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A snapshot of learning theories and their authors commonly assessed on the LBSI licensure exam.

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A snaptshot of commonly used assessments when determining eligibility for a student suspected of having a disability.

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A Comprehensive Inventory of Academic and Behavior Interventions

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Intervention Express provides educators a comprehensive inventory of academic and behavior interventions. Explore research-based interventions for mathematics, reading, writing, and behavior.

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Talking to people can be hard if you stutter. You may get stuck on certain words or sounds. You may feel tense or uncomfortable. You might change words to avoid stuttering. Speech-language pathologists can help.

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Box Breathing (Visual Only During Breathing Exercise)

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Box Breathing (Visual Only During Breathing Exercise)

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How to Reduce Stress (Box Breathing Animation) | In Control Middle School SEL

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These science song lyrics are available from a variety of albums:

General Science Songs
2 Scientific Method Songs - Jack Hartmann The Bar Graph Dance - Science Maniacs Evidence and Inference - Science Maniacs
The History of Scientific Discoveries - Science Maniacs
Hypothesis - MindMuzic
I Can Do What Scientists Do - Jack Hartmann
I Can Spell My Science Words 1 &2 - Jack Hartmann
Nature of Science - Musically Aligned
Nature of Science - Professor Boggs
Physical Property Sense - Musically Aligned
Science Is - Tickle Tune Typhoon
Science or Fiction? - Grin Brigade
Scientific Inquiry Rap - Allendale's Got Talent
Scientific Method - Music with Mar.
Scientific Method Blues - Kathleen Carroll
The Scientific Method Blues - J.P. Taylor
The Scientific Process - Jim Thompson
Try Again - Ken Whiteley

Life Science Songs:
Biology & Zoology -- See more Biology Songs
A Habitat - Learning by Song
Adaptations - Musically Aligned
All Around the Pond - Sam Jones
Animal Shop (Vertebrates & Invertebrates) - Music with Mar.
Animalia - J.P. Taylor
Arachnids - Tickle Tune Typhoon
Arthropods - Science in Song
Bats - Lyrical Life Science
Bacteria - Lyrical Life Science
Biomes - Lyrical Life Science
Cell Biology - MindMuzic
Cell Castle - Professor Boggs
The Cell Song - Science in Song
Cellular Physiology - Science Maniacs
Classify It - Science in Song
Echinoderms - Science in Song
Ecology II - Lyrical Life Science
Ecosystems - MindMuzic
Ecosystems - Science Maniacs
Energy Roles (Producers and Consumers) - Science Maniacs
Environment Change - Musically Aligned
Food Chain - Kathleen Carroll
Frog's Life Cycle - Jack Hartmann
The Food Chain Song - Science in Song
Genes and Genetics - MindMuzic
Genetics - Lyrical Life Science
Habitat - Bill Oliver/Jeff Schroeder
Habitat - Bill Oliver/Stan Slaughter
Habitat Scat - Music with Mar.
Home Is a Habitat - Judy Leonard
Ichthyology - Tickle Tune Typhoon
I'm A Plant - Jack Hartmann
Living Things - Jack Hartmann
Metamorphosis - Jack Hartmann
Mammals - Lyrical Life Science
I'm A Plant - Jack Hartmann
The Mitosis Square Dance - Science in Song
Mr. Frog - You Just Think You're Smart! - Dianne Baker
Nature Vs. Nurture - Science Maniacs
No Backbone Backbeat (Invertebrates) - Tickle Tune Typhoon
Non-Living Things - Jack Hartmann
Pirates on the Dichotomous Sea - Professor Boggs
Plant and Animal Needs - Musically Aligned
Pretty Paper, Pretty Trees - Bill Oliver
Producers - Comsumers - Decomposers - MindMuzic
Save the Frogs! - Dianne Baker
Teeth - Musically Aligned
Toothless Mammals - Lyrical Life Science
Ungulates - Lyrical Life Science
The Virus Song - Science in Song
Water Cycle Song - Science in Song
You Can Tell It's a Cell - J.P. Taylor

Botany Songs
A Plant Will Grow - Lauren Mayer
Algae, Fingi, and Nonvascular Plants - Lyrical Life Science
I'm A Plant - Jack Hartmann
My Favorite Apple Tree - Fred Gee
Plant a Tree for Tomorrow - Dianne Baker
Plant and Animal Needs - Musically Aligned
Plant Structure - MindMuzic
Roots, A Stem and Some Leaves - J.P. Taylor
Sacred Trees - Lorraine Bayes
Tree Song - Robin Walling
Up In A Tree - Frank Bruen
Vascular Plants - Lyrical Life Science
What A Plant Needs to Stay Alive - Jack Hartmann

Human Physiology Songs: How the Body Works
Basic Anatomy - MindMuzic
The Bones Song - Kathleen Wiley
The Bones Song - Science in Song
Brains - Dennis Westphall
The Circulatory System - Science in Song
The Digestive System Song - Science in Song
The Endocrine System - Lyrical Life Science
Fanfare for the Brain - Music with Mar.
Identifying Bones - Jack Hartmann
Immune and Lymph Systems - Lyrical Life Science
Intoduction to the Human Body - Lyrical Life Science
The Muscles Song - Science in Song
The Muscular System - Lyrical Life Science
Ologies (The Study Of) - Lyrical Life Science
The Senses Boogie - Mark and Morgan Kasmer
Skeletal Structure and Organs - MindMuzic
The Skeletal System - Lyrical Life Science
Skin - Dennis Westphall
Three Body Systems - MindMuzic

See our pages on: My Body, Health, and Illness and Food and Nutrition

Science Musical Plays
Biomes: Animals and Plants in their Habitats - Bad Wolf Press
Environmental Show - Bad Wolf Press
The Garden Show - Bad Wolf Press
Geology ROCKS! - Bad Wolf Press
It's Electrifying - Bad Wolf Press
Life Cycles: How Plants and Animals Change - Bad Wolf Press
Matter and Its Properties: The Science of Stuff - Bad Wolf Press
Name that Internal Organ - Bad Wolf Press
The Nutrition Show - Bad Wolf Press
The Oceanography Show: Tide Pool Condos - Bad Wolf Press
The Rumpus in the Rainforest - Bad Wolf Press
Vacation On Mars - Bad Wolf Press

Dinosaurs & Paleontology
Physical Science Songs

Astronomy
Day Sky, Night Sky - Jack Hartmann
Energy from the Sun - Jack Hartmann
Fireball - Earth Mama - Joyce Rouse
Fireball Dance Mix - Earth Mama - Joyce Rouse
Hey oh, Galileo - J.P. Taylor
I'm the Moon - Kathleen Wiley
Kepler Said - Professor Boggs
The Little Bear -Jim Thorne
Our Solar System - Music Movement & Magination
Planet Jive - Tickle Tune Typhoon
Planet Placement Dance - Music with Mar.
Planet Rap - Ron Brown
Sky Objects - Musically Aligned
Solar System - Musically Aligned
The Stars Go By -Jim Thorne
To Follow Apollo -Jim Thorne
Voices from the Sky -Jim Thorne

Chemistry Songs Acids and Bases - MindMuzic
Atom Matter - Tickle Tune Typhoon
Atoms and Molecules - MindMuzic
Electrons Flowing - Science in Song
The Elements - Tickle Tune Typhoon
The Elements Song - Science in Song
E-VAP-O-RATE - Musically Aligned
Get Your Molecules Movin' - J.P. Taylor
Hey, Avogadro - Professor Boggs
Matter Is Everywhere! - J.P. Taylor
Molecules - Ron Brown
Move Like Molecules Move - Jack Hartmann
Physical Property Sense - Musically Aligned
Pillar of Sound - Story by Frank Bruen
Solid, Liquid or Gas? - Ron Brown
Solid, Liquid or Gas Groove - Musically Aligned
That's Matter - Lauren Mayer
What's the Matter? - Jack Hartmann
What is Matter? - MindMuzic

Songs about Simple Machines
A Wedge - Ken Whiteley
Big Wheel - Little Wheel - Ken Whiteley
Forces Can Push or Pull - Jack Hartmann
It Takes Force - Ken Whiteley
Six Simple Machines - J.P. Taylor
Up & Down An Incline Plane - Ken Whiteley

Earth Science and Geology Songs
Air - Frank Bruen
Air is Everywhere - Jack Hartmann
Compass Construction - Musically Aligned
Conservation Nation - J. P. Taylor
Every Little Drop of Water - Fred Gee
Folding, Faulting, and Intrusion - Lyrical Earth Science
Garbage Blues - Dennis Westphall
The Good Earth - Jack Hartmann
Gravity - Professor Boggs
The Green Revolution - Judy Leonard
Interdependence Day - J. P. Taylor
Introduction to Geology - Lyrical Earth Science
Keep Your World Clean - Marilyn M. Linford
Layers of the Earth - MindMuzic
Let's Take Care of the Earth - Debbie Clement
Living on a Layer Cake - Chris Rawlings
Mass Movement - Lyrical Earth Science
MOHS Rock Hardness Scale - Kathleen Wiley
Plate Tectonics - Lyrical Earth Science
Pollution - Kathleen Wiley
Rain, Snow, Hail or Sleet - Ron Brown
Recycle - Judy Leonard
Reduce, Reuse and Recycle - Jack Hartmann
Rock Cycle - Professor Boggs
The Rock Cycle - J.P. Taylor
Rock Cycle Rock - Chris Rawlings
Rock Cycle Rap - Allendale's Got Talent
Rocks: Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic - Jim Thompson
Rock Types - MindMuzic
Saturated Zone - Chris Rawlings
Save the Earth! - Dianne Baker
Sedimentary, Metamorphic, Igneous - Kathleen Wiley
Sedimentary Rock - Marla Lewis
Solar Energy - Ron Brown
Some Mountains - Chris Rawlings
That's the Earth (Earth's Physical Features) - Music Movement & Magination
Topographic Maps - Lyrical Earth Science
Water in the Air - Skip West
The Water Cycle - Lauren Mayer
Water Cycle Song - Foster Brown
Water Cycle Song - Jim Thompson
Water is So Amazing - Jack Hartmann
Weathering of Rocks - Lyrical Earth Science
We've Got the Power - J. P. Taylor
Why Rivers Flow - Frank Bruen

Physics Songs
See all of our Physics Songs

Biology Songs
See also: Biology Songs

Metric Songs
King Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk - Science Maniacs
The Metric Song - Kathleen Carroll
The Metric System: Units of Length - Tim Pacific
The Metric System Rap - Earth Tone Productions
Metric Unit Conversions (An acronym song) - Middle School Math Music
Use Metrics - Street Style - Christina DeSanto
See more of our Science Songs for Young Children, Fruit, Vegetable, Gardening, Oceans, Ponds, Arctic, Rainforest, Safari, Farm, Pirates and Outer Space Song Lyrics

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These science song lyrics are available from a variety of albums: General Science Songs 2 Scientific Method Songs - Jack Hartmann The Bar Graph Dance - Science Maniacs Evidence and Inference - Science Maniacs The History of Scientific Discoveries - Science Maniacs Hypothesis - MindMuzic I Can Do What Scientists Do - Jack Hartmann I Can Spell My Science Words 1 &2 - Jack Hartmann Nature of Science - Musically Aligned Nature of Science - Professor Boggs Physical Property Sense - Musically Aligned Science Is - Tickle Tune Typhoon Science or Fiction?

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From "Three is a Magic Number" to "I'm Just a Bill" and "Lolly, Lolly" - bring along a sing-along of topical tunes that still keep popping into the heads of devoted Schoolhouse Rock fans.

From "Three is a Magic Number" to "I'm Just a Bill" and "Lolly, Lolly" - bring along a sing-along of topical tunes that still keep popping into the heads of devoted Schoolhouse Rock fans.

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Watch Schoolhouse Rock! | Full episodes | Disney+

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From "Three is a Magic Number" to "I'm Just a Bill" and "Lolly, Lolly" - bring along a sing-along of topical tunes that still keep popping into the heads of devoted Schoolhouse Rock fans.

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Thanks to the wonders of neuroplasticity, adolescents are primed to improve their performance in school-and beyond. Here's how to help.

Adolescence is an exciting time as teenagers become increasingly independent, begin to look forward to their lives beyond high school, and undergo many physical, emotional, and cognitive changes. In that last category, teenagers can learn to take charge of their developing brains and steer their thinking in positive and productive directions toward future college and career success.

The brain's prefrontal cortex, which functions as the control center for executive functions such as planning, goal setting, decision making, and problem solving, undergoes significant changes during the teenage years. In an NPR interview, Laurence Steinberg, author of Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence, notes that ages 12 to 25 are a period of extraordinary neuroplasticity. "Science suggests that it's important for kids to be challenged and exposed to novelty in order to facilitate healthy development of brain systems that are important for things like self-regulation," Steinberg says.

1. They have the capacity to become functionally smarter. By their early teens, many youths have already formed an image of themselves as intellectually capable-or not. It's important to emphasize for students in the latter group that past school performance need not be a predictor of future outcomes, if they are willing to persist in the hard work that may be required when learning gets challenging.

2. Success in school is largely determined by the learning strategies students employ, and not by some innate talent for academics. Students across the continuum of current performance can learn and improve effective problem-solving and study skills to nudge their grades in a positive direction.

The potential that comes from neuroplasticity-the capacity to change the structure and function of the brain through learning-provides the foundation for two crucial messages for middle and high school students:

Tools for Self-Directed Learning

As they progress through middle and high school, students are expected to take on increasing responsibility for their learning, with more out-of-class assignments that require independent research, reading for understanding, and wider application of classroom lessons. Our new book, Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains: Metacognitive Strategies, Activities, and Lesson Ideas, suggests that learning and applying strategies to "explain it to your brain" can help students improve their study habits. We note some of those strategies here.

Creating diagrams, pictures, and symbols to represent key ideas as they take notes;

Summarizing passages in their own words (some students might enjoy the challenge of capturing the essence of an assignment in a tweet); and

Searching for cues about the most important content. For textbook assignments, students can go back and review features like key terms, subtitles, and informational graphics after their first reading to reinforce crucial facts. When reading fiction or poetry, identifying literary devices such as metaphors and symbols can help uncover deeper meaning.

Don't just read-learn. There can be a huge difference between reading the words on the page and learning from them. To think through the ideas in a reading assignment and improve recall of what they have read, students might benefit from:

Consider the source. Like the reading strategies included here, a careful consideration of the credibility of sources, especially online ones, that students consult and cite in their research projects is a learning strategy that will serve them well throughout their lives. Is the information presented fact or opinion? Is the objective of this resource to inform, to influence, or to entertain? Are the authors and/or the sources cited reputable and qualified to discuss this topic? Making these kinds of judgments is a crucial executive function for students to develop. In his book The Adolescent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy, Robert Sylwester identifies this careful approach to vetting information sources as one of the "intuitive, logical, and predictive capabilities that will enhance the resolution of . . . emerging vocational challenges."

Create, then edit. Two common problems in academic writing are getting stalled out early on in writing the introduction and failing to edit the first draft carefully. Guide students to begin productively by putting in writing the information they want to convey without worrying about how they will word the first paragraph. That task will be much easier once they have laid out all the content they have gathered. And remind them to allow time to edit their papers not once, but twice, before turning them in.

Make a schedule-and stick to it. Planning and organizing are versatile executive functions that students will use in every subject and in their personal lives as well. For independent study projects, guide your students to develop a step-by-step process, to set dates to complete each step, and to build in extra time for unexpected issues, such as the need to conduct another round of research.

Read ahead to stay ahead. Encourage students to finish every reading assignment by reading a few pages ahead. This strategy can help improve understanding and recall by showing students how the information presented in one chapter is applied and expanded on in the next.

Become metacognitive about which study skills work best for you. Students will likely find that some of these strategies are more effective for them than others. Encourage them to try different strategies and to assess which ones get the best results for them. Some students may learn better in study groups, some by creating elaborate graphics to explore and connect the concepts they are studying, and some by reading and explaining the content aloud to themselves, to give just a few examples.

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The Teenage Brain Is Wired to Learn-So Make Sure Your Students Know It

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Thanks to the wonders of neuroplasticity, adolescents are primed to improve their performance in school-and beyond. Here's how to help.

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A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self Regulation

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A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self Regulation

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✉Please address correspondence to David Yeager (dyeagerutexas.edu).

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Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self-Regulation

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Many important learning tasks feel uninteresting and tedious to learners. This research proposed that promoting a prosocial, self-transcendent purpose could improve academic self-regulation on such tasks. This proposal was supported in four studies…

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What Neuroscience Tells Us About the Teenage Brain

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What Neuroscience Tells Us About the Teenage Brain

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Developmental cognitive neuroscientists are at the frontier of this new outlook, using updated methodology, larger and more diverse samples, and experimental tasks with real-world relevance to answer questions about adolescents in the context of society. They're also supporting developmentally informed policy and practice on everything from mental health care to juvenile justice. "The adolescent brain was long portrayed as broken, immature, or contributing to problematic behaviors," said Eva Telzer, PhD, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "But in the last five years, there's been a huge shift toward seeing the developing brain as malleable, flexible, and promoting many positive aspects of development in adolescence."

Heightened sensitivity to rewards, for example, which is partly driven by increased activity in a part of the brain called the ventral striatum, has been implicated in behaviors such as substance use and unprotected sex among teens. But research now shows that in different settings, that same neural circuitry can also promote positive peer influence and behaviors, Telzer said, such as wearing a seat belt or joining a peaceful protest.

As the field of developmental neuroscience matures, so too do the questions researchers ask. Studies are increasingly considering the influence not just of peers but also of parents. Researchers are also looking closely at how social media use may affect young brains, as concerns mount about teens' online activity. As a result, research on the teenage brain is finally starting to catch up with studies of other age groups, complete with the level of detail it deserves.

"The shift from childhood to adulthood is not a linear one. Adolescence is a time of wonderfully dynamic change in the brain," said BJ Casey, PhD, a professor of psychology who directs the Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain Lab at Yale University. "Too often, we've superimposed an adult model onto a developing brain, but now we're starting to see more nuanced findings."

Embracing new approaches

Adolescence-spanning from puberty until the mid-20s-describes the transitional period between childhood and adulthood, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. During this period, the brain grows and changes in a number of ways. Gray matter in the cerebral cortex tends to thin, while white matter that connects various regions of the brain generally increases in volume. Functional connections between regions, which researchers measure with brain scans that track oxygen usage in blood, also undergo widespread changes during adolescence.

Beyond that, things get a little more complicated-and recent replication efforts indicate that some findings considered fundamental to the field may not hold up in larger samples. For example, early research suggested that brain volume increases peaked earlier in adolescent girls (Lenroot, R. K., & Giedd, J. N., Brain and Cognition, Vol. 72, No. 1, 2010), but more recent studies of large, international samples have shown it's not that simple. Instead, boys' brains tend to change at similar rates regardless of variability in other brain metrics, while changes in girls' brains can be predicted based on certain measurements, such as the thickness of the cortex (Mills, K. L., et al., NeuroImage, Vol. 242, 2021).

"This kind of finding is emblematic of a bigger shift in the field as to how we're approaching our science, what techniques we use, and what information we consider valuable," said Jennifer Pfeifer, PhD, a professor of psychology and director of the University of Oregon's Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab. "It's become clear that if we want to understand developmental processes within individuals, we need to use some different tactics."

More sophisticated methodology is a big part of that shift, she added. Instead of merely comparing brain structure or activity between two age groups (12- and 18-year-olds, for instance), researchers are increasingly relying on a variety of experimental approaches that follow the same youth over time.

"Many people may not realize that our early insights about adolescent brain development were based on cross-sectional approaches, which can sometimes lead to the wrong conclusions," said Pfeifer, who also codirects the National Scientific Council on Adolescence.

Now, researchers use other techniques, such as accelerated longitudinal designs, where participants are sampled a handful of times at a range of ages (starting at ages 12 to 15, for instance, and then annually for three years), which can paint a more comprehensive picture of neurodevelopment.

Large collaborative consortia, in particular the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a decade-long effort that follows a nationally representative sample of nearly 12,000 teens, are also providing richer data that can power more rigorous studies of the developing brain. The ABCD Study shares its brain scans measuring neurological development, clinical tests of mental and physical health, and behavioral data on substance use, academic achievement, and more with researchers around the world; of about 250 papers published using the survey's data so far, half were from investigators outside the consortium. Fittingly, one of the study's early insights is that very large samples-with thousands of individual brain scans-are needed to detect reproducible differences between individuals at the whole-brain level (Marek, S., et al., Nature, Vol. 603, 2022).

"On the other hand, there is still a need for innovative, smaller-scale studies," said Eveline Crone, PhD, a professor of neurocognitive developmental psychology and director of the Society, Youth, and Neuroscience Connected (SYNC) Lab at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. "If we only ran the big consortia, we would miss out on a lot of novelty in terms of our methods and research questions."

Some questions-for instance, how adolescents' brains respond, on average, to winning money for themselves, a family member, or a stranger-can be examined effectively in much smaller samples, pointing to the importance of a balance between large and small efforts (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol. 51, 2021). (Crone and her colleagues who conducted this research have found that teen brains show activation in the nucleus accumbens, part of the brain's reward system, when achieving gains for themselves or their parents but not for strangers. Those findings point to the development of ingroup-outgroup distinctions during adolescence.) Like others in the field, Crone employs a mixed-methods approach, combining brain imaging with behavioral measures, youth panels, and large-scale surveys to contextualize development alongside behavior, relationships, and society.

Another major advance is the creation and use of "ecologically valid" experimental tasks, or those that more accurately mimic teens' experiences outside the lab.

"If we really want to understand how the adolescent brain works, we need to use stimuli-things like social media and video games-that they actually care about," said Jennifer Silk, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh who runs the Families, Emotions, Neuroscience, and Development Lab.

Silk and her colleagues have developed one such activity, called the Chatroom Interact Task, which simulates acceptance and rejection from peers. Teenage girls participating in the task are either "chosen" or "rejected" by other girls their age while undergoing an fMRI scan, which maps brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow and oxygen levels. Other tasks monitor teens while they use platforms similar to Instagram and Facebook, including how their brains respond to receiving "likes."

Researchers are even collecting data that may redefine the meaning of "adolescence," with an eye on the juvenile justice system.

"We're expanding the age ranges we're looking at because the field is recognizing that significant neurocognitive changes continue into the 20s," said Casey. "Those changes have consequences with regard to decision-making," and research in this area may ultimately inform more scientifically aligned approaches to reward, punishment, justice reform, and other areas.

Optimizing mental health

Teens are famous for their heightened emotional sensitivity, especially in social interactions. Researchers are starting to pin down brain circuitry linked to that sensitivity-and differentiate between cases where it's an asset that helps teens reach emotional maturity versus a risk factor that may predict mental health problems (Casey, B. J., et al., Neuroscience Letters, Vol. 693, 2019).

Research by Silk, Telzer, Casey, and others has identified several areas of the brain that underlie emotional responses in teens, including the subgenual cingulate cortex, anterior insula, and amygdala. For example, teens who had more activity in those regions during the rejection phase of Silk's Chatroom Interact Task, compared with the acceptance phase, were more likely to experience depression and suicidality down the line (Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, online first publication, 2022; Child Psychiatry & Human Development, Vol. 51, 2020). "There seems to be some sensitivity to rejection in this brain network that's related to the development of internalizing disorders," Silk said.

Because mental health problems increase sharply during adolescence-affecting an estimated 1 in 4 teens-there's an urgent need to determine who is at risk and what treatments may be most effective (Silva, S. A., et al., PLOS ONE, Vol. 15, No. 4, 2020).

In animal models, stressful experiences during adolescence appear to alter the development of emotion-focused regions such as the amygdala and hippocampus, as well as the prefrontal cortex (Eiland, L., & Romeo, R. D., Neuroscience, Vol. 249, 2013). Early findings from the ABCD Study have found different patterns of activation in the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and other reward-associated brain regions among preteens with disruptive behavior disorders, as well as brain differences that may underlie attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Hawes, S. W., et al., The American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 178, No. 4, 2021; Bernanke, J., et al., The Lancet Psychiatry, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2022).

Rather than searching for a drug or mechanism that can address the entirety of depression, anxiety, or ADHD, researchers are increasingly studying specific symptoms-anhedonia or inattention, for instance-as well as subtypes of various disorders and seeking solutions for each.

"We are now looking at specific behaviors for which we can identify a neural circuit, mechanisms, and sometimes even genes," said Pradeep Bhide, PhD, a professor of developmental neuroscience and director of the Center for Brain Repair at the Florida State University College of Medicine. "That is a newer, better, and likely more successful approach to treating complex human psychiatric and developmental disorders."

For example, adolescents tend to benefit less from fear extinction efforts than adults (Pattwell, S. S., et al., PNAS, Vol. 109, No. 40, 2012). According to Casey, this suggests that they may respond poorly to exposure therapy, a key component of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety, which recruits the prefrontal cortex to reprogram fear memories. It may therefore be possible to optimize CBT to work better for adolescents by using strategies that bypass the prefrontal cortex, instead working to alter memories using other circuitry, including emotion- and memory-focused regions such as the hippocampus and amygdala (Scientific Reports, Vol. 5, No. 8863, 2015; Nature Communications, Vol. 7, No. 11475, 2016). This process is often referred to as "memory reconsolidation" or "reconsolidation update."

"Thus, there appear to be developmental windows in which we can optimize treatments in specific ways," Casey said.

Parents and peers

When it comes to teens' relationships, both the scientific community and the lay public have long embraced the assumption that adolescence triggers a shift away from parents and toward peers, particularly when it comes to risk-taking.

New findings are challenging that assumption, which was pervasive but difficult to test directly, Pfeifer said (Nelson, E. E., et al., Psychological Medicine, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2005). Early data from Project NeuroTeen, Telzer's 5-year longitudinal study of how parent and peer relationships influence adolescent decision-making and development, show that teens shift their behavior to align with the risky choices of parents more than the risky choices of peers. This shift is supported by increased activation in regions of the brain related to reward, including the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Journal of Research on Adolescence, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2021).

Silk, Amanda Morris, PhD, of Oklahoma State University, and their colleagues have started to document the synchrony between teens and their parents in real time, using a new simultaneous scanning technique to measure how one brain responds to another during an interaction. They have found that adolescent brain activity tends to mirror parent brain activity, especially in emotion-processing regions such as the amygdala and anterior insula (Child Development, Vol. 92, No. 6, 2021).

"I think a lot of parents believe that it's too late, that by adolescence, peers have all the power," Silk said. "But this research is showing that parents shouldn't give up, that they still do have the power to help their adolescents learn how to process and regulate their emotions."

Pfeifer's lab also recently explored the claim that changes in the brain during adolescence make teens more sensitive to social information related to acceptance by peers, but their findings did not clearly support that idea. Instead, they found that activity in regions such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex-a brain area related to evaluation of the self-tended to peak during mid-adolescence, especially for information related to status (Cosme, D., et al., Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol. 54, 2022). These findings may suggest that "identity is an important source of value to adolescents, and this could be leveraged to promote healthy decision-making," she said (Child Development Perspectives, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2018).

Peer interactions are still important, of course, and they're increasingly happening online. Parents, researchers, and policymakers have plenty of unanswered questions about how social media use may affect the developing brain. For example, do certain neural profiles among teens predict riskier online behavior, such as the tendency to compare one's appearance and social status to others?

Silk and Cecile Ladouceur, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, have launched new research to bring more nuance to that conversation. They are collecting information about social media use from teens' phones, along with fMRI data on their neurological responses to acceptance and rejection, for instance during the Chatroom Interact Task. Telzer has also launched a new effort, with Mitch Prinstein, PhD, APA's chief science officer, to study whether brain development in regions responsible for reward, emotion, and cognitive control relates to how frequently teens check their social media apps.

"Undoubtedly there's a link between teens' social experiences online and the way their brains respond to the environment, but it's something we're slowly working to unpack," Telzer said.

Challenging assumptions about teens

The malleability of the adolescent brain may make it vulnerable at times, but teen brains are also highly capable of prosocial growth under the right circumstances, Pfeifer said. Teens' biological need for social connection, combined with their heightened sensitivity to rewards, likely underlies teen-led activism, for instance on climate change, racial justice, and gun control.

Research by Crone and others shows that the ventral striatum is linked to prosocial behavior, responding to rewards not just for oneself but also for others (Nature Communications, Vol. 12, No. 313, 2021). Among teens serving time in youth detention centers, both the ability to spontaneously take the perspective of others and activity in the temporoparietal junction-an associated region of the brain-differed significantly from a control group. The temporoparietal junction is more malleable by environmental influence than other social brain regions, according to studies by Crone among twin populations. This suggests that interventions in perspective-taking, which target this area, may be helpful for justice-involved teens (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Vol. 9, No. 12, 2014).

Based on ongoing research by Casey and others about the trajectory of development in regions related to cognitive control, including the prefrontal cortex, APA has launched a task force to review new findings that may inform extending Roper v. Simmons, a Supreme Court decision that abolished the use of the death penalty for those under 18, to cover individuals into their early 20s.

Looking forward, researchers in the field emphasize the importance of continuing to challenge assumptions about adolescence-around risk-taking, emotionality, and more-to ensure that the science remains robust and can ultimately support interventions for healthy development.

"We're not going to change adolescents' brains, nor should we want to," Telzer said. "What we can do is optimize what we know to create social contexts and environments that provide the most enriching experiences for them."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What neuroscience tells us about the teenage brain

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New research now turns an old assumption on its head, as psychologists seek to optimize social contexts and environments for developing minds.

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Self-control makes for a socially and academically successful child. Discover ten impulse control activities for kids that can help hone this skill.

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Cognitive Flexibility - ECE Resource Hub

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REGULATE Developing Cognitive Flexibility Cognitive flexibility is being able to adjust one's own thinking to meet the demands of the environment At a Glance Cognitive flexibility means adjusting our thinking to meet the demands of the environment. Preschoolers can experience great growth in their ability to think about and solve problems in new ways.

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BrainBreak Hub - Fun & Engaging Brain Break Activities ⚡

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Explore trending and popular brain break activities designed to help students stay focused and energised. Perfect for use during study sessions or classroom breaks.

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Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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Brain-Building Through Play: Activities for Infants, Toddlers, and Children - Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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From infancy on, play is an important part of a child’s life. For babies and toddlers, simple, playful interactions with adults help develop sturdy brain architecture, the foundations of lifelong health, and the building blocks of resilience. Through games and playful activities, children can practice and strengthen important executive function skills that will help them throughout their lives, including learning…

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21 Transition Songs for Preschool - Preschool Education

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Engage your preschoolers with these 21 fun transition songs. Perfect for singing along and learning about transitions.

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Made by Minnesota Educators The creators of the curriculum, a group of educators at the St. Croix River Education District, started building Be Good People over Zoom sessions in April 2020. We are honored that this humble "quarantine project" is now supporting students across the world! If you

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If you are going to choose one book to read (or listen to) about education, this is the book! I cannot express how important of a read this is for all educators, parents, service providers, and anyone who cares about children. -Kate McConnell, Padlet Moderator

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From New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, an essential investigation into the collapse of youth mental health-and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on most measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the *play-based childhood" began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the "phone-based childhood" in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this "great rewiring of childhood" has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the "collective action problems" that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes-communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children-and ourselvesfrom the psychological damage of a phone-based life.

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The Anxious Generation is out March 26. Order the Book.

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From New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, an essential investigation into the collapse of youth mental health-and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood

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Since 2007, the MTSS Center has been a national leader in supporting states, districts, and schools across the country in implementing an MTSS framework that integrates data and instruction within a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and support students' social, emotional, and behavior needs from a strengths-based perspective.

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Home | Center on Multi-Tiered Systems of Support

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Since 2007, the MTSS Center has been a national leader in supporting states, districts, and schools across the country in implementing an MTSS framework that integrates data and instruction within a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and support students' social, emotional, and behavior needs from a strengths-based perspective.

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Easy, actionable, and functional Occupational Therapy activities and interventions. OT resources and information to help kids thrive.

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Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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A Guide to Executive Function - Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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Executive function skills help us plan, focus attention, switch gears, and juggle tasks. Learn how to enhance and develop these core skills for lifelong health and well-being.

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Helping Kids Who Struggle With Executive Functions - Child Mind Institute

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Learning specialists discuss how to help kids who have problems with executive functions stay organized and on top of their responsibilities.

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Permission to Feel (Celadon/Macmillan) inspires a new mindset around the power of emotions to transform our lives. Using science, passion, and lively storytelling, Dr. Brackett guides us to understand our own and others’ emotions, as well as provides innovative strategies for developing emotional intelligence in adults and children so that emotions help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being.

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"What neuroscience tells us about the teenage brain"

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"What neuroscience tells us about the teenage brain"

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Developmental cognitive neuroscientists are at the frontier of this new outlook, using updated methodology, larger and more diverse samples, and experimental tasks with real-world relevance to answer questions about adolescents in the context of society. They're also supporting developmentally informed policy and practice on everything from mental health care to juvenile justice. "The adolescent brain was long portrayed as broken, immature, or contributing to problematic behaviors," said Eva Telzer, PhD, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "But in the last five years, there's been a huge shift toward seeing the developing brain as malleable, flexible, and promoting many positive aspects of development in adolescence."

Heightened sensitivity to rewards, for example, which is partly driven by increased activity in a part of the brain called the ventral striatum, has been implicated in behaviors such as substance use and unprotected sex among teens. But research now shows that in different settings, that same neural circuitry can also promote positive peer influence and behaviors, Telzer said, such as wearing a seat belt or joining a peaceful protest.

As the field of developmental neuroscience matures, so too do the questions researchers ask. Studies are increasingly considering the influence not just of peers but also of parents. Researchers are also looking closely at how social media use may affect young brains, as concerns mount about teens' online activity. As a result, research on the teenage brain is finally starting to catch up with studies of other age groups, complete with the level of detail it deserves.

"The shift from childhood to adulthood is not a linear one. Adolescence is a time of wonderfully dynamic change in the brain," said BJ Casey, PhD, a professor of psychology who directs the Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain Lab at Yale University. "Too often, we've superimposed an adult model onto a developing brain, but now we're starting to see more nuanced findings."

Embracing new approaches

Adolescence-spanning from puberty until the mid-20s-describes the transitional period between childhood and adulthood, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. During this period, the brain grows and changes in a number of ways. Gray matter in the cerebral cortex tends to thin, while white matter that connects various regions of the brain generally increases in volume. Functional connections between regions, which researchers measure with brain scans that track oxygen usage in blood, also undergo widespread changes during adolescence.

Beyond that, things get a little more complicated-and recent replication efforts indicate that some findings considered fundamental to the field may not hold up in larger samples. For example, early research suggested that brain volume increases peaked earlier in adolescent girls (Lenroot, R. K., & Giedd, J. N., Brain and Cognition, Vol. 72, No. 1, 2010), but more recent studies of large, international samples have shown it's not that simple. Instead, boys' brains tend to change at similar rates regardless of variability in other brain metrics, while changes in girls' brains can be predicted based on certain measurements, such as the thickness of the cortex (Mills, K. L., et al., NeuroImage, Vol. 242, 2021).

"This kind of finding is emblematic of a bigger shift in the field as to how we're approaching our science, what techniques we use, and what information we consider valuable," said Jennifer Pfeifer, PhD, a professor of psychology and director of the University of Oregon's Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab. "It's become clear that if we want to understand developmental processes within individuals, we need to use some different tactics."

More sophisticated methodology is a big part of that shift, she added. Instead of merely comparing brain structure or activity between two age groups (12- and 18-year-olds, for instance), researchers are increasingly relying on a variety of experimental approaches that follow the same youth over time.

"Many people may not realize that our early insights about adolescent brain development were based on cross-sectional approaches, which can sometimes lead to the wrong conclusions," said Pfeifer, who also codirects the National Scientific Council on Adolescence.

Now, researchers use other techniques, such as accelerated longitudinal designs, where participants are sampled a handful of times at a range of ages (starting at ages 12 to 15, for instance, and then annually for three years), which can paint a more comprehensive picture of neurodevelopment.

Large collaborative consortia, in particular the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a decade-long effort that follows a nationally representative sample of nearly 12,000 teens, are also providing richer data that can power more rigorous studies of the developing brain. The ABCD Study shares its brain scans measuring neurological development, clinical tests of mental and physical health, and behavioral data on substance use, academic achievement, and more with researchers around the world; of about 250 papers published using the survey's data so far, half were from investigators outside the consortium. Fittingly, one of the study's early insights is that very large samples-with thousands of individual brain scans-are needed to detect reproducible differences between individuals at the whole-brain level (Marek, S., et al., Nature, Vol. 603, 2022).

"On the other hand, there is still a need for innovative, smaller-scale studies," said Eveline Crone, PhD, a professor of neurocognitive developmental psychology and director of the Society, Youth, and Neuroscience Connected (SYNC) Lab at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. "If we only ran the big consortia, we would miss out on a lot of novelty in terms of our methods and research questions."

Some questions-for instance, how adolescents' brains respond, on average, to winning money for themselves, a family member, or a stranger-can be examined effectively in much smaller samples, pointing to the importance of a balance between large and small efforts (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol. 51, 2021). (Crone and her colleagues who conducted this research have found that teen brains show activation in the nucleus accumbens, part of the brain's reward system, when achieving gains for themselves or their parents but not for strangers. Those findings point to the development of ingroup-outgroup distinctions during adolescence.) Like others in the field, Crone employs a mixed-methods approach, combining brain imaging with behavioral measures, youth panels, and large-scale surveys to contextualize development alongside behavior, relationships, and society.

Another major advance is the creation and use of "ecologically valid" experimental tasks, or those that more accurately mimic teens' experiences outside the lab.

"If we really want to understand how the adolescent brain works, we need to use stimuli-things like social media and video games-that they actually care about," said Jennifer Silk, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh who runs the Families, Emotions, Neuroscience, and Development Lab.

Silk and her colleagues have developed one such activity, called the Chatroom Interact Task, which simulates acceptance and rejection from peers. Teenage girls participating in the task are either "chosen" or "rejected" by other girls their age while undergoing an fMRI scan, which maps brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow and oxygen levels. Other tasks monitor teens while they use platforms similar to Instagram and Facebook, including how their brains respond to receiving "likes."

Researchers are even collecting data that may redefine the meaning of "adolescence," with an eye on the juvenile justice system.

"We're expanding the age ranges we're looking at because the field is recognizing that significant neurocognitive changes continue into the 20s," said Casey. "Those changes have consequences with regard to decision-making," and research in this area may ultimately inform more scientifically aligned approaches to reward, punishment, justice reform, and other areas.

Optimizing mental health

Teens are famous for their heightened emotional sensitivity, especially in social interactions. Researchers are starting to pin down brain circuitry linked to that sensitivity-and differentiate between cases where it's an asset that helps teens reach emotional maturity versus a risk factor that may predict mental health problems (Casey, B. J., et al., Neuroscience Letters, Vol. 693, 2019).

Research by Silk, Telzer, Casey, and others has identified several areas of the brain that underlie emotional responses in teens, including the subgenual cingulate cortex, anterior insula, and amygdala. For example, teens who had more activity in those regions during the rejection phase of Silk's Chatroom Interact Task, compared with the acceptance phase, were more likely to experience depression and suicidality down the line (Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, online first publication, 2022; Child Psychiatry & Human Development, Vol. 51, 2020). "There seems to be some sensitivity to rejection in this brain network that's related to the development of internalizing disorders," Silk said.

Because mental health problems increase sharply during adolescence-affecting an estimated 1 in 4 teens-there's an urgent need to determine who is at risk and what treatments may be most effective (Silva, S. A., et al., PLOS ONE, Vol. 15, No. 4, 2020).

In animal models, stressful experiences during adolescence appear to alter the development of emotion-focused regions such as the amygdala and hippocampus, as well as the prefrontal cortex (Eiland, L., & Romeo, R. D., Neuroscience, Vol. 249, 2013). Early findings from the ABCD Study have found different patterns of activation in the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and other reward-associated brain regions among preteens with disruptive behavior disorders, as well as brain differences that may underlie attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Hawes, S. W., et al., The American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 178, No. 4, 2021; Bernanke, J., et al., The Lancet Psychiatry, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2022).

Rather than searching for a drug or mechanism that can address the entirety of depression, anxiety, or ADHD, researchers are increasingly studying specific symptoms-anhedonia or inattention, for instance-as well as subtypes of various disorders and seeking solutions for each.

"We are now looking at specific behaviors for which we can identify a neural circuit, mechanisms, and sometimes even genes," said Pradeep Bhide, PhD, a professor of developmental neuroscience and director of the Center for Brain Repair at the Florida State University College of Medicine. "That is a newer, better, and likely more successful approach to treating complex human psychiatric and developmental disorders."

For example, adolescents tend to benefit less from fear extinction efforts than adults (Pattwell, S. S., et al., PNAS, Vol. 109, No. 40, 2012). According to Casey, this suggests that they may respond poorly to exposure therapy, a key component of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety, which recruits the prefrontal cortex to reprogram fear memories. It may therefore be possible to optimize CBT to work better for adolescents by using strategies that bypass the prefrontal cortex, instead working to alter memories using other circuitry, including emotion- and memory-focused regions such as the hippocampus and amygdala (Scientific Reports, Vol. 5, No. 8863, 2015; Nature Communications, Vol. 7, No. 11475, 2016). This process is often referred to as "memory reconsolidation" or "reconsolidation update."

"Thus, there appear to be developmental windows in which we can optimize treatments in specific ways," Casey said.

Parents and peers

When it comes to teens' relationships, both the scientific community and the lay public have long embraced the assumption that adolescence triggers a shift away from parents and toward peers, particularly when it comes to risk-taking.

New findings are challenging that assumption, which was pervasive but difficult to test directly, Pfeifer said (Nelson, E. E., et al., Psychological Medicine, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2005). Early data from Project NeuroTeen, Telzer's 5-year longitudinal study of how parent and peer relationships influence adolescent decision-making and development, show that teens shift their behavior to align with the risky choices of parents more than the risky choices of peers. This shift is supported by increased activation in regions of the brain related to reward, including the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Journal of Research on Adolescence, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2021).

Silk, Amanda Morris, PhD, of Oklahoma State University, and their colleagues have started to document the synchrony between teens and their parents in real time, using a new simultaneous scanning technique to measure how one brain responds to another during an interaction. They have found that adolescent brain activity tends to mirror parent brain activity, especially in emotion-processing regions such as the amygdala and anterior insula (Child Development, Vol. 92, No. 6, 2021).

"I think a lot of parents believe that it's too late, that by adolescence, peers have all the power," Silk said. "But this research is showing that parents shouldn't give up, that they still do have the power to help their adolescents learn how to process and regulate their emotions."

Pfeifer's lab also recently explored the claim that changes in the brain during adolescence make teens more sensitive to social information related to acceptance by peers, but their findings did not clearly support that idea. Instead, they found that activity in regions such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex-a brain area related to evaluation of the self-tended to peak during mid-adolescence, especially for information related to status (Cosme, D., et al., Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol. 54, 2022). These findings may suggest that "identity is an important source of value to adolescents, and this could be leveraged to promote healthy decision-making," she said (Child Development Perspectives, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2018).

Peer interactions are still important, of course, and they're increasingly happening online. Parents, researchers, and policymakers have plenty of unanswered questions about how social media use may affect the developing brain. For example, do certain neural profiles among teens predict riskier online behavior, such as the tendency to compare one's appearance and social status to others?

Silk and Cecile Ladouceur, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, have launched new research to bring more nuance to that conversation. They are collecting information about social media use from teens' phones, along with fMRI data on their neurological responses to acceptance and rejection, for instance during the Chatroom Interact Task. Telzer has also launched a new effort, with Mitch Prinstein, PhD, APA's chief science officer, to study whether brain development in regions responsible for reward, emotion, and cognitive control relates to how frequently teens check their social media apps.

"Undoubtedly there's a link between teens' social experiences online and the way their brains respond to the environment, but it's something we're slowly working to unpack," Telzer said.

Challenging assumptions about teens

The malleability of the adolescent brain may make it vulnerable at times, but teen brains are also highly capable of prosocial growth under the right circumstances, Pfeifer said. Teens' biological need for social connection, combined with their heightened sensitivity to rewards, likely underlies teen-led activism, for instance on climate change, racial justice, and gun control.

Research by Crone and others shows that the ventral striatum is linked to prosocial behavior, responding to rewards not just for oneself but also for others (Nature Communications, Vol. 12, No. 313, 2021). Among teens serving time in youth detention centers, both the ability to spontaneously take the perspective of others and activity in the temporoparietal junction-an associated region of the brain-differed significantly from a control group. The temporoparietal junction is more malleable by environmental influence than other social brain regions, according to studies by Crone among twin populations. This suggests that interventions in perspective-taking, which target this area, may be helpful for justice-involved teens (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Vol. 9, No. 12, 2014).

Based on ongoing research by Casey and others about the trajectory of development in regions related to cognitive control, including the prefrontal cortex, APA has launched a task force to review new findings that may inform extending Roper v. Simmons, a Supreme Court decision that abolished the use of the death penalty for those under 18, to cover individuals into their early 20s.

Looking forward, researchers in the field emphasize the importance of continuing to challenge assumptions about adolescence-around risk-taking, emotionality, and more-to ensure that the science remains robust and can ultimately support interventions for healthy development.

"We're not going to change adolescents' brains, nor should we want to," Telzer said. "What we can do is optimize what we know to create social contexts and environments that provide the most enriching experiences for them."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What neuroscience tells us about the teenage brain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New research now turns an old assumption on its head, as psychologists seek to optimize social contexts and environments for developing minds.

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"The Perfect Storm: Adolescent and the Teenage Brain"

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"The Perfect Storm: Adolescent and the Teenage Brain"

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The Perfect Storm: Adolescent Development and the Teenage Brain | Gooding Wellness

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Adolescent behavior and moods are challenging for parents to understand and communication with adolescents is typically difficult.

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"The Development of Self and Identity in Adolescence: Neural Evidence and Implications for a Value-Based Choice Perspective on Motivated Behavior"

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"The Development of Self and Identity in Adolescence: Neural Evidence and Implications for a Value-Based Choice Perspective on Motivated Behavior"

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This excellent study was conducted by Jennifer H. Pfeifer and Elliot T. Berkman at the University of Oregon. The article was first published on February 8, 2018.

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Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self Regulation

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Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self Regulation

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This is an excellent read of a study that was first published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study revealed how tying learning to self-purpose motivates students to learn and complete tasks--even boring, rote tasks.

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✉Please address correspondence to David Yeager (dyeagerutexas.edu).

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Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self-Regulation

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Many important learning tasks feel uninteresting and tedious to learners. This research proposed that promoting a prosocial, self-transcendent purpose could improve academic self-regulation on such tasks. This proposal was supported in four studies…

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How to Boost Executive Functioning Skills in Teen

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How to Boost Executive Functioning Skills in Teen

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Another great resource from Edutopia.

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The teenage years, when students start to juggle priorities and manage workloads from multiple teachers, are critical for the development of executive function-a set of skills that help us organize, prioritize, focus, and exercise self-control in order to be productive and accomplish tasks. These skills have been shown to be strong indicators of success in school and in life.

Over the years, an extensive body of research has surfaced actionable ways to develop these skills; listed below are links to the studies cited in the video.

Harvard's Center on the Developing Child's work on how executive function builds skills for life and learning (2012)

Zelazo, Blair, and Willoughby's study on executive function's implications for education (2017)

Borman, Rozek, Pyne, and Hanselman's study on the benefits of reappraising academic and social adversity (2019)

Rozek, Ramirez, Fine, and Beilock's study on students' emotional regulation (2019)

Thomaes, Tjaarda, Brummelman, and Sedikides's study on how effort self-talk benefits math performance (2019)

Eskreis-Winkler, Milkman, Gromet, and Duckworth's study on how giving advice improves academic outcomes for the adviser (2019)

Hulleman and Harackiewicz's study on connecting science course materials to students' lives (2009)

Yeager et al.'s study on how purpose for learning fosters academic self-regulation (2014)

To learn more about these strategies and the research behind them, see "8 Ways to Bolster Executive Function in Teens and Tweens."

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Bolstering Executive Function in Middle and High School Students

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The teenage years, when students start to juggle priorities and manage workloads from multiple teachers, are critical for the development of executive function-a set of skills that help us organize, prioritize, focus, and exercise self-control in order to be productive and accomplish tasks.

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Executive Functioning Resources from Rush NeuroBehavioral Center

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Executive Functioning Resources from Rush NeuroBehavioral Center

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Executive Functions - Rush NeuroBehavioral Center

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Think:Kids Provides Practical Tools for Supporting Students with Challenging Behaviors

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Think:Kids Provides Practical Tools for Supporting Students with Challenging Behaviors

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About Collaborative Problem Solving ®

At Think:Kids, we recognize that kids with challenging behavior don't lack the will to behave well. They lack the skills to behave well.

Our Collaborative Problem Solving® (CPS) approach is proven to reduce challenging behavior, teach kids the skills they lack, and build relationships with the adults in their lives.

Anyone can learn Collaborative Problem Solving, and we're here to show you how.

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About Collaborative Problem Solving ® At Think:Kids, we recognize that kids with challenging behavior don't lack the will to behave well. They lack the skills to behave well. Our Collaborative Problem Solving® (CPS) approach is proven to reduce challenging behavior, teach kids the skills they lack, and build relationships with the adults in their lives.

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August, D., & Siegel, L. (2006). Literacy instruction for language-minority children in special education settings. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (pp. 523-553). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Cirino, P. T., Vaughn, S., Linan-Thompson, S., Cardenas-Hagan, E., Fletcher, J. M., & Francis, D. J. (2007). One year follow-up outcomes of Spanish and English interventions for English language learners at-risk for reading problems. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Denton, C. A., Anthony, J. L., Parker, R., & Hasbrouck, J. E. (2004). Effects of two tutoring programs on the English reading development of Spanish-English bilingual students. The Elementary School Journal, 104, 289-305.

Franklin, E. A. (1986). Literacy instruction for LES children. Language Arts, 63, 51-60.

Gunn, B., Smolkowski, K., Biglan, A., & Black, C. (2002). Supplemental instruction in decoding skills for Hispanic and non-Hispanic students in early elementary school: A follow-up. The Journal of Special Education, 36, 69-79.

Haager, D., & Windmueller, M. (2001). Early literacy intervention for English language learners at-risk for learning disabilities: Student outcomes in an urban school. Learning Disability Quarterly, 24, 235-250.

Limbos, M., & Geva, E. (2001). Accuracy of teacher assessments of second-language students at risk for reading disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34, 136-151.

Quiroga, T., Lemos-Britton, Z., Mostafapour, E., Abbott, R. D., & Berninger, V. W. (2002). Phonological awareness and beginning reading in Spanish-speaking ESL first graders: Research into practice. Journal of School Psychology, 40, 85-111.

Shanahan, T., & Beck, I. L. (2006). Effective literacy teaching for English-language learners. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (pp. 415-488). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Vaughn, S., Cirino, P. T., Linan-Thompson, S., Mathes, P. G., Carlson, C. D., Cardenas-Hagan, E., et al. (2006). Effectiveness of a Spanish intervention and an English intervention for English language learners at risk for reading problems. American Educational Research Journal, 43, 449-487.

Vaughn, S., Linan-Thompson, S., & Hickman-Davis, P. (2003). Response to treatment as a means for identifying students with reading/learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 69, 391-410.

Vaughn, S., Mathes, P., Linan-Thompson, S., Cirino, P., Carlson, C., Pollard-Durodola, S., et al. (2006). Effectiveness of an English intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading problems. Elementary School Journal, 107, 153-180.

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Best Practice for ELLs: Small-Group Interventions

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Providing small-group reading instruction in five core reading elements (phonological awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) can really help English language learners in the elementary grades.

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Who were Orton and Gillingham?

Samuel Torrey Orton (1879-1948)

A neuropsychiatrist and pathologist and his focus was on reading and language processing difficulties. He brought together neuroscientific information and principles of remediation. As early as the 1920s, he had extensively studied children with the kind of language processing difficulties now commonly associated with Dyslexia and had formulated a set of teaching principles and practices for such children.

Anna Gillingham (1878-1963)

A gifted educator and psychologist with a superb mastery of the language. Working with Dr. Orton, she trained teachers and compiled and published instructional materials. Over the last half century the Orton-Gillingham Approach has been the seminal and most influential intervention designed expressly for remediating the language processing problems of children and adults with Dyslexia.

We owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to these 2 distinguished individuals, as the Orton Gillingham Approach has opened the door to language acquisition for countless individuals.

What is the Orton Gillingham Approach?

The Orton Gillingham Approach is a research based approach, and has been used for many decades to successfully provide literacy remediation to students of all ages.

The Orton Gillingham Approach is primarily used for those who have Dyslexia. These individuals have difficulty primarily in the areas of reading, writing, and spelling. Often these difficulties create a learning gap in other academic areas as well.

While those who do not have Dyslexia acquire language skills easily, those with Dyslexia need to be taught the various components that make up the English language. The Orton Gillingham Approach has stood the test of time and has been proven effective time and time again in assisting individuals to overcome their language-based disability.

In recent years, the Orton Gillingham Approach has also been adopted in general education classrooms, and has been very effective with the general education population. Due to the prescriptive nature of the Orton Gillingham Approach, the lesson plans target the student's individual learning needs. It is so important to accommodate the varying needs and acknowledge the different learning styles by incorporating multisensory strategies in the classroom. In doing so, we set our students up for success, as well as ignite in them a renewed excitement and zest for learning.

How does the Orton Gillingham Approach work?

Many programs have evolved throughout the years from Orton Gillingham.

Though they have some differences, they all have the same necessary components to be effective for our students with Dyslexia, or specific language-based disability.

The essential elements of the Orton Gillingham Approach are:

Multisensory: A multisensory approach is one that taps into the various modalities by which we learn. We learn via the visual, auditory, kinesthetic (movement), and tactile (touch) pathways. The Orton Gillingham Approach is multisensory, making it an optimally effective teaching method.

Phonetic-Alphabetic: There is a logical connection between the sounds and symbols in our English language, as well as conventional rules that when applied produce independent readers. Teaching by using a sequential phonetic approach offers the students the tools necessary to unlock the door to reading acquisition. As the student reads, he/she can apply the rules of our language and analyze what is written for greater understanding.

Synthetic-Analytic: Synthetic Phonics is the learning of phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and their corresponding graphemes (the written symbol for each phoneme). Analytic Phonics (whole-word approach) is breaking down a whole word to its parts with the help of decoding.

Structured: The materials taught are presented in an organized manner indicating the relationship between new and previously taught information. This presentation facilitates optimal student learning, as the tools of our language work together to develop competent, independent learners.

Sequential: This Approach moves from the simple concepts of our language to the more complex concepts. As the student masters the basic foundational language skills, they move on to the next step and so on until all steps are mastered.

Repetitive: The repetitive nature of the Orton Gillingham Approach promotes word recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension.

Cumulative: As language skills are mastered, new skills are introduced. This approach is cumulative and each step is an essential building block for the next sequential step.

Cognitive: The student learns and understands the rules of our language and how to apply those learned skills to become a fluid and proficient reader, an accurate speller, and a creative writer.

Diagnostic: The instructor is continuously progress monitoring the student's performance to assess areas of need and responsiveness to instruction.

Prescriptive: The instructor then takes the diagnostic information and drives the subsequent lesson planning to best target and promote resolution to the student's areas of need.

Who owns the Orton Gillingham Approach?

The Approach is not owned by any agency or organization. The Orton Gillingham Approach has been around since the 1930s and it is a teaching philosophy. Having said that, there are many learned individuals who have created their own programs and accreditation standards that have developed from the Orton Gillingham Approach.

The Orton Gillingham Online Academy practicum supervisors are experts in the field of Dyslexia and O-G. One has been the International Dyslexia Association Branch President for the state of Indiana and is an O-G Certified Master Trainer. Another is a Florida State University professor with 35 years of experience working in the field of Dyslexia and O-G (trained by Dr. Marge Tillman & David Schenck). Another has a doctorate in curriculum and Administration and is a Reading Specialist who has spent years facilitating Orton Gillingham trainings for teachers across the country. Our staff is highly qualified and gifted to provide the scaffolding needed to guide our participants successfully through the certification process.

Orton Gillingham Training Options:

Orton Gillingham Online Academy

Dyslexia Institute of Indiana

Dyslexia Training Institute

Wilson Reading System

Barton Reading and Spelling System

Fairleigh Dickinson University

Institute for Multi-sensory Education

Academy of Orton-Gillingham

Neuhaus Education Center

...and many more

Wonderful Orton Gillingham Resources:

As evidenced by the list above and the variety of others offering Orton Gillingham training opportunities and wonderful resources, there are many quality options available. If we are going to truly make a difference in the lives of those with Dyslexia, it is vital that we work together as a team and to collaborate with one another. The Orton Gillingham Online Academy has students from across the globe. Paths are appearing where they have never been before. We have course participants from Thailand, Singapore, Mongolia, Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Indian reservations in the United States, and several remote areas that would not have had access to the Orton Gillingham Approach if it were not for an online option.

Dr. Orton and Anna Gillingham came up with this amazing philosophy, now, let us get it out there to make the world of difference for those with Dyslexia!

We believe that all people have the right to reach their full potential. The Orton Gillingham Online Academy (OGOA) exists to serve children, adolescents, and adults with Dyslexia. The Orton Gillingham Online Academy offers parents and teachers resources to assist with teaching our English language. We are dedicated and committed to present to you tools that will enhance the teaching/learning venue. It is our goal to maintain a standard of excellence for the practice of the Orton Gillingham Approach. We make it our mission to reach students across the globe.

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Welcome to the Orton Gillingham Online Academy! We are so glad you stopped by for a visit. Who were Orton and Gillingham? Samuel Torrey Orton (1879-1948) A neuropsychiatrist and pathologist and his focus was on reading and language processing difficulties. He brought together neuroscientific information and principles of remediation.

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iReady is offering its whole program to the Archdiocese of Chicago for FREE, All schools are now connected/uploaded all schools to this platform.

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Remote Learning: At-Home Teaching Support with i-Ready

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This is a unique year of teaching and learning. As teachers, students, and families navigate different learning contexts and constantly adapt to change, we are here to help.

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This is a free program that provides students with movement breaks in the classroom. Videos are available for teacher/classroom use. This is a resource that is easy to use and available for all age groups.

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SIGN UP FOR FREE

What is BOKS?

BOKS is a free physical activity program for kids of all ages and abilities.

The BOKS program includes lesson plans, training, and support needed to get kids moving for up to 45 minutes a day. It also includes shorter movement breaks, games, and activities tailored to your needs as an educator or parent.

Why BOKS?

Kids are not getting enough physical activity.

Regular physical activity is proven to help prevent and manage non-communicable diseases, and help with physical health, mental health issues, and academic performance and yet, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 81% of adolescents do not do enough physical activity.

Who is a BOKS Trainer?

Anyone can be a BOKS Trainer!

Whether you are a physical education leader, classroom teacher, youth development professional or parent volunteer, BOKS provides all the training and resources you need to run a successful program.

Is it really free?

YES - 100% FREE!

BOKS is free to enroll in and to use. Many games, activities, and movement breaks are equipment free as well.

What do I Get When I Sign Up?

Unlimited access to our lesson plans, training and free resources.

Once you sign-up, you will be given access to our Trainer Hub. This Hub holds everything you need to run a successful BOKS program as well as all the extra games and activities we release monthly.

How do I get started?

Sign up your school, classroom, youth organization or household.

Click the "Sign-Up" button to get started! Once you are in the Trainer Hub the New Trainer On-boarding Module under TRAINING is a great place to start your journey!

Click Here To Sign Up

Weymouth has been participating with the Reebok BOKS program for over eight years. In Weymouth, we believe that this program has made an impact with our students ability to focus, achieve, and learn the valuable lesson that fitness can be fun! BOKS rocks in Weymouth Public Schools!

Jennifer Curtis Whipple

Superintendent Weymouth Public Schools

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BOKS Kids - Free Before & After School Exercise Programs

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SIGN UP FOR FREE The BOKS program includes lesson plans, training, and support needed to get kids moving for up to 45 minutes a day. It also includes shorter movement breaks, games, and activities tailored to your needs as an educator or parent.

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Guidance and interventions for supporting students demonstrating difficulty with social-emotional learning skills, such as self regulation, anxiety, etc.

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PBIS World | A Complete Tier 1 Through Tier 3 Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports System

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PBIS World is in no way affiliated, associated, or connected with any other website, entity, organization, or federal, state, local, or other government agency, department, program, policy, organization, or initiative.

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National Center on Intensive Intervention

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National Center on Intensive Intervention

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Intensive intervention helps students with severe and persistent learning and behavioral needs, including students with disabilities. It is a process, not a specific program or product. The process is driven by data, characterized by increased intensity and individualization, and considers the academic and behavioral needs of the student. In some schools, intensive intervention may be known as “Tier 3 intervention,” and may be embedded within a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) framework.

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Explore all

Educators

Find tools and resources to support general and special education teachers, interventionists, school psychologists, school counselors, and other school-based personnel working with students with intensive academic and behavioral needs.

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Explore all Find tools and resources to support general and special education teachers, interventionists, school psychologists, school counselors, and other school-based personnel working with students with intensive academic and behavioral needs.

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Overview of Common Accommodations and Modifications 

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Overview of Common Accommodations and Modifications 

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By Eve Kessler, Esq. with Michele Schneider, MS

AT A GLANCE

Accommodations and modifications are tools used by your child's IEP team to help level the playing field for kids with learning difficulties * Understanding the differences-along with what the options are- can help ensure that your child's needs are met at school

The difference between success and failure for students with LD and ADHD often comes down to how effectively the curriculum is adapted to individual needs. Accommodations and modifications are the tools used by the IEP team to achieve that end.

Accommodations

Accommodations allow a student to complete the same tasks as their non-LD peers but with some variation in time, format, setting, and/or presentation. The purpose of an accommodation is to provide a student with equal access to learning and an equal opportunity to show what he knows and what he can do.

Accommodations are divided into four categories:

Variations in time: adapting the time allotted for learning, task completion, or testing

Variation of input: adapting the way instruction is delivered

Variation of output: adapting how a student can respond to instruction

Variation of size: adapting the number of items the student is expected to complete

Common examples of accommodations include extended time to complete assignments, provision of notes or outlines, untimed tests, and reduced number of test questions.

Modifications

Unlike accommodations, which do not change the instructional level, content, or performance criteria, modifications alter one or more of those elements on a given assignment. Modifications are changes in what students are expected to learn, based on their individual abilities.

Examples of modifications include use of alternate books, pass/no pass grading option, reworded questions in simpler language, daily feedback to a student.
Eve Kessler, Esq., a criminal appellate attorney with The Legal Aid Society, NYC, is co-founder of SPED*NET Wilton and a Contributing Editor of Smart Kids.
Related Smart Kids Topics

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IEP Planning: Accommodations & Modifications

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By Eve Kessler, Esq. with Michele Schneider, MS Accommodations and modifications are tools used by your child's IEP team to help level the playing field for kids with learning difficulties * Understanding the differences-along with what the options are- can help ensure that your child's needs are met at school The difference between success and failure for students with LD and ADHD often comes down to how effectively the curriculum is adapted to individual needs.

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LD Online's Resource of Accommodations and Modifications

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LD Online's Resource of Accommodations and Modifications

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What are accommodations?

Accommodations are alterations in the way tasks are presented that allow children with learning disabilities to complete the same assignments as other students. Accommodations do not alter the content of assignments, give students an unfair advantage or in the case of assessments, change what a test measures. They do make it possible for students with LD to show what they know without being impeded by their disability.

How does a child receive accommodations?

Once a child has been formally identified with a learning disability, the child or parent may request accommodations for that child's specific needs. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act states that a child's IEP (Individualized Education Program) team - which both parent and child are a part of - must decide which accommodations are appropriate for him or her. Any appropriate accommodations should be written into a student's IEP.

Here are some examples of possible accommodations for an IEP team to consider, broken into six categories:

Presentation:

Provide on audio tape

Provide in large print

Reduce number of items per page or line

Provide a designated reader

Present instructions orally

Response:

Allow for verbal responses

Allow for answers to be dictated to a scribe

Allow the use of a tape recorder to capture responses

Permit responses to be given via computer

Permit answers to be recorded directly into test booklet

Timing:

Allow frequent breaks

Extend allotted time for a test

Setting:

Provide preferential seating

Provide special lighting or acoustics

Provide a space with minimal distractions

Administer a test in small group setting

Administer a test in private room or alternative test site

Test Scheduling

Administer a test in several timed sessions or over several days

Allow subtests to be taken in a different order

Administer a test at a specific time of day

Other

Provide special test preparation

Provide on-task/focusing prompts

Provide any reasonable accommodation that a student needs that does not fit under the existing categories

Should accommodations have an impact on how assignments are graded?

School assignments and tests completed with accommodations should be graded the same way as those completed without accommodations. After all, accommodations are meant to "level the playing field," provide equal and ready access to the task at hand, and not meant to provide an undue advantage to the user.

What if accommodations don't seem to be helping?

Selecting and monitoring the effectiveness of accommodations should be an ongoing process, and changes (with involvement of students, parents and educators) should be made as often as needed. The key is to be sure that chosen accommodations address students' specific areas of need and facilitate the demonstration of skill and knowledge.

To find specific technology for particular accommodations, go to Tech Matrix . Choose a subject area and /or a learning support need. The matrix will generate a list of products to consider.

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individuals with disabilities education act

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The National Center for Learning Disabilities presents examples of accommodations that allow students with learning disabilities to show what they know without giving them an unfair advantage. Accommodations are divided into the following categories: how information is presented to the student, how the student can respond, timing of tests and lessons, the learning environment, and test scheduling.

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Free, easy-to-use research-based intervention tools.

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Free research-based MTSS, RTI, and PBIS resources for easy implementation in the schools

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The Pyramid Model for Promoting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children

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The Pyramid Model for Promoting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children

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The Pyramid Model is a conceptual framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children’s healthy social and emotional development.

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1. Home

2. Pyramid Model

3. Overview

4. The Basics

The Basics

The Pyramid Model for Promoting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children
(Pyramid Model)

What is the Pyramid Model?

The Pyramid Model is a conceptual framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children's healthy social and emotional development.

Who uses the Pyramid Model?

The Pyramid Model provides guidance for:

early childhood special education personnel

early intervention personnel

early educators

families

other professionals

Who created the Pyramid Model?

The Pyramid Model was developed by two national, federally-funded research and training centers: The Center for the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL) and Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention for Youth Children (TACSEI). These centers' faculty represent nationally recognized researchers and program developers in the areas of social skills and challenging behavior.

NCPMI's role in the Pyramid Model

It is our goal to provide states with the technical assistance and training to establish the systems and policies needed to adopt and sustain the implementation of the Pyramid Model. NCPMI is focused on the implementation of the Pyramid Model to promote the social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes of young children birth to five, address disparities in discipline practices, promote family engagement, use data for decision-making, and foster inclusion of children with, and at risk for, developmental delays and disabilities.

Tried and Tested Results

Based on over a decade of evaluation data, the Pyramid Model has shown to be a sound framework for early care and education systems.

Now let's take a closer look at each level of the Pyramid Model.

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Home Pyramid Model Overview The Basics The Pyramid Model for Promoting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children (Pyramid Model) The Pyramid Model is a conceptual framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children's healthy social and emotional development.

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St. Clement Mother Turns Daughter's Diagnosis into Opportunity to Spread Inclusion

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When Paula Quinn's daughter Rosie was 2½, she lost her hair over a period of just three weeks. The family soon learned that Rosie had alopecia, a condition that causes the immune system to attack hair follicles.

It can cause patches of baldness on a person's head or complete baldness, which is the case with Rosie. There is no cure.

Rosie and her parents began receiving stares and questions whenever they went out in public. To help cope with that, and with the hair loss, Paula Quinn made a story book about Rosie's hair going on adventures around the world. That book is now a professionally illustrated children's book titled "My Hair Went on Vacation" and is available through the family's charity, Coming Up Rosies, and on Amazon.com.

"I wrote the book to help me when Rosie was first diagnosed," Paula Quinn said. "I was trying to wrap my arms around having a bald child and how do I raise this bald child in a world to love herself as she is and not be ashamed of how she looks."

The title came from Rosie, who, before she went to bed after she lost her hair, would tell her mother, "Don't worry, Mommy, my hair just went on vacation."

As the family members, including Rosie's younger sister, Caroline, became used to answering all the questions people asked and learned how to respond to the pointing and staring, they no longer needed the book. But some time later Quinn's husband, Larry, suggested they publish it to help others.

Paula Quinn updated the story, added a teachers' guide and found a publisher and illustrator. All the proceeds support Coming Up Rosies, the non-profit the family founded (see Chicago Catholic's 2017 story.)

Coming Up Rosies sells head and neck scarves printed with Rosie's paintings, the proceeds of which cover the costs of producing scarf-making kits for children in hospitals.

Each kit includes a handwritten note from Rosie, paint, brushes and a blank canvas. After children paint the canvases, their parents or caregivers email Paula a photo of the image, which she has printed on a head scarf for the child.

"There's so many different words to describe alopecia that a little kid, if they heard them, would go crazy, because they don't understand an autoimmune disease," said Rosie, who is 9 and attends St. Clement School. "So my mom wrote a book about me to break down alopecia in little bits and pieces for the kids to help understand what alopecia is and my journey with alopecia. It's just to help other kids feel more confident."

It's not easy being different from others, she said.

"It's hard when you know that you look different from other people and you can see that other people know you look different," said Rosie, whose energetic and charming personality shines through when you meet her.

Paula noted that Rosie is blessed with a strong and confident personality, but many kids who look different, whether because of a physical disability or a medical diagnosis, struggle with it.

"A lot of children don't want to go to school and they're afraid they'll get made fun of," Paula said.

"Honestly, I think any kid who is going through something will feel insecure, and our goal with this book is to help them as much as we can with being confident and making sure they're happy, and just as happy as I am," Rosie added.

The book doesn't just help kids accept those who look different from them, it also teaches them to be kind, Paula said.

Often people assume Rosie has cancer because they don't know about alopecia. In most cases, when kids approach Rosie, their questions come from curiosity and not malice. Paula and her husband have always encouraged Rosie to approach children and introduce herself. They would accompany her and suggested Rosie ask the children what made them different too.

"Everyone has something that makes them different," Paula Quinn said. "Most of the time when we went up to the children, the parents would mouth 'Thank you,' because they didn't know what to say."

Before COVID-19, Rosie would regularly visit kids at Ronald McDonald House who lost their hair from chemotherapy. She misses those visits.

"I see God in people when we go to the Ronald McDonald House because I think they also see God in us," she said. "We go there, and the stories are just heart-wrenching. We're there to paint with the kids and have fun."

Faith has helped the family get through the tough times.

"With this diagnosis there is no cure," Paula Quinn said. "There is no treatment that's effective for kids. There were so many unknowns. Larry, my husband, and I just felt so helpless. I really leaned on my faith because there were so many unknowns."

Faith has also helped them maintain a sense of humor. For example, they keep a "silver lining list" of the top 10 reasons why it's good to be bald. That list had an addition to it when the family contracted head lice and Rosie was spared. She ran around the house cheering, both Rosie and Paula said laughing.

"God has really helped us to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We're all just doing the best job that we can," Paula Quinn said. "I think it's our calling to use Rosie's positive energy to share with others so that other children can benefit."
To order a copy of "My Hair Went on Vacation," visit cominguprosies.com or Amazon.com. Bulk prices are available through the charity. All books ordered through cominguprosies.com are signed by Rosie Quinn. Beanie hats are also for sale.

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St. Clement mother authors children's book on daughter's alopecia

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When Paula Quinn's daughter Rosie was 2½, she lost her hair over a period of just three weeks. The family soon learned that Rosie had alopecia, a condition that causes the immune system to attack hair follicles. It can cause patches of baldness on a person's head or complete baldness, which is the case with Rosie.

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"Considering that COVID-19 is regaining traction as schools reopen, it is imperative that we prioritize students and their families who are most threatened by the pandemic and who are already struggling to learn math with outdated and inefficient learning modalities.

By adding playful fun to learning, the National Math Foundation’s approach is breaking the mold of traditional teaching techniques – a mold that needs to change now more than ever. Students of color, students of diverse economic backgrounds, students with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and students with learning disabilities all need – and all deserve – just as much support in their learning as their peers. All students, regardless of their socio-economic background, not only deserve to experience success, but can experience success in mathematics and reading."

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Physical distancing recess solutions.

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We help to prevent bullying and promote positive social interaction Playground programs and kits to enhance learning, prevent bullying and promote positive social interaction on the playground at recess. SHOP OUR RECESS PAINTED GAMES As Featured in Peaceful

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Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites
The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents.
Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience.

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Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents. Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience.

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Resources from DePaul University-Dr. Donna Kiel

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Resources from DePaul University-Dr. Donna Kiel

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Providing Support During Challenging Current Events_Kiel (002).docx

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Easy, actionable, and functional Occupational Therapy activities and interventions. OT resources and information to help kids thrive.

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Early Childhood Interventions and Progress Monitoring

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Early Childhood Interventions and Progress Monitoring

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Ages zero to three are the most important for lifelong mental health and well-being.

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Intervention Central: a warehouse of interventions for all learning standards.

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Intervention Central provides teachers, schools and districts with free resources to help struggling learners and implement Response to Intervention and attain the Common Core State Standards.

[24 April 2017] Class Pass: Escape Breaks. The Class Pass intervention reduces disruptive behavior by allowing the student to use a limited number of passes to take brief work breaks to engage in preferred activities. Find out more!

[7 Sept 2016] Wise Feedback. When offered constructive criticism, students can become defensive and shut down. Instead, teachers can use 'wise feedback' to .ensure that their well-intentioned feedback is accepted and acted upon.

[7 Sept 2016] School-Home Note. Managing classroom behaviors is not always easy. A simple strategy that enlists both school and home to improve motivation and behavior is the school-home note.

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Response to Intervention | RTI | RTI Resources | Intervention Central

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Intervention Central provides teachers, schools and districts with free resources to help struggling learners and implement Response to Intervention and attain the Common Core State Standards. [24 April 2017] Class Pass: Escape Breaks. The Class Pass intervention reduces disruptive behavior by allowing the student to use a limited number of passes to take brief work breaks to engage in preferred activities.

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Rubric Maker - Create custom assessments

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Create rubrics for your classroom projects.

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Progress Monitoring and Interventions for SEL Skills

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Progress Monitoring and Interventions for SEL Skills

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PBIS World | A Complete Tier 1 Through Tier 3 Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports System

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PBIS World is in no way affiliated, associated, or connected with any other website, entity, organization, or federal, state, local, or other government agency, department, program, policy, organization, or initiative.

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National Association of Special Education Teachers

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National Association of Special Education Teachers

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Take a moment to review the various e-Publications, professional development and special education resources.

NASET is proud to offer its' members free access to one of the most extensive and comprehensive sources of Professional Development courses available today. With over 100 courses ranging from 1 to 3 hours each, NASET provides it's members the opportunity for over 100 hours of professional development included with your membership in NASET.

Professional Development Courses (101 courses) - Free with Membership!

Board Certification in Special Education establishes a much needed standard for professionals, across disciplines, who work with exceptional children.

NASET provides the multiple areas with valuable information about IEPs. From a ePublication IEP Components to mutlple articles resources, forms, NASET has a wealth of information for the special education professional.

The online Special Educator e-Journal is published monthly throughout the year and provides timely information on what's current in special education.

This list is provided to all members of NASET to help facilitate the numerous tasks required on a daily basis. All documents are available to view online or download as a PDF file for offline printing.

NASET's Week in Review is a weekly emailed publication that provides members with some of the most interesting stories, topics and issues reported during the week in the field of special education.

NASET News Alerts provide the latest special education news as it happens. News Alerts are emailed, posted and through RSS feeds.

This series provides NASET members with an in-depth look at the step-by-step process of assessing students for eligibility and educational placement in special education.

This series is devoted to lesser known disorders that you may encounter in special education. While not as prevalent as other disorders experienced by most special education teachers, you should be aware of these disorders in order to become more knowledgeable, and increase your ability to assist patents of children with these disorders if they should appear in your classroom or school. Each month we will present a list of 3 disorders that appear in the special education population. Some of these disorders may contain subtypes which will also be presented.

The NASET LD Report is an education resource that provides NASET members with a comprehensive overview of learning disabilities. The NASET LD Report covers many areas of study in the field of LD.

The Practical Teacher is a monthly education resource that provides NASET members with practical tools, strategies, and relevant information that they can use both in and outside of the classroom.

Parent Teacher Conference Handouts can be given at the end of parent teacher conferences to reinforce concepts and help parents better understand information discussed at the conference. New additions are added monthly.

The NASET RTI Roundtable is an educational resource that provides members with the latest information on RTI.

The NASET Autism Spectrum Disorder Series is an education resource that focused on the research, writing, and practical information that we have obtained on causes, characteristics, eligibility, assessment, and teaching strategies.

NASET's Behavior Management Series is a unique guide for all teachers in helping to understand what their student's behavior really means and how to identify and resolve the issue. This series offers teachers the insight into the inner dynamics, conflicts, fears, symptoms, tension, and so on of students who may be experiencing difficulty learning or behaving in the classroom.

The Classroom Management Series provide teachers with practical guidelines covering a variety of topics and supportive information which may help improve their classroom.

A Journal of Research Based Articles in Special Education are provided courtesy of The Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals (). Each issue contains articles that are derived from multiple authors and are based upon the latest research in our profession.

This series is devoted exclusively to students with severe disabilities. This series will cover all aspects of students with severe disabilities focusing especially on understanding this population and what skills and information are necessary if you are asked to teach this population of students.

At NASET, we get many questions from our members about certain areas of interest. The NASET Q & A Corner provides all members with the opportunities to have access to these questions, and more importantly, answers to them from professionals in the field.

This series is intended to provide teachers, related service personnel, administrators, and other individuals charged with assisting in the development of the paraprofessional workforce with information and strategies to build strong, effective, supportive teams to ensure successful educational services for all students.

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National Association of Special Education Teachers: Teachers Teaching Exceptional Children

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Special Education Web Site - Teachers Teaching Special Education National Association of Special Education Teachers

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The SEL Padlet of resources curated by the Archdiocese's Director of Social Emotional Learning, Yesenia Maldonado, is an excellent resources for helping students handle this recent crisis as well as other SEL challenges.

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special education | special needs classroom products

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assistive technology & teacher materials

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The largest selection of Special Education and Special Needs Classroom Products Available at School Specialty. Click Above to Purchase Now!

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Q: Do you have any tips for motivating parents who are reluctant to engage in receiving additional support?

A: It is important to remember that there are many reasons that might be contributing to what looks like lack of engagement. There are stressors facing families now that are beyond what any of us likely learned about in our teacher education programs. In addition to praying for such families, I recommend reaching out individually to check on them. I also recommend reachong out to colleagues and/or your administrator to brainstorm ideas.

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The new realities of the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to set in this week. For educators, that means disrupted routines and a shift to online learning at many schools. In the United States so far, 46 states have decided to close schools, affecting more than 54 million students nationwide. That's 54 million students out of a total of about 56 million in the country.

And no one knows how long this will last. Some have noted that this feels like the first few steps of a marathon.

This week on the podcast, EdSurge spoke with Christine Elgersma, a senior editor of social media and learning resources at the nonprofit Common Sense Media. As both a parent and a former teacher, Elgersma understands just how much is being asked of educators and families right now.

Elgersma offers some actionable advice for teachers and parents looking to better support their children-and themselves. Among other points, she says that human connection is more critical than instructional time right now, and that educators and parents should let themselves off the hook a little bit, since these are unprecedented times and no one can be expected to handle it perfectly.

Listen to this week's podcast on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player below. Or read the partial transcript, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
EdSurge: Given how surreal and, frankly, scary these circumstances are, I first just want to check in and ask: How are you doing?
Christine Elgersma: I am OK. I actually have a cold right now, so I apologize for the stuffiness, but yeah, I'm doing OK.
Where are you calling in from and how is that different from your normal work arrangement?
I am currently calling in from my home, which is just outside San Francisco, and our main office is in the city of San Francisco. So yeah. So I'm here at home, as most of us are.

This week's podcast is brought to you by "The State of Online STEM Education'' an upcoming national survey of the online STEM landscape created by Every Learner Everywhere and Online Learning Consortium.

Share your experience in these areas; Effectiveness, Opportunities, Challenges, Equity & Access.
At what point do you feel like you had a wake-up call about COVID-19, where you said to yourself, 'OK, this is going to possibly change everything about our daily life'?
I think when the news stories started to [break], it felt like dominoes started to fall, so school's closing here, rumors of schools maybe closing, and then I could feel the momentum building. I think that was the moment for me where I knew everything was about to really change.
A lot has happened since then. It seems like a lot is happening every day. And of course our nation's educators are bearing the brunt of that with abrupt school closures and indefinite return dates. So let's start there. I know Common Sense has come up with some resources to help educators navigate this new reality. Can you tell us a little bit about those?
Yes, and I'll just start by saying that I am a parent and I was a teacher. So just thinking about what teachers are going through right now, it's really intense, and to have to make that switch so quickly and on the fly and figure this all out is really quite something. And so, I know that there are a lot of resources coming at them right now. So hopefully what we have available will be streamlined enough that it can be really helpful and kind of take them through what they need.

But what we've tried to do is break it down into ways to organize yourself as a teacher, to plan to figure out what method you want to use to connect with kids, whether you're going to do it asynchronously or live stream, and then ways to actually deliver the material. There are so many options, so I think making those decisions first is a good place to start.
A lot of schools are going to be turning to virtual learning in the coming weeks and possibly months. What advice do you have for those that are ramping that up?
I think for schools that are trying to do remote learning, some advice I've heard from teachers who are doing it already is that they should really focus on the basics. So you won't be able to do everything you were going to do or what you planned to do, so you've got to really focus and streamline-figure out how you're going to connect with your students.

And I think, if it's possible, some kind of [video-based] connection at least a little bit a day is really helpful for both you and the kids because, as we know, that connection with the teacher is really important. It keeps the structure and also it's just that human element that might help kids feel a little bit less anxious.

And then we have to talk about digital citizenship also because if all learning is on the computer, we have to set some boundaries around that. So it's important to talk about how to be kind, how to use the chat if they can use the chat, and what it means to be communicating via maybe just text. So [things like] tone, audience and who you're talking to.

[And it's] boundaries around how to behave on screen, how to behave with teachers online, how to behave with other students online-those are some things that teachers can address very directly. So what are the limits, what are the rules going to be and be very explicit about what kids can and cannot do.
One of the things featured on the Common Sense website is resources for promoting well-being. Can you share some of those strategies?
Well, I think building in breaks is really important. So generally during the school day, kids and teachers are going to have at least some chunks of time that are natural breaks. And if you're doing remote learning, you may have to build those in very deliberately and make sure that kids are getting outside if they can, moving around.

Those movement breaks are really important for both teachers and students-getting outside, getting some fresh air, especially when we're all feeling a little bit trapped.

Of course there are meditation apps, there are deep breaths and stretches. As an organization, we actually did a stretch together on screen and it was really great. It just felt very connected and I think it made us all feel a little better.

Things like that can really break up the day and address that human element that we need to move our bodies, we need to breathe, we need to have breaks built in.

And then for teachers, It's really important to let yourself off the hook a little bit. It's not going to be perfect. And I think there are lessons within the lessons that can come with this whole experience. ... When there are problems, we [can be] modeling problem solving. If there are glitches, we're modeling perseverance. So I think there are a lot of ways that this experience can be instructive in ways we might not expect and might not be part of the set curriculum.

[Teachers can be] looking for opportunities to let student-led instruction or project-based learning happen. Maybe you haven't tried before ... and this might be the time to try them. And if they don't work, it's OK.
What guidance do you have for teachers working with and supporting families during this time, because of course parents are in a unique situation as well?
It's really important to be in contact, to have a closed loop, because we are all in this together. So communicating with parents and getting feedback from parents ... is really important. For administrators, it would also be great to get some feedback and find out how things are going and to try to get in touch.

Equity is something we also need to talk about because some families do not have the same resources, and so if you're setting up online learning, there will be families who may not be able to do that easily.

So there are some resources like Everyone On or PCs for People that administrators can help facilitate for their community members to use, if online learning is the way that they're going to go. But yes, I think using tools like Remind; TalkingPoints, which is multilingual; Zoom; Google Meets, all of those tools just to close the loop and stay connected. Communication is key, especially during times like this.
You keep coming back to connection-that kids need assurance right now, perhaps more than they need the content of an academic lesson.
Yes, and I've read some articles and I've seen some posts about worries that students might fall behind, that they aren't going to get the same instruction, et cetera. And I think there are valid concerns, [but] at the same time, I think we can't put that kind of pressure on ourselves or on the kids, especially right now. It's very true that they may not get the same kind of instruction or make the same kind of progress. But I think that's OK. And I think we're all doing our best. And again, there may be other valuable pieces to this experience that may not translate into something they're tested on but still could be a great learning experience.
Common Sense also put together some resources for parents and families. What do those look like?
We have a ton of stuff for parents, and I think since kids are getting so much information about coronavirus and what's happening right now, we don't want to inundate kids with the 24-hour news cycle for sure. So we want to limit how much they have to hear and see about this and what information they do get, we want to make sure it's child-appropriate and accurate.

So if they're going on YouTube and searching for lots of videos, it's possible they'll run into misinformation or disinformation. So we want to make sure that they're getting their information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and reliable sources of information just to protect and give them that news literacy piece.

But again the calming of anxiety is really important for both. Kids pick up what we're putting down as parents, so if we're anxious-and a lot of us are-kids are probably absorbing some of that. So the more that we can calm ourselves and kind of communicate that to our kids-that day by day, we're together, we're OK, we'll just take it one step at a time. That can help ease kids' fears.

And of course we have tools, meditation tools, mental health tools and apps that parents can look into as well. But getting out and moving as we were talking about is also really important because that sense of being pent up can also translate into more anxiety, feeling more amped up. So using any kind of tool. My daughter loves Ring Fit, which is on Nintendo Switch. So if you're trapped inside that's a good way to go. Just Dance, doing yoga, YouTube videos, old-school Twister, there are all kinds of options to keep yourself moving and a little bit less anxious.
You mentioned your daughter. How old is she, and can you share maybe how you have been talking with her about the coronavirus?
She is 10 and so far she is loving online school. She likes it very much. And I don't get the sense that she's extremely anxious about it, which is good. But we definitely, we try to let her take the lead in terms of how much information she wants. So we've talked about it, but we have tried not to over-talk about it or give her information that she's not looking for. And I think the togetherness, the connection between us as a family is also really calming for kids.

So I think some kids are going to look back on this time ... and they're like, "Wow, both of my caregivers were home," or "My mom got to be home," or whatever the case is. And so it could be actually a great memory, and that's what I'm trying to keep my eye on, the positivity that could come with it, the opportunities that are coming. Which isn't always easy. I'm not doing it perfectly. I have my moments, but yeah, that's my goal.

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'Let Yourself Off the Hook': Advice for Teachers and Parents During COVID-19 - EdSurge News

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The new realities of the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to set in this week. For educators, that means disrupted routines and a shift to online learning at many schools. In the United States so far, 46 states have decided to close schools, affecting more than 54 million students nationwide.

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Free Tools from Leading Education Organizations

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Free Tools from Leading Education Organizations

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An excellent resource for creating learning opportunities for your students during remote learning days.

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Wide Open School's mission lives on at Common Sense

With schools back in person, we have closed this dedicated distance-learning site designed to guide families and educators through the sudden shift to remote learning.
Discover More Great Resources for Families & Educators
Common Sense is dedicated to providing teachers and families with free resources to help kids learn, grow, and thrive with media and technology. Join our community for more tips and resources to support kids' learning and healthy development.

More Resources You'll Love

Get more free content like what you found on Wide Open School.
For Families For Educators
Thank You to Our Supporters & Partners

We are grateful to our supporters and partners for helping to bring these resources to kids, families, and educators everywhere during a global crisis. It is a testament to the power of creativity, collaboration, and a shared commitment to education and digital access for all.

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Wide Open School's mission lives on at Common Sense With schools back in person, we have closed this dedicated distance-learning site designed to guide families and educators through the sudden shift to remote learning. Discover More Great Resources for Families & Educators

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Here is an example of how schedules can be individualized during remote learning days..

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This Free Bundle contains:
- 11 Proven Teaching Strategies that will DELIVER results
- Full Blueprint on how to get kids with ASD learn faster and retain information
- 121 Picture Communication Cards that are FREE and yours to keep.

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11 Autism Teaching Strategies & 121 Free

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Download Effective Autism teaching Strategies

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iReady is offering its whole program to the Archdiocese of Chicago for FREE, All schools are now connected/uploaded all schools to this platform.

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Remote Learning: At-Home Teaching Support with i-Ready

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This is a unique year of teaching and learning. As teachers, students, and families navigate different learning contexts and constantly adapt to change, we are here to help.

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Real life 3-part math questions created by Dan Meyer, featured math teacher on TedTalk, Math Class Needs a Makeover.

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Google Slides is a sound option whether you are using Google Classroom or not. Almost everybody has a Gmail account and you can easily share the link to the deck with your students.

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Weekly Planner for Online Lessons. Perfect for those using Google Classroom!

Now that educators, students and families are adapting to distance learning, planning your online lessons using Google Slides is a great option whether you are using Google Classroom or not. Almost everybody has a Gmail account and you can easily share the link to the deck with your students.

You can add all the multimedia files they'll need within the Google Slides file. Just one file for the whole week!

I've added links to each lesson on the numbers that I put on each day on the first slide, also to the home button on each lesson for easy navigation (check out the video on slide 2). If you need to add more lessons, copy and paste the circles on the cover and add a link to its corresponding slide.

ATTENTION GOOGLE SLIDES USERS: PLEASE, DO NOT REQUEST FOR ACCESS. If you are prompted to "Request for access·" (sometimes it happens when you are logged in more than one Google account or when you are logged in a Google for Education account and your IT Admin has blocked the access), you can try again by logging in a personal Gmail account, and signing out of all the other accounts.

The other workaround is for you to download the pptx file, upload it to your Google Drive, and open it as Google Slides.

Subscribe to be the first to know about new Templates and Themes for Google Slides or PowerPoint that we publish.

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Weekly Planner for Online Lessons based on Google Slides or PowerPoint. | SlidesMania

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Now that educators, students and families are adapting to distance learning, planning your online lessons using Google Slides is a great option weather you are using Google Classroom or not. Almost everybody has a Gmail account and you can easily share the link to the deck with your students.

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George Lucas Educational Foundation

The benefits of movement in the classroom aren't limited to younger students. Pairing new words and concepts with gestures or dance moves locks in understanding-and active brain breaks prime students to learn even more.

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A free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education.

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Child Mind Institute | Transforming Children’s Lives.

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The Child Mind Institute is an independent nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of children struggling with mental health and learning disorders.

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Nutrition/Food Resource during Covid 19 Closure

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Nutrition/Food Resource during Covid 19 Closure

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For students who are Chicago residents Food pick up is available at any CPS location between 9:00 am - 1:00 pm, Monday through Friday during the closure. Food pick-up is available for any child. You can find the nearest CPS location by visiting www.cps.edu/map.
The food boxes will contain three days of breakfast and lunch for every student in the household. Food pick-up will be held outdoors.  Families need only ask for the number of boxes they need depending upon the number of children.

Families may visit any CPS school to receive this food except for Vaughn Occupational and Sheridan.

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CHICAGO - Following the school closure mandate issued by Governor JB Pritzker Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will close beginning Tuesday, March 17. During the closure, all CPS schools will offer free meals for pick up. Important information for families can be found below:

WHAT: Free meals for all CPS students outside of all CPS school locations.

Beginning Tuesday, March 17 through the closure, between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m, Monday through Friday.

ALL CPS district schools will offer free meals for students.
Select charter school locations will also offer meals; a link to those locations can be found here.

Families can pick up meals outside of their nearest CPS school - they DO NOT need to pick up meals at their school of attendance.
Any student (district school, charter school, options school, etc.) can access meals at the location that's closest to them.

Families can find their nearest CPS school at CPS.edu/map.

DETAILS ON MEALS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Each child in the household will receive a food bag which will contain three days of breakfast and lunch meals.

Enrichment activity packets will also be available for pick up at these locations.

For additional information and the latest updates, families should visit cps.edu/coronavirus.

Families with questions about meals and other family services can call the CPS Command Center at 773-553-KIDS (5437) between 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, or email familyservices@cps.edu.

Chicago Public Schools serves 355,000 students in 642 schools. It is the nation's third-largest school district.

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All CPS Schools to Offer Free Meals for Pick Up During Closure Beginning Tuesday, March 17

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CHICAGO - Following the school closure mandate issued by Governor JB Pritzker Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will close beginning Tuesday, March 17. During the closure, all CPS schools will offer free meals for pick up. Important information for families can be found below: WHAT: Free meals for all CPS students outside of all CPS school locations.

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This website provides FREE activities to motivate and engage children to learn speech, language, and communication skills.

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Welcome to Speech Therapy Activities!

FREE activities to motivate and engage children to learn speech, language, and communication skills.

Articulation, language, literacy, and communication activities to sing and dance about.

ideas and activities for all ages

Books in a Bag - Great books that engage and teach language concepts.

Language Fun - Action based activities and games that encourage language development.

Rhymes - Activities and games that use nursery rhymes to learn.

More Language - Ideas that are appropriate teaching language to teens.

Children learn best when they are having fun!

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FREE activities to motivate and engage children to learn speech, language, and communication skills. Articulation, language, literacy, and communication activities to sing and dance about. ideas and activities for all ages Books in a Bag - Great books that engage and teach language concepts. Language Fun - Action based activities and games that encourage language development.

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This is an excellent resource for educators and families on how to assist with distance learning.

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Resources, tips, and materials to help you, help children with autism

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work in a dedicated space that is distraction-free

have access to a visual schedule that can keep students on track and work towards a daily goal

set a timer, if needed

take movement breaks whenever possible

demonstrate active listening by taking notes during class instruction; even drawing pictures to represent key concepts is a great strategy

access resources for each class that are posted to Schoology

email teachers to check-in and clarify assignments/directions

schedule a video conference with teachers if the student is not understanding a key concept

parents/guardians should check-in on students throughout the school day to prompt/ensure that the student is staying focused and engaged

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Singlish to English is a video channel that provides short videos to reinforce skills for improving comprehension. The videos are geared toward older students but is useful for younger students as well.

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Welcome to my YouTube channel! Learning English through work and play. I am an English language blogger in Singapore, where I guide kids with focused work in...

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Jack Hartman is a musician and educator who provides engaging songs to support learning in foundational skills in reading. The channel is geared toward younger children in grades kindergarten through 4th grade.

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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This free resource provides research-based interventions and teaching techniques to support students who struggle with a specific learning disability in math.

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Dyscalculia.org: Information and guidance on Learning Disabilities in Math, Reading, and Penmanship: Dyscalculia, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia. Diagnosis, remediation, accommodations, assistive technology, special education, school help, college guidance.

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Carol Gray is an international expert on creating social stories. Social stories were originally designed for students with autism. However, any child at any age who is having a difficult time with interacting appropriately to the world around them can benefit from social stories. Carol Gray’s website provides samplers as well as guidance on how to create social stories to benefit children.

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It is no surprise that some of the most frequently requested Social Stories are among the most difficult to write. The Stories in this Sampler address a few of those challenging topics. These are models that parents and professionals may use to develop Social Stories for a specific child, adolescent, or adult.

The Sampler contains Stories related to these concepts:

Safety: Understanding safety may make it easier to follow some rules.

Tragedies: What a tragedy is and understanding tragedies on television.

Discovery of Self and Others: Each person is one of a kind.

Advanced Concepts: Stories to address 'elusive' topics like stereotypes and resilience.

A few notes before you get started:

The Stories are arranged in a suggested sequence, according to concept areas and level of difficulty. They are designed to work together now, and over time. Reading the entire collection of Stories before selecting a starting point may be helpful. The ties between the Stories - and how they work together to build concepts - will become apparent.

A few Stories have two versions for level of difficulty or for a male or female Audience.

A Social Story may use an activity to make a point and share information. Such is the case with the "Peanut Butter Survey". Or, an activity may be accompanied by a set of Stories, as is the case with "The Fingerprint Survey" and Stories.

Story and Activity List: Th e following is a sequential list of Stories and activities in The Sampler, followed by a brief description of each. Stories with two versions share one title, with the exception of the series of Stories about Emma and Tyler.

1 & 2. "Safety Wherever I Go" (1-Boy Version) and "Safety Wherever I Go" (2-Girl Version) use simple text and large illustrations to identify safety measures in several areas, including the physical environment (rails, gates, doors and locks), safety equipment (helmets, life jackets, seat belts), signs, and more. The repetitive format builds predictability into the content, reinforcing the reassuring message.

3. "What is a Tragedy?"introduces and defines key vocabulary, like tragedy and survivor, explains the events surrounding a tragedy, describes efforts to assist survivors, and encourages the audience to ask questions of trusted adults.

4. "Watching a Tragedy on Television" clarifies the confusing aspects of watching a newscast about a disaster on television. It reassures children throughout, opening with a news bulletin that interrupts regular programming. The Story covers several concepts, including but definitely not limited to: the distinction between what is happening on the screen versus the safety of home; how a single event may appear on television for many days (making it seem like a tragedy is reoccurring); and how a family's typical routine usually resumes shortly, with the example of eating dinner. The Story closes with mention of efforts to help survivors.

5 & 6. "What Autism Means and What it Doesn't Mean" (5) and "What Autism Means and What it Doesn't Mean" (6) demonstrates how simple Story content and format can cover a relatively advanced or abstract concept. The Stories introduce a concept that echoes throughout The Social Story Sampler: autism is a personal factor, but it never defines who someone is. Story 6 contains more detail. Please note: Stories in The Sampler assume that readers with autism are aware of their diagnosis and understand it at a basic level.

7. "The Peanut Butter and Jelly Survey" uses peanut butter and jelly sandwich preferences to explore individual differences. This survey is geared to a younger Audience, although it is likely to be useful with children of any age, with or without autism.

8. "Everyone is Diagnosed Frequently" challenges the traditional interpretation of normal by pointing out that since everyone is diagnosed frequently, it is average or normal to have a diagnosis. The Story uses the example of Clark (pictured at left), who is a guy with over 35 diagnoses in the course of his 30-something life to date: His family and friends think he's a pretty healthy guy. They're right.

9. "The Difference Between Emma and Everyone Else"and 10. "The Difference Between Tyler and Everyone Else", could be regarded as Social Story puzzles. The first paragraph announces Emma/Tyler is a lot like other people except for one huge difference. Both Emma and Tyler have autism, but that, of course, is not it. Building upon concepts from "Everyone is Diagnosed Frequently", this Story has a bit of a surprise ending when the big difference between Tyler/Emma and everyone else is revealed. To develop an individualized version, the Story may be used to create an interview regarding a child's personal information. A child or adolescent may then compare his or her Story with that of Emma and Tyler.

11. "The Fingerprint Survey" continues building the concept that each person is unique via drawings. Where The Peanut Butter and Jelly Survey focuses on personal preferences, this survey explores a more advanced level of personal differences. It demonstrates how a single instruction, for example, "Draw a stick figure doing something," makes its way through an individual's mind and past experiences before it becomes lines and colors on paper. It is a tangible way to demonstrate that each of us has a brain and life story that is uniquely ours, with clues to that story in our drawings and the thoughts that create them.

12. "Emma and Tyler Take the Fingerprint Survey" describes two sets of survey responses. Individuals who complete "The Fingerprint Survey" compare Emma and Tyler's survey results with their own. Tyler serves as a healthy role model, too, as he does not like to draw but participates despite his lack of confidence.

13 & 14. "Fingerprints, Decisions, and Fingerprint Decisions" (13-Girl Version) and "Fingerprints, Decisions, and Fingerprint Decisions" (14-Boy Version) introduce and define the terms decision and fingerprint decision for the first time in The Sampler. It opens with a discussion of the difference in fingerprints between identical twins, moving on to other things that distinguish us from one another, like our brain, environment, and experiences. That leads to a summary of the different kinds of decisions that we make. The Story closes with a page devoted to a definition and discussion of fingerprint decisions.

15. "Learning About Skunks and Stereotypes" introduces and defines stereotypes. Skunks provide a tangible and universally recognized case example. The Story describes how stereotypes can be helpful in some cases, and damaging in others.

The description of both good and bad stereotypes lays the groundwork for future discussions of both. Adolescents are increasingly independent and it's important to teach the 'warning flags' or constellation of cues that may mean trouble or a threat to personal safety. An example is driving and the quick judgments that it requires. Many of those judgments are stereotypes at work.

16. "What is it? It's R _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _. A Puzzle Story" opens with a word puzzle that leads to a definition and discussion of resilience. The Story closes with a description of a very resilient man, Wilson Bentley (1865 - 1931).
The Sampler Stories are for any parent or professional seeking ideas and materials for use with the person or persons in their immediate care. I hope they will give you many ideas. You have my permission to download and print the Stories and activities for this purpose exclusively. Permission is not granted for professional presentations of any kind, duplication or distribution via any means, or for sale or profit. Thank you, Carol Gray, Author
The Social Story Sampler References
Project History and Story Guide
National Center for Autism (2009). The National Autism Center's national standards report: National standards project - Addressing the need for evidence-based guidelines for autism spectrum disorders. National Autism Center. Available online at http://www.nationalautismcenter.org/pdf/NAC%20Standards%20Report.pdf
The Difference Between Emma and Everyone Else The Difference Between Tyler and Everyone Else What is it? A Story Puzzle
Illustrations by Deposit Photos http://www.depositphotos.com

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Social Story Sampler - Carol Gray - Social Stories

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It is no surprise that some of the most frequently requested Social Stories are among the most difficult to write. The Stories in this Sampler address a few of those challenging topics. These are models that parents and professionals may use to develop Social Stories for a specific child, adolescent, or adult.

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Yak Back Pack is a YouTube channel with a series of speech therapy videos aimed at articulation. Each video shows a mouth in the bottom corner to provide a visual to students on how to properly form sounds. No cost. This video has a young-child's feel to it. However, the videos do provide helpful practice and guidance for articulating sounds that any older children may continue to struggle with.

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apraxia "speech development" autism "learning english" autistic "speech therapy" speaking "young children" "childhood apraxia" speech talking delay development "developmental delay"

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Fundations (phonics, phonemic awareness, letter formation) 

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Fundations (phonics, phonemic awareness, letter formation) 

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Designed for students in grades K-3rd. Fundations can be used as a prevention program, Tier 1 or Tier 2 intervention for students at risk of reading difficulties.

https://www.wilsonlanguage.com/programs/fundations/

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Establish a foundation for reading, spelling, and handwriting in Tier 1 and Tier 2.

Fundations ® utilizes a structured literacy approach grounded in the science of reading to make learning to read fun while laying the groundwork for lifelong literacy. The program's research-based approach and extensive materials allow K-3 teachers to confidently present a carefully structured reading, spelling, and handwriting curriculum using engaging, multisensory techniques. Fundations is aligned with the science of reading and guides teachers to provide effective instructional practices.

WEBINAR RECORDiNG AVAILABLE

More Fun in 2023!
Explore What's New With Fundations®

Explore FUN HUB ® and our new Fundations Student Workbooks for Levels 1 and 2. Learn how these easy-to-use resources and materials enhance learning.

A Structured Literacy Approach Grounded in the Science of Reading

Teach the foundational skills that at-risk readers need and all students benefit from.

A structured literacy approach to foundational skills grounded in the Science of Reading contains the instructional topics and principles critical for foundational reading and writing success. Fundations' unique and multisensory approach to instruction makes learning efficient and effective while maximizing valuable classroom time. Instruction and practice occur in a systematic, cumulative, explicit, diagnostic, and integrated manner, allowing students to experience greater gains in the skills required for independent reading and spelling.

Student focus

Tier 1/Prevention: All K-3 students;
Tier 2/Early intervention: All struggling or at-risk K-3 readers in the lowest 30th percentile.

Professional learning & support

●Wilson Academy ®/Fundations Learning Community (online)

●Program Workshops

●Virtual Implementation Support

●Facilitator and Presenter Certifications

●Sustainability Plans

●Demonstration Sites with On-Site Coaching

Critical Fundational Skills Instruction

Fundationsstudents receive a systematic program in critical foundational skills emphasizing:

Print concepts

Letter formation

Phonological and phonemic awareness

Sound mastery

Phonics, word study, and advanced word study

Trick word (high frequency word) instruction

Vocabulary

Accuracy, Automaticity, and Fluency

Comprehension strategies

Handwriting

Spelling

The Pre-K Activity Set introduces Fundations activities for learning letter-keyword-sound, alphabetic order, and letter-formation skills.

Instruction and Intervention Within an MTSS/RTI Framework

Fundations serves as a foundational prevention program to help reduce reading and spelling failure. It is integral to an MTSS or RTI framework, providing research-based instruction in Tier 1 as well as Tier 2 for students at risk for reading difficulties. To support the implementation of an MTSS or RTI framework, progress monitoring is built into Fundations. This allows students requiring a more intensive program to be identified early.

Find the Right Instruction

In Grades 2 or 3, some students may not make sufficient progress in early intervention or require more intensive instruction due to a language-based learning disability. In these instances, instruction with the more comprehensive Wilson Reading System® (WRS) by a WRS Certified teacher would be appropriate.

As a teacher, I want my students to have a toolbox of strategies they can use to decode words. I don't want them to look at an unknown word and feel overwhelmed. Fundations has given my first graders the confidence to look at a multisyllabic word, break it into its parts, and then look for recognizable chunks like blends, glued sounds, and v-e patterns.
Lindsay Ciccone, First Grade Teacher, Madison, CT

Fundations Curriculum

Familiarize yourself with the skills and concepts taught in each of Fundations' four levels.

Fundations Implementation

Use in your general education classroom with all students and incorporate the intervention component as needed.

Fundations Materials

Comprehensive program materials allow K-3 teachers to confidently present a carefully structured foundational skills program using engaging, multisensory techniques.

Implemented Across the Country

Impact and efficacy studies of thousands of kindergarten and first grade students, including English learners, have demonstrated that Fundations students make greater gains in foundational literacy skills compared with students using other programs.

See what states have recognized Fundations

Fundations® Learning Community

With Fundations, you gain access to this membership-based companion site, which supports individuals teaching Wilson's programs. Gain access to reference and instructional materials, expert tips, and more.

FUN HUB® + Fundations Are Better Together

Strengthen Your Fundations Implementation with Exciting New FUN HUB Features

Unit Test Tracker

Say goodbye to managing spreadsheets!

Enhanced Digital Manual

Direct access to a dynamic PDF that allows for annotations.

Enhanced Search

Quickly find resources and materials when you need them!

Not an administrator? Your school or district may purchase a FUN HUB license for you. We encourage you to contact your school administrator, curriculum director, or the person responsible for digital purchases to find out how you can get access.

Ways to Subscribe

Qualifying Fundations materials purchased after January 5, 2023, include an individual license for an annual recurring subscription to FUN HUB.

Classroom Set (any Level)
Teacher Kit (any Level)
Multi-Level Kit (any Level)

Teacher's Manual (any Level)
Level 3 Implementation Kit
WinPrin Seat

Individual licenses to FUN HUB can be purchased for $95/year per user. Click on the button below to submit a purchase order. If you're paying with a credit card, please call Customer Support at 800.899.8454.

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Fundations - Wilson Language Training Corporation

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WEBINAR RECORDiNG AVAILABLE More Fun in 2023! Explore What's New With Fundations® Explore FUN HUB® and our new Fundations Student Workbooks for Levels 1 and 2. Learn how these easy-to-use resources and materials enhance learning.

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Wilson Reading System (fluency, encoding, decoding)

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Wilson Reading System (fluency, encoding, decoding)

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Designed for students in grades 2nd – 12th and adults who have a language-based learning disability or have not yet internalized the sound-symbol system for reading and spelling. Can be used for Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions.
https://www.wilsonlanguage.com/programs/wilson-reading-system/

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Wilson Language Training - Achieving Literacy for Life

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Wilson provides evidence-based curricula and ongoing professional learning to literacy educators across the country

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The Links Curriculum (Linking Assessment and Instruction for Independence) is an evidence-based, comprehensive, web-based curriculum to teach upper elementary, secondary, and post-secondary students with autism and other developmental disabilities to be independent across school, community and vocational routines.

The Links Curriculum includes detailed lesson plans, visual support materials, data systems, and assessment.

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The Links Curriculum (Linking Assessment and Instruction for Independence) is an evidence-based, comprehensive, web-based curriculum to teach upper elementary, secondary, and post-secondary students with autism and other developmental disabilities to be independent across school, community and vocational routines.

The Links Curriculum includes detailed lesson plans, visual support materials, data systems, and assessment. Links also features academic, small group, and independent work activities. Links is designed to promote student independence in natural environments. The Links online system utilizes a curriculum-based skill assessment and an observed routine assessment (ORA) to identify target areas for instruction. Links task-analyzed routines can be individualized to meet the needs of every student. The Links school, community and vocational lesson plans provide instructional staff with the tools necessary to teach both individual skills and independence in daily routines.

Evidence-Based

Research Validated

ABA Based

Award Winning

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The Links Curriculum (Linking Assessment and Instruction for Independence) is an evidence-based, comprehensive, web-based curriculum to teach upper elementary, secondary, and post-secondary students with autism and other developmental disabilities to be independent across school, community and vocational routines. The Links Curriculum includes detailed lesson plans, visual support materials, data systems, and assessment.

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SQ Write (writing and executive functioning)

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SQ Write (writing and executive functioning)

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SQ Thinking products directly and explicitly teach executive functioning skills to promote (1) independent thinking (2) self-initiation and self-monitoring (3) mental organization.  These are the intangible skills research tells us students need to succeed in school and beyond.    Instead of simply talking about these 3 traits, SQ Thinking embeds current executive functioning research into tangible instructional tools.

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Students Become Self-Reliant!

SQ Thinking: Executive Functioning-Based Learning Tools

A 21st Century Learning Mission

Empower students to become self-reliant learners.

Using easy-to-implement tangible executive functioning-based learning tools, SQ Thinking provides evidence-based tools and training that helps educators and parents effectively teach 21st century thinking and independence.

SQ Thinking products directly and explicitly teach executive functioning skills to promote (1) independent thinking (2) self-initiation and self-monitoring (3) mental organization. These are the intangible skills research tells us students need to succeed in school and beyond. Instead of simply talking about these 3 traits, SQ Thinking embeds current executive functioning research into tangible instructional tools.

SQ Write, An Executive Functioning Writing Curriculum

A research-based, core writing curriculum that's anything but common!

Finally an end to "I don't know what to write?" SQ Write is a unique writing curriculum that combines executive functioning and an original Self-Questioning technique to provide students with simple yet powerful tools to become effective, organized, and self-reliant writers. Check out how executive functioning research is directly embedded in SQ Write's student tools. (link) Review the evidence!

It all begins with the SQ Write Q Card. The Q Card provides prompts for students to formulate the right questions to generate the novel answers and ideas necessary for an effective essay. Then, using the SQ Write Thought Organizer, students are able to capture these ideas, visually storing them until they are ready to be put to paper. With the ideas organized and written down, students can read their ideas aloud to make sure they sound "right". Finally, they will be ready to write organized, structured essays - every time!

SQ Sentence, An Executive Functioning Sentence Writing Curriculum

Teachers love the research-based SQ Sentence Maps for students to follow!

SQ Sentence is a research-based sentence-writing program that fills an important educational need. Creating well-constructed sentences is challenging for many young students. These writers generally produce shorter, less syntactically complex sentences. Without fundamental sentence construction competency, students' writing continues to fall behind.

SQ Sentence is easy to implement and helps students stay on track. Instead of an open-ended writing task, students follow research-based sequential SENTENCE MAPS to convert their ideas into well-constructed and grammatically correct sentences. Key components of SQ Sentence include:

Individualized Word Banks for student reference

Step-by-Step SQ Sentence Maps for sentence expansion

Student Workbooks for practice and repetition to attain mastery

SQ Organize, An Executive Functioning-Based Student Planner

Find out how easy it is for students to independently take control of their lives with SQ Organize!

Students are not born with natural executive functioning, organizing skills. Yet, they are expected to organize and plan a lot: nightly homework to complete, long-term projects to plan for and prepare, and materials to bring home and back to school again. How is a student supposed to learn to organize and keep track of all of these tasks and responsibilities?

It's simple with SQ Organize! This direct instructional organizational system instructs students to independently take charge and show everyone how smart, organized, and prepared they are. Students independently initiate, self-monitor, and complete homework. It all begins with the proven ROUTINES.
3-Routine System
Simple, clear and explicit self-questions guide students through 3 checklist routines.

Start-of-Week Routine

End-of-Class Routine

End-of-School-Day Routine

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SQ Thinking | Executive Functioning Learning Tools

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Students Become Self-Reliant! SQ Thinking: Executive Functioning-Based Learning Tools Empower students to become self-reliant learners. Using easy-to-implement tangible executive functioning-based learning tools, SQ Thinking provides evidence-based tools and training that helps educators and parents effectively teach 21st century thinking and independence.

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IXL is personalized learning. With a comprehensive PK-12 curriculum, individualized guidance, and real-time analytics, IXL meets the unique needs of each learner.

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The exact skills you need

Planning a lesson or prepping for an exam?
We've custom-built IXL skills to reinforce each topic within your:

State standards

Virginia Standards of Learning (2016)

Textbooks

See skills that match every chapter of 80+ popular textbooks

Assessments

Use IXL for the NWEA MAP, ACT, SAT, and more

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IXL | Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Spanish

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IXL is the world's most popular subscription-based learning site for K-12. Used by over 15 million students, IXL provides personalized learning in more than 10,000 topics, covering math, language arts, science, social studies, and Spanish. Interactive questions, awards, and certificates keep kids motivated as they master skills.

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Visualizing/Verbalizing (comprehension of orally spoken and written information)

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Visualizing/Verbalizing (comprehension of orally spoken and written information)

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Designed for students with deficits in language and literacy in grades K-12th, particularly for students whose fluency is good but comprehension is poor. Can be used for Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 interventions.
www.ganderpublishing.com

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gander publishing visualizing and verbalizing overview

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Gander Publishing - Visualizing and Verbalizing® Overview

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Gander Publishing - Visualizing and Verbalizing® Overview

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A wealth of resources for supporting the needs of students who struggle with expressive language.

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Am I the only one that has run into the teacher's lounge for ice or coffee and had a brief encounter with a general education teacher, only to leave feeling like we live on different planets? I spent YEARS feeling like I did not have one single thing in common with...

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Communication Archives - The Autism Helper

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Am I the only one that has run into the teacher's lounge for ice or coffee and had a brief encounter with a general education teacher, only to leave feeling like we live on different planets? I spent YEARS feeling like I did not have one single thing in common with...

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This free resource provides students with self-guided lessons on keyboarding. In addition, with the audio reinforcement, it is a good resource for reviewing phonemic awareness. This resource is appropriate for students in PK-8.

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Learn touch typing online using TypingClub's free typing courses. It includes 650 typing games, typing tests and videos.

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Executive Function Skills Overview (HGSE)

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Executive Function Skills Overview (HGSE)

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Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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What is Executive Function? How Executive Functioning Skills Affect Early Development

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As essential as they are, we aren’t born with the skills that enable us to control impulses, make plans, and stay focused. We are born with the potential to develop these capacities—or not—depending on our experiences during infancy, throughout childhood, and into adolescence. Our genes provide the blueprint, but the early environments in which children […]

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"Using Checklists and Planners to Support Executive Function" Skills

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"Using Checklists and Planners to Support Executive Function" Skills

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I taught video production in a technical college after years of being in the industry. Quality work and meeting deadlines were a big deal. I told my students that doing quality work and meeting their deadlines was a critical skill that they had to master if they were going to succeed in the video industry (and in the program). Many students were good at one or the other but not both so we gave students lots of help and support to improve their abilities, manage their time better, and improve their skills so that they could meet their deadlines with quality work. Part of that process was the creation of a production schedule. Students were asked to create one by working backward from the deadline and following it. It was pretty amazing how some students took to this and others did not. There were multiple students who did the work of creating the schedule but did not follow it and ended up cramming a lot of work in at the last minute to meet the deadline. The quality of the work suffered, and the work turned in had multiple errors that couldn't be fixed because there was no time left for correction. All of these students could have fixed the problems if they had followed the production schedule and left themselves time to do the work. What was missing was executive function skills.

As it turns out, these "skills" are built into Universal Design for Learning. The third principle of UDL is to Provide Options for Action and Expression. The third guideline in this principle is Provide Options for Executive Functions and the second and third checkpoints are Support Planning and Strategy Development and Facilitate Managing Information and Resources. Executive function is "the group of complex mental processes and cognitive abilities (such as working memory, impulse inhibition, and reasoning) that control the skills (such as organizing tasks, remembering details, managing time, and solving problems) required for goal-directed behavior (Webster)". School may be one of the best examples of "goal-directed behavior" but just about all human activity requires it, from sports to work. There are many ways that you can help your students improve their executive functions by following the checkpoints within the UDL Guidelines, but calendar-based planners and checklists are the most common and easiest tools that students can use to plan, organize and manage themselves and the information that they need to use.

Project maps, calendars, planners, and checklists are organizational tools that require executive function to start, maintain and complete. Once learned, they help you and your students manage time, develop a plan or develop a strategy. There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution for teaching executive function so you want to offer options to your students so they can find the best way for them to learn the skills.

Project Maps

A project map (or process map) is a sequential visual that "maps" all of the steps that are necessary for a project to be completed. It includes options for completion as well. In the video industry, it is a list that goes from the advent of the program idea through the delivery of the completed program. For a school project, it can be a simple linear plan to go from the first idea to the final draft like the graphic below.

The goal of the project map is to show the steps that the student needs to take to complete a program. Knowing the steps is the foundation for planning a successful final project. The steps from the map can be added to a calendar or become a checklist. The students can be partners in the creation of a map too!

Calendars/Planners

Calendars are everywhere as schools seem to run on a schedule for everything! This lesson has to be completed by this date. This project by this date. The basketball team has a game on this date. Testing has to be completed by this date. PTA will meet on this date. You get the picture. The only way for everyone to keep track of it all is to use some form of a calendar and/or a planner. Many schools and districts publish daily/weekly/monthly calendars for some of this and many teachers post calendars for their key events in their classrooms. But, what about all of the assignments, projects, presentations, and homework? Many adults have problems handling this, how can a second grader?

Creating or following a calendar is not an intuitive skill. It is something that has to be taught and learned but it is a life skill that will serve everyone throughout their lives. Most planners are calendars with more room for details. So, start at the beginning.

For PreK/Primary students, you have to think out loud to explain the process of waiting for a certain time or a certain day. Once students understand "yesterday, today, and tomorrow" and can tell time and follow a traditional calendar you can help them plan for all of the things that need to be done in their lives. Start by sharing the time schedule that you have for a lesson. "For the next ten minutes, we will...." and build from there. Once they understand how a day is planned and managed you can move on to weeks and months. I would suggest that you give all of your students at least one blank calendar or planner at the start of each month (or week if you prefer) and have them put each homework assignment on the calendar or planner. Be sure to give them a few choices for what it looks like and that you provide class time for them to update it.

For Secondary students, you can share a class Google Calendar or have them all set up their own calendar (some research supports that paper calendars are a more effective tool for managing time, believe it or not, but they lack things like built-in reminders that can be useful for some learners). If students use an online calendar they can also set up notifications and alarms to help them meet any deadlines If your school allows it, you can have students set the calendar up on their phones.

Regardless of the calendar type or planner, the goal is to help the students develop the habit of adding things to the calendar and checking them before the due date.

Checklists

Checklists are great for helping students keep track of anything that has a process. A great starting point is to provide a checklist to your students for an assignment that is already filled out with tasks that need to be completed. Your checklist will model what to do and serve as an example for them to follow. Remember to explain your thinking as you review the checklist as it can model an important skill of planning. Next, you can give them a blank template to develop their own checklist with your guidance. Developing a checklist is a great discussion topic that supports planning and strategy development and the final checklist serves as a reminder of the process taken to complete the task. The checklist can be a "live" document that can be changed or modified as new details emerge or problems arise. Those modifications will support expert learning and the development of flexible thinking. Using checklists helps to support independence and self-reliance, instead of students coming to you to ask what to do next, they can refer to their checklist.

So, if you haven't already, make a note in your planner, write an item in your calendar or create a checklist to show your students how to use these great tools for planning, staying organized, and on track so that they can get things done!

Learn tips and strategies for developing expert learners.

Resources:

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Teachers: Use Checklists and Planners to Support Executive Functions

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I taught video production in a technical college after years of being in the industry. Quality work and meeting deadlines were a big deal. I told my students that doing quality work and meeting their deadlines was a critical skill that they had to master if they were going to succeed in the video industry (and in the program).