work out issues among themselves, and they talked openly about the importance of treating each other with respect. An advisor remarked:

I like to stress that we are a family. So, we do not laugh at each other and nobody makes comments. They still do it, but we always come back to 'we are a family.' I am trying to break them of snickering and stuff like that.

Another advisor noted her frequent conversations with her advisory about friendship and ostracism. A third advisor mentioned a specific instance of conflict resolution when she pulled students aside and told them, "This is like our little family away from home, and you can't just leave it and [what happened between you] didn't feel right." At one school, a conversation protocol in the advisory helped students give one another positive feedback and asked them to "address issues that are caused by the behavior of someone in advisory." Another advisor talked about a student in her advisory who was always getting lost and having a hard time emotionally, so she asked her advisees to be the "big brother or sister" to her in other classes.

Figure 1 Advisor/Advisory characteristics that foster connectedness

Strong advisory programs address issues of community.

Strong advisories promote open communication.

Strong advisors know and care about their advisees.

Strong advisors closely supervise their advisees' academic progress.

Strong advisors are problem solvers and advice givers.

Students and advisors perceive that advisory directly improves academic performance.

Students and advisors perceive that advisory functions as a community of learners.

The theme of "community" was also evident in the student data. Students from all three schools referred to the trust games they used to help build a sense of community, and students in all of the focus groups shared two recurring comments: (1) advisory is a family; and (2) advisory helps student bond together. Students said they developed new friendships through their advisory programs. One student explained, "You become great friends with people you normally would not hang out with, which I think is great because you expand the way you know people." During the observations, students were not self-segregated ethnically, and students refrained from teasing and put-downs.

Both students and advisors reported that advisories addressed the issues that arise between grade levels within the school. At one middle school, advisors addressed problems the sixth graders were having with older students. At another middle school, advisors assigned seventh graders to an eighth grade buddy. A student described this buddy system as a way "to get to know someone new and help them with their problems, like your advisor did for you. It is kind of like a pay it forward thing." Students noted that one of the benefits to having a multiage advisory is that you form bonds with older and younger students. One advisor talked about how advisory created a nurturing culture at school, and another mentioned that she saw evidence of the brotherly and sisterly relationships between students continuing even after they moved on from her advisory.
Strong advisories promote open communication
Advisors at all three schools discussed their efforts to help students know each other and communicate openly by creating activities that helped them "bond" and "talk to each other." For example, advisors at each school talked about structuring activities in which students could get to know each other. Each described a different version of an activity in which one student was in the spotlight while other students asked questions to get to know him or her better. Advisors also talked about arranging trust walks and team-building games. At one school, Monday mornings started with a circle where students shared anything that was on their minds. One of the advisors articulated the connection between these activities and communication in the following way.

When I start out, I tell them, "We are going to get to know each other really well. We need to be able to trust each other." So, I do a couple of exercises at the beginning. I set up an obstacle course, and I blindfold them. I say, "Okay, some of you are going to be the leaders of this group. The rest of you are going to have to listen and trust the person that is verbalizing to you. That is the only way you are going to get through this, carefully." ... It is the level of trust and then you start building from that to issues at home or school. Where it is all involved, we can all discuss things, and it stays here. And that is what you want to [do]. You want them to get to know each other and build up friendship.

Students described communication as characterized by trust and intimacy. In the focus groups, students repeatedly talked about feeling "really close with" and "trusting" their advisors and peers as a rationale for sharing personal and academic pieces of themselves. One student used the word intense to describe the communication in advisory, and another mused that "people are really vulnerable, and we all share our feelings." One student even talked about "feel[ing] a connection" with his advisor. In more than half of the advisories observed, students shared emotions publicly. For instance, in one advisory there was a whole conversation about crying after an advisor offered his own feelings about a sensitive topic the group was discussing. When a student probed, "Are you crying?" the advisees all looked at the advisor intently, without giggling or other nervous responses that might be typical of middle school students in such a situation. Students said they regularly initiated conversations with their advisors for academic and personal reasons- a student's parents fighting, a disagreement with a friend, a problem with a teacher, or academic difficulties.

Students routinely made comments such as, "Like, when you need help, you just ask him and he will always help you" or "I tell my advisor, and she will help me." Students talked about feeling welcome to approach their advisors outside of the advisory, citing lunch and after school as "other good times to talk." Students said their advisors were easy to talk to and comforting. A student said advisees could "get things off their chest," and they "do not hesitate to share." Every advisor we interviewed confirmed this observation.
Strong advisors know and care about their advisees
In the focus groups, students talked about feeling known and cared about. Students at all three sites said their advisors knew them and asked them individualized questions about their personal lives, citing such topics and events as a basketball game, an event over the weekend, or a family doughnut shop. Interestingly, students at all three schools used the words notice and care in their descriptions of their advisors. When asked what makes a really good advisor, one student explained, "Having someone notice you-notice you are having a bad day." Students also relayed that their advisors were quick to notice when they were having a hard time. As one student commented, "She can really sense sometimes if you are upset, and she will initiate talking to you or ask you if everything is okay." Advisors, according to their advisees, know and appreciate their personalities. Students at each school site mentioned that they believed they had been "intentionally matched" with or "chose[n]" by their advisors.

The advisors claimed that noticing and caring about students was one of their primary aspirations. More than half of the advisors we talked to mentioned that one of the central goals of the advisory program was to know students well. "Get to know your kids," one advisor counseled, "then you can be perceptive enough to find ways to reach them." Advisors echoed this desire to "really know kids" and often talked about "connecting" with, "caring" about, "watching over," and "checking" on students. Advisors talked about approaching their students when "something doesn't look right," which paralleled students' feeling that their advisors noticed when they were not acting like themselves.

Another common characteristic of strong advisors was that they listened to their advisees and were interested in their ideas. When we asked the students what makes a strong advisor, students from every school site answered that being a good listener is one of the most important attributes. Again and again, students talked about how their advisors "really listen" and "hear" the students in the advisory. Students said their advisors were interested in their intellectual thoughts, and one student said his advisor asked probing questions, instead of just insisting she was right because she was the teacher. Students believed the advisors were excited about their advisees' opinions. In our observations, advisors listened attentively to students in the advisory group or in one-on-one conversations. Also, advisors took the ideas of their students seriously. In several advisories observed, the advisor gave minimal directions and spent the rest of the advisory period sitting next to and listening to various groupings of individual students.
Strong advisors closely supervise their advisees' academic progress
Students reported that their advisors were aware of how they were doing in their classes. In the focus groups, students commented that their advisors "know everything" about their academic standing. As one student put it, "Even if she does not know right away, she will find out." Another added, "Yeah. They find out everything." Contrary to what one might expect, students admitted it was helpful to have someone know their academic standing.

In the interviews, the advisors insisted that it was part of their role to know how students were doing academically. Advisors at each site reported that they talked with other teachers to find out how their advisees were doing. They sometimes sought out teachers in reaction to seeing poor work and low grades; however, they also initiated contact if they had not heard anything about a particular advisee in a while. Almost every advisor mentioned that one way they kept track of their students academically was through official progress reports at the end of the quarter and semester. An advisor added:

I, um, talk to their teachers and stuff. I have this one boy, he is amazing in one class and failing another. [I asked him,]"You get an A in math and science, and you are failing social studies. How is that possible?" So, it came out that he does all of his homework for his other classes and saves his social studies and does not get to it.

This type of awareness, inquiry, and follow-up on academic work was typical of the advisors we interviewed.

Advisors also reviewed their advisees' work and academic progress with them. Advisory period provided a structure for this regular academic review, since students at all three sites had time to do work during advisory on a weekly basis. In many advisories, the advisor posted a checklist of information and tasks on the board during this work time, some of which were directed at the whole group and some of which were directed at specific students. When students in one advisory were asked whether their advisor knew if they struggled academically, one student eagerly responded, "Immediately, they are all on it."
Strong advisors are problem solvers and advice givers
Students felt that an important attribute of strong advisors was their ability to offer assistance and give reliable advice. In the focus groups, students at all three sites talked extensively about going to their advisors to solve their problems. Students recounted approaching their advisors about bullying issues, friendship strife, homework dilemmas, and other "drama" of middle school. Students unanimously agreed that they would go to their advisors for advice when they experienced problems. One student explained,

Let's say you have a typical problem in a typical subject in school; she will give you some strategies to work it out. And, uh, if you, like, have a problem with your life, she will also help you. She will give you advice.

The advisors indicated during interviews that they, too, viewed problem solving as an essential part of their role. They structured opportunities for giving advice within the context of the advisory, and many advisors talked about problem-solving sessions as "organic" and "responsive to the needs of my kids." Advisors reported addressing many types of problems including racial tension, weak grades, misunderstandings with teachers, school policy, bullying and exclusion, and stress at home. Advisors talked about empowering students by problem solving with them rather than for them. For example, during observations we often heard students begin questions with phrases such as "What should I do about...?" "Can you help me with...?" and "How do you think...?" Advisors responded with questions such as "How would you solve that problem?" or "What do you think are your next steps?"
Students and advisors perceive that advisory directly improves academic performance
In all the three schools, survey data suggested both students and advisors perceived that advisory improved academic performance. Interestingly, students in advisories with high levels of connectedness were more likely to perceive links between academic performance and advisory than students in advisories with lower levels of connectedness.

In the student focus groups, 98%of students responded affirmatively when asked, "Do you think advisory helps you academically?" Students noted that their advisories helped them focus on their studies, receive critical academic support, strategize about classes and teachers, set academic goals, and belong to a group of peers striving for success.

The data from the survey we administered to advisors confirmed the qualitative findings and revealed that advisors, like their advisees, assign the advisory program a significant role in the academic success of students. Advisors often attributed the academic growth they witnessed in their advisees to the advisory program; however, they disagreed about the immediacy of the impact advisory had upon academic performance. Some claimed the evidence of the advisory program's academic influence was "right away," while others believed the evidence came "in the long run."

Advisors from each site said that the advisory program impacts students' academic performance because it sets an environment conducive to academic success. One advisor explained, "As you know, create a good climate, and you are going to have kids who perform at a good academic level." Another advisor commented,

It absolutely helps academically. I do not think middle school kids know how to talk with teachers and advocate for themselves, and they need good modeling. [Advisory] is an academic support.
Students and advisors perceive that advisory functions as a community of learners
Students talked about how fellow advisees were a useful academic resource, because they knew what they were learning and could help them with schoolwork. One student said that in his advisory, "There is a lot of time for people to help you. It is supposed to be for the teacher to help you, but there is a lot of unseen potential when you can have students help one another."

Advisors talked about how students gravitated toward one another during guided work time in the advisory. Advisors used language like peer tutoring or study groups to describe what happened when their advisees worked together. Advisors suggested that forming these study groups in the advisory propelled their advisees academically. Unprompted, one teacher noted a connection between this community of learners and the concept of connectedness. She said,

And that is what they do during advisory. They pull out homework and help each other. Which is nice, 'cause at least they get to have a study group. ... They feel connected to school and connected to their teacher and curriculum.

We saw and heard evidence of a community of learners during all of the advisory observations. In advisories at one school, student desks were clustered in groups of four, and students had their notebooks in hand or were quizzing each other. Another group sat on the floor with their advisor reviewing for a test.

At another school, students also sat in small circles studying together. One exasperated boy exclaimed, "I do not get this!" A girl walked up to him and began to explain mathematical functions. Two students stood at the board drawing out a problem, pointing to it, and talking about it. When a student asked her advisor if a problem was wrong, her advisor turned the question to the advisory group, "Are negative numbers real numbers? Who can help Damion with this question?" A conversation then ensued among five students, debating the nature of numbers.

Advisors at each of the sites explained that the students who struggled in a particular area intentionally sought students who were stronger in that area to get help and advice on their work. One advisor revealed how stronger students helped shape the academic culture of the advisory:

I have amazing kids, and what has happened is that the kids [who] are a little bit lower, even though they are not that low, the group seems to be pulling them along; it is like this slip streaming effect. And they can see that they can rely on each other for help.

In addition to helping one another, advisors proudly commented that students were enthusiastic about each other's accomplishments.

Conclusion

As students get closer to adulthood, schools often become more isolating and impersonal. Advisory programs offer the structure to meet students' developmental needs, because it is the one place in school where students are intimately known as a "whole child." Advisory programs have the potential to ensure that every child has a meaningful relationship with an adult and belongs to a community of peers. These elements of connectedness have the potential to improve academic achievement and the overall school experience for middle grades students. As the eighth grade boy from the beginning of the article stated, "Advisory gets you into the state of mind that school is not only about work, but that it is a place where teachers really know you and understand you."
References
Blum, R. W., & Libbey, H. P. (2004). School connectedness-strengthening health and education outcomes for teenagers. Journal of School Health, 74(7), 231-235.

Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. (1989). Turning points: Preparing American youth for the 21st century. Washington, DC: Carnegie Corporation.

Cushman, K. (1990). Are advisory groups 'essential'? What they do, how they work. Horace, 7(1), 5-17.

Galassi, J. P., Gulledge, S. A., & Cox, N. D. (2004). Advisory. Westerville, OH: National Middle School Association.

Galassi, J. P., Gulledge, S. A., & Cox, N. D. (1997). Middle school advisories: Retrospect and prospect. Review of Educational Research, 67(3), 301-338.

Jackson, A. W., & Davis, G. A. (2000). Turning points 2000: Educating adolescents in the 21st century. New York & Westerville, OH: Teachers College Press & National Middle School Association.

Juvonen, J., Le, V. N., Kaganoff, T., Augustine, C., & Constant, L. (2004). Focus on the wonder years: Challenges facing the American middle school. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Klem, A., & Connell, J. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. Journal of School Health, 74(7), 262-273.

Mac Iver, D. J., & Epstein, J. L. (1991). Responsive practice in the middle grades: Teacher teams, advisory groups, remedial instruction, and school transition programs. American Journal of Education, 99(4), 587-622.

McNeely, C., & Falci, C. (2004). School connectedness and the transition into and out of health-risk behavior among adolescents. Journal of School Health, 74(7), 284-293.

National Association of Secondary School Principals. (2006). Breaking ranks in the middle: Strategies for leading middle level reform. Reston, VA: Author.

Stevenson, C. (1998). Teaching ten to fourteen year olds (2nd ed.). New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Sarah Brody Shulkind is the middle school principal at Milken Community High School in Los Angeles, CA.
E-mail: sshulkind@milkenschool.org

Jack Foote is the principal of Joseph Le Conte Middle School in Los Angeles, CA.
E-mail: jackfoote@gmail.com

Previously published in Middle School Journal, September 2009

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Creating a Culture of Connectedness through Middle School Advisory Programs

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In the middle of an ordinary day in an ordinary Los Angeles school, four middle school students shared fascinating insights in response to the question, "Does advisory help you feel connected to school?" Without advisory school would be more distant. It would not be as cheerful. We would not be as connected to everybody.

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Bullying Prevention Programs

Does the word bullying make you immediately think of fights on a playground or shoving matches in the hallway? If you keep up with the news and trending topics, you know that unfortunately, in today's world, our definitions can no longer be so narrowly defined. Schools now contend with physical, verbal, social bullying, and cyberbullying. Our Just Say YES bullying prevention programs and assembly programs can help your campus combat bullying by addressing students, educators and parents.

Types of Bullying

According to stopbullying.gov, bullying is defined as unwanted, aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.

Our Just Say YES assembly programs focus on the four types of bullying:

This is what most of us think of when we hear the word bullying. All of those images in our heads of fights on the playground, or scuffles in the hallway between classes fall under this category. It includes: hitting, pushing, tripping, slapping, stealing or destroying possessions, and sexual harassment or assault.

Verbal bullying can be just as damaging as physical bullying. Females typically engage more in this form of bullying, though males may also use it in an attempt to dominate their victim. Kinds of verbal bullying include: name calling, insults, gossip, teasing, taunting, intimidation, and sexist or racist remarks.

Sometimes called indirect or covert bullying, this form can be more difficult to detect. It can go on behind the victim's back, or can take the form of public humiliation. It includes: spreading rumors, non-inclusion, negative gestures, jokes or pranks, embarrassment or humiliation, and damaging someone's social reputation. This form can be the most emotionally damaging to its victims, and may cause them to experience depression and anxiety. The psychological effects of social bullying often stick around even into adulthood.

Due to the internet, social media and smart phones, cyberbullying has rapidly increased amongst today's youth. It takes place over digital devices such as cell phones, computers and tablets and can occur through SMS, text, apps, social media, chat rooms, gaming, etc. It reaches the victim wherever they are, and they often feel that they cannot escape.

Click here to read more about cyberbullying.

How Just Say YES Can Help

Book a Just Say YES bullying prevention program today for your campus. Students will come to understand the four different types of bullying, how to prevent bullying by treating others with kindness and respect, and what to do if they see bullying or are victims of bullying behavior. As for our educator and parent programs, audiences will learn how to keep the lines of communication open with students, how to properly address bullying behavior to the bully, and how to support kids who are being bullied.

Contact us today to learn more about our bullying prevention programs!

Just Say YES Bullying Prevention Programs

More Just Say YES Bullying Articles:

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Bullying Prevention Programs for Schools | Just Say YES Anti-Bullying

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Does the word bullying make you immediately think of fights on a playground or shoving matches in the hallway? If you keep up with the news and trending topics, you know that unfortunately, in today's world, our definitions can no longer be so narrowly defined. Schools now contend with physical, verbal, social bullying, and cyberbullying.

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Middle School Bully Lesson Plans—Intermediate Unit 1

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Middle School Bully Lesson Plans—Intermediate Unit 1

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Educate About Bullying | StopBullying.gov

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Educate About Bullying | StopBullying.gov

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Assessments-such as surveys-can help schools determine the frequency and locations of bullying behavior. They can also gauge the effectiveness of current prevention and intervention efforts. Knowing what's going on can help school staff select appropriate prevention and response strategies.

Assessments involve asking school or community members-including students-about their experiences and thoughts related to bullying. An assessment is planned, purposeful, and uses research tools.

What an Assessment Can Do

Assess to:

Know what's going on. Adults underestimate the rates of bullying because kids rarely report it and it often happens when adults aren't around. Assessing bullying through anonymous surveys can provide a clear picture of what is going on.

Target efforts. Understanding trends and types of bullying in your school can help you plan bullying prevention and intervention efforts.

Measure results. The only way to know if your prevention and intervention efforts are working is to measure them over time.

An assessment can explore specific bullying topics, such as:

Frequency and types

Adult and peer response

Locations, including "hot spots"

Staff perceptions and attitudes about bullying

Aspects of the school or community that may support or help stop it

Student perception of safety

School climate

Develop and Implement an Assessment

Schools may choose to use school-wide surveys to assess bullying. There are several steps involved:

Choose a survey. There are many free, reliable, and validated assessment tools available. Choose a set of measures that covers the questions you want answered, is age appropriate, and can be answered in a reasonable amount of time.

Obtain parental consent as your district requires. Some allow passive consent, others require active consent. According to federal guidelines, at a minimum, each year the Local Education Agency (LEA), must notify parents about the survey and when it will be conducted. Parents have the right to opt their child out of the survey. Parents also have the right to inspect and review the surveys before they are given.

Administer the survey. School staff are best equipped to judge how to carry out a survey at school, but these tips can help:

Administer surveys early in the school year. Schedules surveys after students are settled in a routine but there is still time to use the findings in the school year's prevention efforts.

Assess at least once every school year. Some schools like to survey students at the start and end of the school year to track progress and plan activities for the following year.

Decide which students will be surveyed to ensure statistically significant results. Schools may choose school-wide surveys or surveys of specific grades.

Plan to administer the survey when all students can take it at once. This will reduce the chance that they will discuss it and affect each other's answers.

Protect student privacy. Many surveys are subject to the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Assure students that their responses will be kept confidential and that their answers can't be tracked back to them.

Analyze and distribute findings.

Make sure you continue to protect students' privacy by ensuring that no personally identifiable information is accessible.

Consider how the survey results will be shared with teachers, parents, and students.

Make sure that you are prepared to respond to the results of the survey. Have a clear plan for prevention and intervention in place or in development.

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Assessments-such as surveys-can help schools determine the frequency and locations of bullying behavior. They can also gauge the effectiveness of current prevention and intervention efforts. Knowing what's going on can help school staff select appropriate prevention and response strategies. Assessments involve asking school or community members-including students-about their experiences and thoughts related to bullying.

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National Bullying Prevention Center - Classroom Toolkits

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National Bullying Prevention Center - Classroom Toolkits

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Free educational options designed for younger students to creatively engage them to build their understanding and develop the skills on how to address and prevent bullying.

Free activities and resources designed for younger students. The goal is to creatively engage them through conversation, activities, art and music to build their understanding of how to handle bullying situations.

Free educational options designed for teens to creatively engage them to build their understanding and skills on how to address and prevent bullying.

Free activities and resources designed for older students. The goal is to creatively engage them through conversation, event planning, activities, art and music to build their understanding of how to handle bullying situations.

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Classroom Tool Kits - National Bullying Prevention Center

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Free, online educational activities and resources designed to engage students in K-12.

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Icebreakers that Rock | Cult of Pedagogy

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Icebreakers that Rock | Cult of Pedagogy

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SEE THE END OF THIS POST FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON DOING THESE ICEBREAKERS REMOTELY.
We're coming up fast on the beginning of another school year. That means a new batch of students to get to know, students who need to be made comfortable in your classroom, and who need to get to know each other. It's essential to start building relationships with your students right from the start.

And how to accomplish this? Icebreakers.

The Trouble with Most Icebreakers

I planned to create a nice big post with dozens of icebreaker ideas you could choose from. I would scour the Internet for the very best activities and games and store links to them here for your reference. The problem is that so many of the ones I've found are problematic for one of these reasons:

They require students to take massive social risks with people they barely know. So many of the icebreakers I found asked students to publicly share some kind of personal information. For the icebreaker to actually work, students would need to share something interesting and different about themselves, something that makes them stand out. But to most kids-especially once they get into the middle and high school range-being different is the worst thing you can be. So what many students ultimately do is share something safe and boring, something like "I like soccer," just so the game moves on to the next person. The result? No one really gets to know anyone.

They don't actually facilitate familiarity. Too many icebreakers consist of questions like this: "If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?" Unless you have a ridiculously deep and creative kid who is going to say something like, "I would be a mongoose, because a mongoose can kill venomous snakes, and I have a way of standing up to bullies even though I'm small," you're mostly going to get a lot of cat-cat-dog-dog-fish, et cetera. Unless of course you force creativity on them by insisting that no animals can be repeated, thereby making the poor kids try to come up with some stinking animal that somehow represents the least embarrassing aspect of their personality and isn't a repeat of anyone else's animal. I'm annoyed just writing about it, and I repeat: No one really gets to know anyone.

They are cheesy. The icebreaker I have been subjected to most often is the "Name Game," where you have to add a word to your name that starts with the same letter as your name AND tells something about you. Guh. Because my name starts with a J, I have always hated this game, because jazzy doesn't have anything to do with me. Neither does jelly or jalopy or joyful. Once you've chosen your word, people have to go around the circle repeating the newly enhanced names of the classmates who came before them in line. This means having to listen to Jammin' Jenn over and over, my eyes rolling, my grimace deepening. One year I just rebelled and picked a different letter; I think I called myself something like Indoor Jenn, due to my aversion to the outdoors. That felt better.

So I have scrapped my plan to curate good icebreakers from the Internet. Instead, I'm going to share my three favorites with you.

Three Icebreakers that Don't Suck

In my own classrooms, with middle school, high school, and college students, I have played all three of these games with great success. What I like about all of them is that they get students talking, but require very little social risk. Each activity supplies students with real topics to talk about, topics that actually help students get to know each other, without forcing anyone to reveal anything too personal.

Each of these will likely sound familiar to you, although the names may not be exactly what you've known them as. I should add that I take no credit for inventing these games. I have no idea where I picked them up, but they are not original to me.

Blobs and Lines

In this icebreaker, students are prompted to either line up in some particular order (by birthday, for example) or gather in "blobs" based on something they have in common (similar shoes, for example). What's great about this game is that it helps students quickly discover things they have in common. It's also ridiculously easy: Students don't have to come up with anything clever, and they can respond to every question without thinking too hard about it. This game keeps students moving and talking, and it builds a sense of belonging and community in your classroom.

Here are some sample prompts you can use for this game:

Line up in alphabetical order by your first names.

Line up in alphabetical order by your last names.

Gather with people who have the same favorite video game as you.

Line up in order of your birthdays, from January 1 through December 31.

Line up in order of how many languages you speak.

Gather with people who have the same favorite season as you.

Concentric Circles

This icebreaker has students arrange themselves in an inside circle and an outside circle, the inside facing out, forming pairs. Pairs discuss their answers to a getting-to-know-you question, then rotate for the next question, forming a new partnership. This game gives students the chance to have lots of one-on-one conversations with many of their classmates and helps them quickly feel more at home in your class.

The possibilities for questions in this kind of configuration are endless; be sure to use more open-ended questions that can get students talking, rather than those that simply ask for a yes or no answer. Here are some sample questions:

Do you play any sports? If so, which ones?

Do you consider yourself shy or outgoing? Why?

What was the last movie you saw? Did you like it?

Describe your perfect dinner.

What is one thing you're good at?

This or That

This icebreaker has students informally debate on light topics such as "Which animal makes a better pet...dog or cat?" Students have to choose a position, then physically move to the side of the room that most closely represents their opinion-one side means dogs, the other side means cats-and then talk about why they chose that spot. This game has always been a HUGE hit with any group I've ever taught: It builds student confidence with talking in front of their peers, it helps students quickly find kindred spirits, and it's also just a lot of fun.

Sample questions for This or That:

Would you rather live in the country or the city?

Would you rather be indoors or outdoors?

Which is better: Playing sports or watching sports?

Would you rather travel every single day or never leave home?

Want These Games Ready-Made?

I have created beautiful, animated PowerPoint versions of each of these games, plus a bundle of all three. The files work on Windows, Mac, and Google Slides, and they are all editable, so you can add or change questions anytime you like.

What About Remote Learning?

These instructions outline how to play these games using PowerPoint or Google Slides for the questions and Zoom for videoconferencing. If you are using different software you can probably still adapt the process to your own platforms.

IF YOU ARE TEACHING IN PERSON, students will likely have to be socially distanced and can't play these games as they would pre-COVID. My recommendation is that you create an Avatar Classroom on a Google Slide, then have students "move" around with their Avatars, but still talk from their desks. You could also just follow the remote instructions above and have everyone plugged into devices so they could talk in breakout rooms, etc. It may seem to defeat the purpose of being in school together, but students can still look across the room at each other while participating - I think it would be pretty fun.

Come back for more.
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Too many icebreakers require students to take massive social risks with people they barely know. Or they don't really help students get to know each other. Or they are just plain cheesy. Here are three that are actually good.

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14 Must-Read Anti-Bullying Books for Kids

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14 Must-Read Anti-Bullying Books for Kids

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Bullying and cyberbullying is a difficult topic for everyone-students, parents, and teachers, and it's an increasing issue in classrooms statewide. In fact, 1 out of 4 teens are bullied and 1 out of 5 kids admit to being a bully. What's even more startling is that 282,000 students are physically attacked in secondary schools...each month.

With these statistics, it's more important than ever to teach students about the negative effects of bullying, early-on. With the help of our awesome teacher community, we compiled these anti-bullying books (organized from youngest to oldest) that address teasing, friendship, self-esteem and more.

A popular picture book, Chrysanthemum is a story about teasing, self-esteem and acceptance. It has sold more than a million copies and was named a Notable Book for Children by the American Library Association.

Mean Jean is the recess queen, and it isn't until a new girl becomes her friend that recess dynamics change for the better. This book is ideal for addressing bullying that can be resolved without adult intervention.

One of the best things kids can do to combat bullying is to stand up for one another, which is exactly what The Juice Box Bully is about. Students will learn how to have each other's backs instead of doing nothing when they witness bully confrontation.

Readers will learn about the benefits of making new friends in this book. When Jeremy Ross tries to get rid of enemies, his dad comes to the rescue. The catch? The only way for Jeremy to succeed is to spend an entire day playing with the enemy. Soon, his best enemy turns into his best friend!

This book has a powerful anti-bullying message and follows the story of Chloe, who won't let the new girl, Maya, play with her and her friends. Eventually Maya stops coming to school and Chloe realizes that a small act of kindness-like giving Maya friendship-could have gone a long way.

The Hundred Dresses won a Newbery Honor in 1945 and has never been out of print since. It addresses a classmate who is ridiculed by bullies for wearing the same dress to school every day, while other students stand by and do nothing to help.

This book sensitively addresses the needs of quieter children and reminds readers how small acts of kindness can help other children to feel included.

Here's a book that takes on cyberbullying and cliques. When students begin teasing classmates on Facebook, Lyla knows something needs to be done. This is a perfect read for our increasingly digitally-savvy students.

This book pulls from actual events as the author loosely recounts what it was like when he was bullied in sixth grade. It incorporates both sides of bullying and addresses this ongoing issue in the lives of middle-schoolers.

This uplifting novel follows August Pullman to fifth grade, which is his first time entering a mainstream school. August was born with a facial deformity so he'll have to convince his classmates that he is normal, just like them, despite his appearances.

This powerful novel addresses bullying that leads to suicide. The main character, Clay, sees everything differently at the end of the novel when he realizes why Hannah Baker, his classmate, committed suicide, and why she wanted Clay to understand what happened to her.

This book is a must-read for teens. Today's top young adult authors contributed 70 heartfelt stories about bullying in this collection-from being a bystander, to a victim, to a bully themselves. The book also includes resources and suggestions for further reading.

This story is about a teenage girl who faces criminal charges for bullying after a classmate commits suicide. Now she's under attack as her peers, the community and the media berate her for causing such a tragic event.

16-year-old Alice decides to settle the score with classmates after she is diagnosed with leukemia. Knowing she only has a few months left to live, she figures if she gets even and hurts people for the things they've done in the past, it won't matter in the future. To her surprise, she goes into remission and has to face the consequences of all she has said and done.

What happens when your best friend since forever starts hanging out with the "popular" crowd? A story about how hard it is to find your real friends in life, but how the journey is worth it.

A very helpful book for teaching children about empathy, feelings, kindness, compassion, tolerance and recognizing bullying behaviors.

A poignant chapter book that tells the story of a neighborhood bully who is transformed by a strong, unyielding maple. The lessons the boy learns along the way will inspire thoughtful conversations about anger, self-worth and self-control.
We know there are TONS more books available about this very important topic. What books should we add to our list? List them in the comments below!

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14 Must-Read Anti-Bullying Books for Kids - WeAreTeachers

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Bullying and cyberbullying is a difficult topic for everyone-students, parents, and teachers, and it's an increasing issue in classrooms statewide. In fact, 1 out of 4 teens are bullied and 1 out of 5 kids admit to being a bully. What's even more startling is that 282,000 students are physically attacked in secondary schools...each month.

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How Schools Build A Positive Culture Through Advisory | MindShift | KQED News

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How Schools Build A Positive Culture Through Advisory | MindShift | KQED News

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School leaders are increasingly recognizing that a strong, positive school culture is key for students to experience academic and social success. How to establish that culture and build buy-in from staff and students is often less clear. The Teaching Channel has profiled several schools in the Deeper Learning Network that use an advisory period to offer students a smaller community of support and trust within the larger school.

Advisory at Envision Schools is a space to check in on how life is going, share fears and joys, and often to get reassurance that many peers are feeling similarly. While the conversation might touch on how to manage time or stress related to schoolwork, it doesn't have to be about academics. Instead, this time allows students to "let their shoulders down," get to know their teachers in a different way and the space to ask for help. Students practice presenting their portfolios and get feedback from peers.

At Expeditionary Learning (now known as EL Education) schools, a similar small community called "Crew" serves as a student's family while at school. The group and teacher remain the same for several years, creating a reassuring consistency and a deep trust. The crews meet every morning for 30 minutes or an hour. During crew students set personal and academic goals, reflect on challenges and set plans for how they'll overcome obstacles. "The public explanation of their growth as scholars is built into the day here," said Expeditionary Learning chief academic officer Ron Berger.

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How Schools Build A Positive Culture Through Advisory

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School leaders are increasingly recognizing that a strong, positive school culture is key for students to experience academic and social success. How to establish that culture and build buy-in from staff and students is often less clear.