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Assistive Technologies in the Classroom | Move to Include | PBS LearningMedia

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To help students recognize that technology exists and continues to be created by innovators that make it possible for those with disabilities to more easily deal with daily living tasks and pursue greater independence, we explore how one woman advocated for assistive technology during her time in school.

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The Gauls
Some of the earliest known residents of what is now France were the Gauls, a polyglot people who inherited Celtic traditions and struggled for existence in much of what is now Western Europe-against the Romans, notably, but against other peoples as well. One of the most famous of the Gallic commanders was Vercingetorix (right), who fought a determined campaign against the Roman general Julius Caesar. That famous general defeated Vercingetorix and then subjugated Gaul. The Gauls enjoyed Roman "protection" and even thrived under it for a time but were eventually the target of other invaders. The Vandals ravaged Gaul in 406. Four years later came the Visigoths, on their way to sack Rome. A still reeling Gaul had to contend with Attila and the Huns a few decades after that. Ultimately taking over with lasting authority were the Franks.

The Franks
The most famous early Frankish leader was Clovis (left), a powerful warrior with a magnetic personality, able to inspire his fellow Franks to join him on a campaign of conquest. He soon was in control of nearly all of what is today France. Another famous Frankish leader was Charles Martel ("Charles the Hammer"), who led European forces to victory over an invading Muslim army at the Battle of Tours (right), which many historians consider to be a turning point in history. Later came the most Frankish leader of all, Charlemagne ("Charles the Great"), who ruled alone from 771, when his brother died. Charlemagne (left) earned his famous name by conquering most of Italy and most of Germany, creating an empire the likes of which hadn't been seen in Europe in a few centuries. He and his descendants came to be known as the Carolingian Dynasty.

The Capetian Dynasty
A later famous King of the Franks was Hugh Capet (left), who founded a dynasty of his own, prevailing at a time of great unrest throughout Western Europe. Various descendants of Charlemagne made certain claims to the Carolingian reputation, and Capet had to struggle long and hard to finally take control. His dynasty l asted nearly 400 years. Following him on the throne a century later was Louis VII, who famously led a large contingent of troops invading the Holy Land during the Second Crusade but might be more famous as the first husband of the dynamic and famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose dowry strengthened the hand of England's King Henry II. Another dynamic Capetian was Philip II, known as Philip Augustus, who engaged in titanic struggles with two of England's kings, Henry II and John and eventually retook nearly all of what those two monarchs had seized from France. The most well-known of the late Capetians was Philip IV (right). Philip it was who established the Auld Alliance, a long-running mutual defense pact with Scotland against England, and set up France's first Parlement. Philip it was who moved the papacy to Avignon, where it stayed for generations. Philip's sons succeeded him on the French throne. It was the death of his youngest son, Charles IV, without an heir that precipitated a succession crisis that brought on the Hundred Years War.

The House of Valois
Picking up the slack in the wake of the demise of the Capetians was Valois, a descendancy that ruled France for a few centuries in the early Middle Ages. It was King Charles VII (left) who established the French standing army, a development that helped the country win the centurylong war with England. Another element of that victory came in the inspiration and deeds of the "Maid of Orleans," Joan of Arc. Other well-known Valois rulers were Louis XI, known as the "Universal Spider" for his plentiful intrigues, and Louis XII, known as the "Father of the People." Religious tensions dominated much of the later Valois reigns, punctuated by struggles between Catholics and Huguenots.

The House of Bourbon
It was a Protestant king, Henry III (left), who founded the House of Bourbon. He was the first but not the most famous of the Bourbons, a dynasty the lasted for centuries. Perhaps the most famous of all French monarchs was Louis XIV (right), the famed "Sun King," who reigned for decades and was the architect of so much of early modern French society, thanks in no small part to his country's success in a series of wars, notably the Thirty Years War. He was the son of Louis XIII, whose able ministers included the iconic Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. By the time that Louis XIV, his grandson was in line to succeed him. This was Louis XV, who presided over a devastating defeat in the Seven Years War, a part of which was fought in North America and came to be known as the French and Indian War. This king also gave way to his grandson, Louis XVI, who quite literally lost his head during the French Revolution.

The French Revolution
It was at turns gradual and speedy, triumphant and tragic, sustained and dramatic. French society for centuries had been stratified into social and economic classes. Feudalism had given way to the Ancien Régime, which divided the people of France into Three Estates. Making up the First Estate were the clergy, the religious leaders of the realm. Nobles and royals excluding the monarch made up the Second Estate. Those two Estates together made up about 2 percent of the population for much of this period. The rest of the population comprised the Third Estate. This included not only commoners and peasants but also slightly wealthier people like businessmen who made respectable but large incomes. This division into Estates came in handy when the king needed to summon the people for advice, as in the use of the Estates-General, which dated to 1302. Kings summoned this group occasionally to approve new taxes. In the 18th Century came the growth of the ideas of the philosophes, Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Forming the basis of much of this thought and discussion was the philosophy of René Descartes. Ideas of equality flew in the face of the stratified society preferred by the monarch and the nobility, as ultimately personified by Louis XVI and his extravagant wife, Marie Antoinette. Enough people had had enough by the closing years of the 18th Century that a mob stormed the Bastille (left), setting off the Revolution. A new legislative body, the National Constituent Assembly, issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and then the Constitution of 1791. King Louis XVI tried to flee the country but was caught and placed uner arrest. He was eventually convicted of treason by the Assembly and executed, along with his wife. Gripping the country by this time was the Reign of Terror, personified by the Committee of Public Safety and its most prominent member, Maximilien Robespierre. The guillotine (right) efficiently disposed of hundreds of so-called "enemies of the state." In the wake of all of this internal upheaval, France went to war with various other European nations, starting with the War of the First Coalition and continuing on through a handful of subsequent coalitions. French troops met with varying degrees of success for nearly two decades. Rising to prominence was a young officer named Napoleon Bonaparte, who came to dominate the European scene. Largely at Bonaparte's direction, the Directory gave way to the Consulate, ending the Revolution.

The Napoleonic Era
He rose from humble beginnings and achieved lasting fame and recognition. Famed as a military commander and a political leader, famed as the husband of Joséphine, Napoleon achieved greatness for France but also brought about great sorrow. He and the Grand Armeé had great success-at Austerlitz and Borodino and Jena-but also suffered great defeats-at Trafalgar, in Russia, and at Waterloo. He redrew the political map of Europe, particularly with the Confederation of the Rhine and Continental System, a progenitor of the European Common Market that was designed to exclude the U.K. from European trade.

The Last Monarchs of France
Napoleon was defeated and exiled, twice. The new ruler of France was Louis XVIII, whose prestige and authority benefited from a decade of prosperity but suffered in a time of famine and want. His son, Charles X, had a hard of it and was replaced during the July Revolution by Louis Philippe. This was the time of the Romantic era in Europe. A series of revolutions in 1848 featured one in France, and the king fled the throne in favor of another republic, led by President Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. In 1851, he became Emperor Napoleon III. His rule had varying degrees of success and failure. The most notable of the latter was the disastrous defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, in which he himself was captured. France's defeat was the death knell of his time on the imperial throne. Indeed, he was the last monarch of France.

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The Gauls Some of the earliest known residents of what is now France were the Gauls, a polyglot people who inherited Celtic traditions and struggled for existence in much of what is now Western Europe-against the Romans, notably, but against other peoples as well.

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Elementary Social Studies | PBS LearningMedia

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Find elementary social studies resources for the classroom and home. Motivate your students with free lesson plans, videos, and games.

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How to Establish Classroom Routines for Productive Learning

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Before a lesson begins, it’s important to communicate a clear plan so that students will understand what’s expected of them.

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Wide range of helpful articles

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Culturally Responsive Instruction | Inclusive Schools Network

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6 Picture Books to Help Newcomer Students Build a Sense of Belonging

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6 Picture Books to Help Newcomer Students Build a Sense of Belonging

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6 Picture Books to Help Newcomer Students Build a Sense of Belonging

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Teachers can use these books to support elementary students who are getting acclimated to a new school and country.

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This is a more personal approach to getting to know your students better. Face-to-face communication will help create an open dialogue between you and your pupils, and will encourage them to open up about things like their hobbies, favorite subjects and their preferred in-class exercises.

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Differentiating Instruction by Content, Process, Product, and Learning Environment

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Differentiating Instruction by Content, Process, Product, and Learning Environment

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Differentiated instruction is an inclusive approach that acknowledges and accommodates the diverse needs, interests, and readiness of students. Implementing differentiated instruction strategies in the classroom involves making intentional adaptations to ensure all students can access and engage with the curriculum.

Essential Differentiated Instruction Strategies

Differentiation can come in as many forms as there are learners, but a few key differentiated instructional strategies can be useful for effective planning and implementation.

Assess Student Needs: Using ongoing assessment, progress monitoring, and observation to understand the needs, interests, and readiness of students will help you determine when differentiation is needed.

Prepare a Bank of Activities: Designing a range of instructional activities that cater to different learning needs will provide you with options to choose from for differentiation. See the examples section below for some ideas.

Establish Grouping Criteria: Implementing flexible grouping strategies will ensure that students are grouped in ways that support their learning. This may include whole-group instruction, small-group work, peer tutoring, or individualized instruction, depending on the task and student needs.

20 Differentiated Instruction Examples That Will Maximize Learning

The following list provides examples of differentiated instruction that you can use to ensure students have choices for the way that they learn new information, practice skills, and demonstrate understanding.

1. Choice Boards

Choice boards are visual organizers that present a variety of activities or tasks related to a particular learning objective that students can choose from based on their preferences, interests, or readiness levels. During a unit on the Revolutionary War, for instance, a choice board could present the following options for students to choose from to demonstrate their learning:

Create a newspaper article reporting on a major event from the Revolutionary War.

Design an infographic highlighting key figures, battles, and events.

Write a diary entry from the perspective of a soldier or civilian during the war, describing your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

Create a map of the 13 colonies and surrounding areas during the war with labels for important cities, battle sites, and geographic features.

Act out a skit depicting a scene from the war with historically accurate dialogue and character development.

Try our game board of learning options that you can use for classroom centers, early finishers, and even homework assignments. Students roll a die to determine which activities to complete. We've even included a blank game board option, so you can fill in your own activity ideas if you prefer. You can also check out our choice boards for differentiating instruction and our math choice boards for elementary school.

2. Tic-Tac-Toe

Tic-tac-toe organizes tasks in a grid for students to choose from. Activities vary in complexity and format, and students choose which tasks to complete-based on their interests, strengths, or areas of growth-to achieve a "tic-tac-toe" (three tasks in a row).

3. Think-Pair-Share

Think-pair-share is a routine that allows students to engage with material at their own pace and in a supportive learning environment. Students individually consider a question or prompt, discuss their thoughts with a partner, and then share their ideas with the whole class.

4. Small-Group Instruction

Small-group instruction involves breaking the class into smaller groups based on students' learning needs, interests, or skill levels, and providing targeted instruction or activities to each group. Flexible grouping is essential to meet students' ever evolving needs. For example, analysis of formative assessment data may show that some students in a small group have mastered long vowel sounds and are ready to move on, while others need more intensive instruction. This would indicate a need for regrouping.

5. Tiered Assignments

Tiered assignments offer learners multiple versions of a task, allowing them to work toward the same objectives, but with different levels of support or challenge. For example, the following three assignments all have the same learning objective (students will demonstrate understanding of the life cycle of a butterfly), but with different levels of support:

Students receive pre-cut images and labels of each stage of the butterfly life cycle to paste on a diagram.

Students receive a diagram with blank spaces for each stage for them them to label.

Students create a life cycle poster for a butterfly, including drawings or images and written descriptions for each stage.

6. Jigsaw Method

The jigsaw method allows students to work together in small groups to master specific content or skills, while also providing opportunities for individualized learning. Students are divided into small groups, and each group is assigned a different aspect of a larger topic to become experts on. For example, when learning about ecosystems, students could be divided into the following expert groups: food chains, climate zones, species interactions, human impact, and survival strategies. Then, students from the different groups would come together to share their expertise and develop a more complete understanding of ecosystems together.

7. Curated Content

Curated content empowers teachers to personalize learning experiences by thoughtfully selecting, organizing, and adapting instructional materials to meet student needs related to skill level, interest, accessibility, inclusivity, and relevance. For example, to curate content by skill, a teacher could organize sets of practice problems on fractions into different levels of difficulty, ranging from basic operations to more complex problems involving mixed numbers. This would allow students to practice at their skill level and move forward when they are ready. To curate content by relevance, a teacher might organize case studies of innovative technology by industry and allow students to explore how technology impacts their lives and future career interests.

8. Learning Contracts

Learning contracts are agreements between teachers and students that outline specific learning goals, tasks, and expectations. Students may negotiate aspects of their learning, such as the pace, mode of assessment, or topics of study.

9. Personal Agendas

Personal agendas are task lists written by the teacher that include work for the whole class as well as personalized work that addresses the needs of individual learners.

10. Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are visual tools that help students organize and understand information. They can be flexibly implemented to meet various needs. For example, some learners may benefit from concept maps or diagrams, while others may prefer outlines or charts. Use the Venn diagram organizer below to help students find similarities and differences between two topics. Explore our collection of graphic organizers, along with these templates for guiding multilingual students in writing, comprehension, and more.

11. Peer Teaching

Peer teaching leverages students' interactions to enhance learning. Pairs or groups may consist of students with similar abilities working together to reinforce and deepen concepts, or they may include students with different skill levels to providing peer support and scaffolding.

12. Scaffolded Instruction

Scaffolded instruction follows a gradual release model, where teachers initially provide more support and guidance and gradually transfer responsibility to students as they gain confidence and mastery. The level of support or time spent in each stage can be adjusted based on student needs.

13. Varied Timing

Varied timing is an adjustment to the pace of instruction, assignments, or assessments. Some students benefit from extended or flexible timing to complete assignments with support while other students benefit from time to independently explore topics in greater depth.

14. Flipped Classroom Model

The flipped classroom model reverses the traditional instructional approach. Students learn new content outside of class through pre-recorded lectures, readings, or other instructional materials, typically accessed online. Class time is then used for activities, discussions, and collaborative projects to reinforce and apply the learning. This model allows for greater flexibility, personalized learning experiences, and targeted support for students with diverse needs.

15. Self-Assessment with Goal Setting

Self-assessment with goal setting empowers students to reflect on their progress, identify areas of strength and growth, and set personalized goals for improvement. Teachers can help students set achievable goals and provide guidance and resources to help them work towards their objectives.

16. Multisensory Learning

Multisensory learning engages multiple senses (such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile) to help students process and retain information more effectively. Offering multiple pathways for integrating sensory information-such as providing an audio recording of a passage in addition to the text-reaches more learners than providing a single sensory experience.

17. Educational Technology

Educational technology can give teachers a snapshot of student progress: how well they're grasping concepts and where they need help. Teachers can then use this data to differentiate instruction. Here are some examples of HMH programs that include differentiated practice:

Waggle: This program for Grades K-8 automatically assigns personalized practice and differentiated ELA and math instruction based on each student's performance.

Writable: This writing program for Grades 3-12 provides teachers with grouping recommendations, feedback, follow-up practice suggestions, and lots of options for differentiating lessons.

: This program for Grades K-5 uses each student's assessment results to place them into 1:1 reading tutoring. For those who also subscribe to HMH Into Reading for Grades K-6, Amira makes content recommendations based on students' assessment and tutoring data.

18. Flexible Seating

Flexible seating involves setting up the classroom to include spaces designated for quiet work, as well as spaces for student collaboration, to be used when best suited to particular learners or tasks.

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Differentiated Instruction Strategies and Examples for Teacher and Student Success

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Here we provide differentiated instruction strategies and examples that teachers can use to ensure students have choices for the way that they learn new information, practice skills, and demonstrate understanding.

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Setting up the classroom to include spaces designated for quiet work, as well as spaces for student collaboration, to be used when best suited to particular learners or tasks.

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Imagine this... It's 3:15PM on Wednesday afternoon. All of your students have gone home, you've got 12 stacks of papers scattered around your classroom, an IEP to write, 6 progress reports to update, and a faculty meeting to attend in 15 minutes.

Wait, what? A faculty meeting. *insert face palm and long sigh or groan*

But then you remember. The faculty room has yoga balls, Hokki stools, and pedal desks. #WHAAAAAT

Let me just say this... flexible seating is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

It allows students to move around the classroom, work and communicate openly and collaboratively, while fostering creativity and critical thinking skills. ( Imagine if faculty rooms actually had those flexible seating options! All the things would get accomplished...)

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. View the full disclosure policy here.

In the past are the times of traditional rows of metal desks facing the front of the classroom. Today's classroom environment is flexible, collaborative, and engaging. It's differentiated, focused, and fun for students.

And it's perfect for any classroom. More importantly, it's perfect for your special education classroom.

But there are soooo many options when it comes to flexible seating, which is great! ...andddd overwhelming all at the same time. It's kind of like going to Homegoods in search of that one Rae Dunn mug, and finding 30. #yeahIwentthere

Either way, I have a few recommendations for flexible seating options for your special needs classroom. Tried and true by myself and my friends, you can't go wrong with any of these.
Before we get started, I want to let you know that you can click on any of the images to shop that flexible seating option right on Amazon. Some links are affiliate links, and the pennies I earn for click-throughs help keep this blog running. 🙂
[ Purchase here on Amazon. ]
The one resource classroom in my school has a few of these desks and they. are. amazing! You can the "traditional" school desk height for sitting or you can make them standing desks. The little bar at the bottom is for a student to swing with his or her feet. I can attest to this desk being legit... I think all desks should have those swinging feet bars.

[ Purchase here on Amazon. Second option. Bungee Chair.]
These chairs just suck you into infinite comfort, and the students just love them.

The bungee chairs... for a special needs classroom... can kind of either be a distractor ( think of a sensory bungee playground), but it could also be a great reward for a student.

[ Purchase yoga balls on Amazon. Purchase yoga mats on Amazon. ]

Yoga mats are a great flexible seating option, and they're relatively cheap. I've heard of teachers cutting one mat in half to get 2 flexible seating options out of 1 mat.

Yoga balls are great to use at any student desk or table in your classroom. As with anything, you will need to talk with your students about appropriate use of the yoga ball in the classroom. 😉

[ Purchase floor pillows at Lakeshore Learning. ]
Not only are these pillows great for sensory use in the classroom, they're great for getting work done too. We have a light blue giant calming pillow in our classroom, and we can fit 2 students on it comfortably.

My one student also like to sit on it and hop around on it like it's a horse... so there's that imaginative and dramatic play aspect to it too 🙂

[ Purchase stacking stools at IKEA. Pack of 5 on Amazon. Purchase 6-pack of crates on Amazon. ]

The IKEA stacking stools are where it's at. They easily stack up to save space in the classroom and they're super inexpensive (I think like $5 a seat!).

The BEST crate seating hack I've ever seen was this. The teacher flipped the create upsidedown, bought those seat cushions, and tied them on.

[ Purchase bean bag chair on Amazon. Purchase bean bag sac on Amazon. ]

I feel like bean bag chairs were so 90's ... but they're a thing again! At least in the classroom... and the kids love them!

I have this love-hate with bean bag chairs. If it pops or gets a hole, those little styrofoam beads. get. everywhere. and they stick. to. everything. Although having a student vaccuum up the little beads is a great life skill.

BUT bean bag chairs are easy to fix and now you can buy more bead filling. 🙂

[ Purchase as shown above on Amazon. Purchase foam lap desk on Amazon. ]

Lap desks come in many shapes, sizes, and colors... and are very versatile desks for students to work on.

Just stack them for storage, which also helps save a ton of space!

Our OT has so many different variations of these wobble seats, so I would definitely check with your OT before purchasing any for your classroom.

These seats are also great for sensory input and output for students who need it. You can get them filled with sand or different sized beads, or the more traditional ones that you just pump with air.

Wobble stools... Hokki stools... they're pretty much the same thing.

They come in a variety of stool heights and they're great because, well, they wobble. Students can move and "wobble" to get the sensory input or output they desire, while working.

[ Purchase a pack of 6 on Amazon. Second option on Amazon.]

Scoop seats went c.r.a.z.y. this past summer because so many of you were literally scooping them up for super low deals at WalMart.

From my experience, these are great for younger elementary students, but I have heard of third and fourth grade teachers using these in their flexible seating classrooms as well.

[ Purchase pack of 6 clip boards on Amazon. Pack of 30 clip boards on Amazon. ]

Carpet squares! Clipboards! Working hard, oh my ... okay, that was corny. But really. Carpet squares and clipboards.

In liu of carpet squares, you can use hoola hoops to determine a student's work space. Pool noodles taped into a circle shape. Anything to gives students a defined work space and personal space bubble.

If you're looking for some great resources for Flexible Seating, from parent information brochures, to seat check-ins and editable rule posters... stop by Just a Primary Girl's TPT Store. She is THE person to go to ( IMO) for Flexible Seating.

Flexible seating is a great quick and easy accommodation that you can add implement in the classroom to help friends who have difficulty sitting in a typical chair during the day. Learn more about accommodations vs. modifications here.

Do you utilize flexible seating in your classroom? Tell us how in the comments!

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

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Flexible Seating Options for Special Education - Mrs. D's Corner

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Flexible seating allows students to work in comfort and helps foster creativity. Try these flexible seating options in your special ed classroom today!

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Engages multiple senses (such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile) to help students process and retain information more effectively. Offering multiple pathways for integrating sensory information—such as providing an audio recording of a passage in addition to the text—reaches more learners than providing a single sensory experience.

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Multi-Sensory Learning: Types of Instruction and Materials

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Multi-sensory instruction incorporates the use of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile modalities in the components of learning to read.

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Gradual release model, where teachers initially provide more support and guidance and gradually transfer responsibility to students as they gain confidence and mastery. The level of support or time spent in each stage can be adjusted based on student needs.

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Visual tools that help students organize and understand information. They can be flexibly implemented to meet various needs. For example, some learners may benefit from concept maps or diagrams, while others may prefer outlines or charts

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Help your students classify ideas and communicate more effectively with these free graphic organizer templates, available for download. They can be used to structure writing projects and help in problem solving, decision making, studying, planning research, and brainstorming.

Printable Graphic Organizers

Select a blank graphic organizer from the following categories depending on your curriculum needs.

Sequence of Events

Main Topic and Key Details

Compare/Contrast

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Free Downloadable Graphic Organizer Templates

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Use these free graphic organizer templates to help your students communicate more effectively by classifying ideas, structuring writing projects, and more.

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Task lists written by the teacher that include work for the whole class as well as personalized work that addresses the needs of individual learners.

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Agreements between teachers and students that outline specific learning goals, tasks, and expectations. Students may negotiate aspects of their learning, such as the pace, mode of assessment, or topics of study.

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Allows students to work together in small groups to master specific content or skills, while also providing opportunities for individualized learning. Students are divided into small groups, and each group is assigned a different aspect of a larger topic to become experts on. For example, when learning about ecosystems, students could be divided into the following expert groups: food chains, climate zones, species interactions, human impact, and survival strategies. Then, students from the different groups would come together to share their expertise and develop a more complete understanding of ecosystems together.

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Offer learners multiple versions of a task, allowing them to work toward the same objectives, but with different levels of support or challenge.

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Breaking the class into smaller groups based on students’ learning needs, interests, or skill levels, and providing targeted instruction or activities to each group. Flexible grouping is essential to meet students’ ever evolving needs

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Allows students to engage with material at their own pace and in a supportive learning environment. Students individually consider a question or prompt, discuss their thoughts with a partner, and then share their ideas with the whole class.

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Organizes tasks in a grid for students to choose from. Activities vary in complexity and format, and students choose which tasks to complete based on their interests, strengths, or areas of growth, to achieve a “tic-tac-toe” (three tasks in a row)

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Visual organizers that present a variety of activities or tasks related to a particular learning objective that students can choose from based on their preferences, interests, or readiness levels.

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43 Awesome Team-Building Games and Activities for Kids

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Students will have fun while learning how to cooperate and communicate.

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Activities to teach CASEL 5 Social-Emotional Learning Competencies 

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Activities to teach CASEL 5 Social-Emotional Learning Competencies 

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Teach the 5 Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies

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The 5 social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies developed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) are crucial to students’ learning and growth. Explore the competencies and strategies for helping students achieve them.

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Structure: greeting; discussion; activity; announcements

Incorporate these CASEL Social-Emotional Learning Activities

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Make time at the beginning of class for students to share a "rose" (an achievement or something special to them) and "thorn" (a difficulty or challenge that they face).

Let students know that they can bring up something as low-stakes as feeling tired or bored, or they can share something more personal, such as concerns about a sick relative. When classmates get a glimpse into each other’s emotional and personal lives, they build bonds and are better able to support each other through challenging times.

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Classroom Newsletter Templates: A class newsletter is a great way of connecting the classroom with parents, administrators, and the community

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Classroom Newsletter Templates: A class newsletter is a great way of connecting the classroom with parents, administrators, and the community

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Come up with departments such as Classroom Corner, Class Wish List, Upcoming Events, Student Spotlight, or Fun Photos.

Assign students' jobs, such as writer, editor, proofreader, designer, photographer. These roles can change with every newsletter.

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Encourage students to find the best in each other. Provide a public space for them to compliment one another and celebrate your class’s awesomeness. You might use a bulletin board in the classroom, or try Google Jamboard for a digital experience.

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We often talk about the importance of community building in the classroom at the beginning of the school year. You may play "get to know you" games, assign "all about me" activities, or play show-and-tell to learn more about your students and build your community. But community-building activities are not only crucial at the beginning of the school year-they're really important all year long. Community building is critical to supporting a sense of belonging, which is shown to increase academic performance and decrease the risk of loneliness, depression, and anxiety.

Here are 10 ways you can foster belonging and build classroom community year-round.

1. Collaboratively develop classroom rules and community guidelines at the beginning of the school year.

No matter what grade level we teach, we can empower our students to have voice and agency in their classroom community. At the beginning of the school year, gather together and collaboratively create expectations for the class around how students will treat one another (e.g., listening, being kind, no bullying). Remember that the rules should be more about how we expect students to behave toward one another within the class vs. getting work done and being on time. Creating community rules as a whole class communicates that each individual student's input is valued. You can return to these throughout the year and revise them or add to them as a community.

2. Incorporate "get to know you" and community-building activities throughout the school year.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is classroom community. In order to create a sense of belonging, you have to dedicate time to that throughout the year. Students' likes, dislikes, and interests are constantly changing so it's important to continue "get to know you" activities throughout the year so that we can learn and relearn all the amazing things about the individuals in our classroom community. "Get to know you" activities should include sharing with one another as well as reflection that allows children to feel proud of who they are and their importance in the class.

3. Greet each student every day.

Never underestimate the power of a "Good morning. How are you?" These individual hellos can make a huge difference to students, particularly those who may not feel seen or important in spaces at school, at home, or in the community. Greeting students individually can also open up the opportunity for dialogue if a student is in need of more support. KMHF's classroom conversation starters can help you get students sharing more about themselves.

Setting aside time to work and/or engage with students one-on-one helps foster a sense of belonging. Fostering positive interactions and attention for students from diverse backgrounds is crucial to supporting students' sense of belonging.

4. Regularly build in time each week for socialization.

Equally important to teachers building relationships with students is students building connections with one another. With social times such as play-based programs and recess being reduced or eliminated in many schools, it's important that we find ways to build in time for students to connect with their peers over shared interests and get to know one another outside the context of classwork.

5. Talk openly about "belonging uncertainty."

Belonging uncertainty is the feeling of being an outsider, and most people will have that feeling from time to time. Children who regularly feel belonging uncertainty can experience negative effects like poor academic performance. You can help students overcome their doubts about fitting in by talking openly about feelings of loneliness and uncertainty. Have students reflect on times when they've felt like they do belong. You can also encourage students to participate in activities where they have a sense of belonging.

6. Make time to discuss community concerns.

All communities face conflict, and classrooms are no exception. It's important to set aside time to discuss community concerns and behavior, such as bullying or microaggressions, that impact the safety and security that is necessary for community and a sense of belonging. These conversations can be guided by the community rules as well as students' experiences of feeling excluded.

7. Let student interests guide your planning.

Belonging is bolstered when students feel that their interests are seen and valued. Find ways to incorporate all student interests, not just the most popular ones/trends, into learning. This could include having book report options with a wide variety of genres, science fairs incorporating student interests, or open days to teach one another about hobbies.

8. Celebrate diverse backgrounds and experiences.

While we often highlight diversity months (Black History Month, Disability Pride Month) and holidays, we really need to be celebrating diverse background experiences year-round. Our students (as well as ourselves) hold intersectional identities that impact the way they experience the world every day. Celebrating these diverse experiences, including family traditions, hobbies, and cultural or religious practices, validates the importance of each unique experience in the classroom community.

9. Explicitly teach feelings and emotions.

Helping students identify feelings and emotions can help them advocate for themselves in places they feel that they don't belong. For instance, if a student feels excluded at recess and identifies that feeling excluded makes them feel sad, they can voice these feelings to their peers. Peers who understand feelings and emotions can then connect to others through empathy, learning how to include those who feel excluded. The Kids Mental Health Foundation mental health curriculum for teachers can guide you in teaching feelings and emotions in a developmentally appropriate manner.

10. Collaborate with community partners that reflect student backgrounds and experiences.

As our student community grows more and more diverse, the teaching field continues to be predominantly white and female. Thus, our students may not see themselves reflected in the adults in the school community. Collaborating with community partners can provide students with adult mentors who reflect their own lived experiences, bolstering their sense of belonging.

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Classroom Community: 10 Ways To Build a Sense of Belonging

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Read our tips for building classroom community, from collaboratively developing rules to explicitly teaching feelings and emotions.

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A visual categorizing 50 strategies into visual, written, discussion-based, kinesthetic, and digital formats—great for diverse learners.

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Formative Assessment Strategies for Everyday Teaching - Creative Education Summit

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What Are Simple Formative Assessment Strategies For Learning? As frequently as a chef needs to check a dish for taste, teachers should check for understanding…

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A straightforward technique where students list three things they learned, two questions they have, and one thing they found interesting, aiding in comprehension and reflection.

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For Primary Grades PK-1, this strategy should be used in whole-group rather than as an independent task, with the teacher charting ideas. Of course, since many children will want to participate, there might be more than 3-2-1 ideas/questions in each section.

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27 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom

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In this post, you will find 27 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom! Formative assessment is such an essential part of the learning process and student success, and many digital tools can help support this process.This list has a wide variety of features and options to help you solidify your formative assessment strategies! Many of the tools below are great for both formative and summative assessments.

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Features mini-lessons and resources to help educators understand and implement various levels of student engagement strategies.

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Features mini-lessons and resources to help educators understand and implement various levels of student engagement strategies.

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The mini-lessons below are inspired by and adapted from the work of Dr. Amy Berry and her book Reimagining Student Engagement: From Disrupting to Driving.

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School Mental Health Ontario – Student Engagement Toolkit

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School Mental Health Ontario – Student Engagement Toolkit

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Offers strategies to support diverse student leadership and promote mental health initiatives.

Includes resources for creating supportive environments and engaging students in wellness activitie

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Student Engagement Toolkit - School Mental Health Ontario

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7 Strategies to Increase Student Engagement

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7 Strategies to Increase Student Engagement

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As an elementary teacher, you understand the importance of keeping your students engaged in the classroom. When students are engaged, they are more likely to learn and retain information, which translates to improved academic performance. However, in today's world of distractions and short attention spans, keeping students engaged can be a real challenge. That's why we've compiled this article to give you seven practical strategies for enhancing engagement in your classroom.

In this post, we'll examine seven unique strategies to boost student engagement. These range from the integration of gamification and technology to innovative teaching methods and student-focused learning. By adopting these strategies, you'll be able to captivate your students' interest and maintain their focus and motivation throughout the academic year. So let's dive right in!

What is student engagement?

At its core, student engagement is all about capturing and maintaining a student's interest in the learning process. When students are engaged, they are more likely to retain information, make connections between different concepts, and apply what they've learned in real-world situations. Engaged students are also more likely to work collaboratively with their peers and contribute positively to a classroom environment. Research has even shown that engagement is a key factor in improving student outcomes and achieving academic success. By fostering engagement in your classroom, you can help your students reach their full potential and develop a lifelong love of learning. Let's look at some strategies to get you started.

Strategies for increasing student engagement

Use Technology

Integrating technology into your classroom can be a game-changer when it comes to student engagement. Using gamification and online resources, you can make learning more interactive and dynamic for your students. Gamification in education use point systems, badges, and leaderboards can add a fun and competitive element to the learning experience. Meanwhile, educational games, apps, videos, and interactive websites provide an opportunity for students to explore topics in new and exciting ways. By incorporating technology, you can help your students stay engaged and motivated to learn.

Kodable is one example of an educational app used in over 50% of elementary schools to help teach students the basics of computer programming. You can get started with Kodable by creating your free teacher account today.

Create a positive classroom environment

To increase student engagement, it's crucial to establish a positive classroom environment. Creating a space where students feel safe and comfortable to express themselves is essential for promoting engagement. Collaborative learning is also a powerful tool to enhance engagement, as it encourages students to work together and exchange ideas. One real-world example of this is by implementing a behavior management system tactic of a compliment jar. In this system, students can recognize and praise their peers for positive behaviors or contributions to the classroom. As the teacher you can also add compliments to the jar to help promote positive behavior and interactions among your students.

Create a learning contract with students

Learning contracts are documents created between you and your students that detail what students are responsible for at the beginning of a project or course. These contracts often include behavior expectations, learning objectives, and student reflections to be done once the activity is over. Using learning contracts help empower your students to take ownership of their learning which can lead to students being more engaged in the process.

Incorporate active learning techniques

Incorporating active learning techniques is a proven way to increase student engagement. Project-based learning, where students work on long-term projects that require critical thinking and help develop problem-solving skills for students, can be a great way to keep students engaged in the learning process. Role-playing and inquiry-based learning are also effective methods to make learning more interactive and engaging. By incorporating these active learning techniques in your classroom, you can help your students develop important skills while staying engaged and motivated.

Inquiry-based learning

Inquiry-based learning is an approach to teaching and learning that emphasizes student-driven exploration, problem-solving, and critical thinking. This method has been shown to be highly effective in increasing student engagement and achievement. Some strategies for implementing inquiry-based learning in your classroom include posing open-ended questions, facilitating group discussions, providing feedback, and allowing for student creativity.

Give students a choice in their activities

Giving students a choice in the classroom activities that they participate in is a great way to help students foster their own interests and take a more active role in their learning. Using choice boards is a great way to give students options on what activities they want to partake in while still keeping everyone on track for your learning objectives.

Use personalized learning materials

Using personalized learning materials means having flexible classroom resources that can adapt to the needs of all of your students. This includes having additional materials for students to use if they need more of a challenge and materials to help students who are struggling. Kodable's self-paced learning lessons are a great example of how technology can help you keep all your students engaged whether they need more of a challenge or a helpful hint!

Now that we've laid out several strategies for you to try let's take a look at some practice tips to put these strategies into practice.

Tips for implementing student engagement strategies

Start small

Introducing too many changes at once can be overwhelming for both you and your students so be sure to start small with new strategies. Start by incorporating one or two new techniques and gradually building from there. This will allow you to see what works best for your classroom and adjust accordingly.

Focus on student interests

When students are invested in what they are learning, they are more likely to stay engaged and motivated. Take the time to get to know your students and find out what they are passionate about. You can then incorporate these interests into your lessons and make learning more meaningful and relevant. One way to do this is to have students respond to short journaling prompts about themselves for you to read and return to over the course of the year.

Get feedback from students

Finally, it's important to get feedback from your students. Ask for their opinions on what is working and what could be improved. This will not only help you make necessary adjustments, but it will also show your students that their input is valued and that you are committed to creating a positive learning experience for them. Now, K-5 students may not be the most eloquent when it comes to giving you the level of detail you need so you may want to help facilitate this feedback by using exit tickets after an activity to help gauge the overall reaction.

Addressing student disengagement

First, understand the reasons for student disengagement

Let's take a moment to understand the reasons why students may become disengaged in the first place so that we can effectively increase student engagement. Some common reasons for disengagement include feeling uninterested or bored with the material, not fully understanding the content, feeling disconnected from the learning process, and external distractions outside of the classroom. It's essential to identify the root causes of disengagement so that we can develop targeted strategies to address these issues and re-engage our students.

Develop a plan for re-engaging students

To develop a plan for re-engagement, start by assessing your classroom and identifying areas that may need improvement. This can include classroom management strategies, the curriculum, or your teaching style. Then, create a plan that includes specific strategies for increasing student engagement, such as incorporating active learning techniques or using technology to supplement instruction. Remember to start small and build from there, and to regularly check in with your students to assess their engagement levels and make necessary adjustments. By taking a proactive approach to student engagement, you can help create a positive and engaging learning environment for your students.

Review

As an elementary teacher, it's important to remember that student engagement is an ongoing process that requires dedication and experimentation. Focusing on your students is just one part of creating an overall plan for creating an engaging classroom. Don't be afraid to try new strategies and approaches, and be willing to adjust your teaching style to better meet the needs of your students. By staying open to new ideas and taking a proactive approach to c engagement, you can help create a classroom environment that promotes learning, growth, and success for all students. So go ahead, try out some new strategies, and see the difference it can make in your classroom!

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7 Strategies to increase student engagement in elementary school | Kodable

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In this post, we'll examine seven unique strategies to boost student engagement in elementary school. These range from the integration of gamification and technology to innovative teaching methods and student-focused learning.

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10 Active Learning Strategies to Boost Student Engagement | TCI

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Discover ten teacher-tested active learning strategies to engage students, boost retention, and create an interactive classroom—without the overwhelm.

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 Stanford Teaching Commons – Increasing Student Engagement

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 Stanford Teaching Commons – Increasing Student Engagement

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These strategies can help you increase student engagement with learning activities, build their confidence in their community of learning, and increase their comprehension of the course material.

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Edutopia – Student Engagement Resource Roundup

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Edutopia – Student Engagement Resource Roundup

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

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When student engagement is going downhill, we often find ourselves reaching for the prop box.

We pull out random videos, time-sucking resources, overly complex activities... anything to get and keep attention. But even these can't compete with our students' pen tricks, doodling, and discussions of what happened at recess. And there's a simple reason why:

Our students aren't engaged by things. They're engaged by us. That's why the best (and easiest) ways to increase student engagement come from you.

We compiled 20 essential strategies that generate lasting engagement, without the flashy props and hours of post-school prep.

Let the countdown begin!

20. Connect learning to the real world

We've all heard it before: "When am I ever going to use this?" Answer this question and you'll engage students with content that they know is relevant to life beyond school. Use anecdotes, case studies, and real-life examples from outside the classroom to root your teaching in "the real world".

19. Engage with your students' interests

Find out what already engages your students and build it into the learning process.

Using mathematics as an example, you could have students chart their performance in a video game over the week. You might even get your budding social media influencers to calculate a projected number of Instagram followers.

Learning what excites your students does more than just engage them. You'll build strong relationships and rapport, too.

18. Fill "dead time"

"Dead time" is any point in a lesson where students are left without something to do. You might be handing out a worksheet, getting a presentation set up, or waiting interminably for a YouTube video to load. These are brief windows that leave just enough time for students to tune out, after which time it can be very difficult to get them back.

Fill these blank spaces with low-order activities to hold students' attention. These should be quick, easy, and require minimal follow-up. For example:

Think Pair Share: students reflect on something, discuss with a partner, and then share with the rest of the class once everyone is ready

Quickwrite: write down three questions or points that have been raised by the lesson so far

What I know already: if you're just about to dive into new content, ask students to identify three things they already know about the subject and jot them down as bullet points.

17. Use group work and collaboration

Collaborating with small groups gives students a welcome break from solo bookwork. They'll benefit from each other's perspectives and the ability to express their ideas.

Use your judgment and knowledge of who works well together when organizing group work. Engineering the groups might avoid troublesome partnerships, while allowing students to work with friends might generate the buzz you need for more productive activity.

16. Encourage students to present and share work regularly

Giving students a regular opportunity to share their thoughts and demonstrate learning in front of their peers drives engagement in two ways:

it makes students accountable

it lets them hear from someone other than their teacher.

If your students quiver in fear at the thought of speaking in front of the class, combine presentations with group work. A few ideas:

Have students present in groups after a group task.

Let students share each other's work within smaller groups before asking them to choose one piece to share with the rest of the class.

Let students read or present their work while sitting down. It avoids the pressure of having to "stand and deliver".

Ask for one contribution from each group after discussion, with each group nominating a "spokesperson".

Above all else, make presenting and sharing a regular part of class activity. Your class will become an equitable and engaging space that echoes with the voice of every student, not just your own!

15. Give your students a say

If you don't know how to engage your students, let them tell you! Give your students a say in classroom activity by:

providing a choice of different activities (e.g. group work or solo)

seeking student input for assessment design (e.g. students can choose a final product, provided it meets the criteria)

periodic check-ins to monitor the pace of delivery (e.g. "do we need to go over this a bit more slowly or are we feeling pretty confident?").

Giving students a choice also fosters their sense of ownership over their learning. They'll move from passive consumers to active learners with a stake in classroom activity.

14. Use mixed media

Present learning content in a variety of mediums, including video, audio, and digital resources. Using such tech-rich resources is engaging for two reasons. It's a welcome change from the stacks of paper our students are usually saddled with, and it establishes a direct and relevant connection with the digital world they inhabit.

13. Get your students moving

If your students struggle to sit still for an entire lesson, get them moving. All that pent-up energy can be channelled into a learning activity that puts them on their feet. Try the following.

Have students come to the front and brainstorm together on the whiteboard.

Have students rotate through different stations around the room over the course of an activity.

Have students split into groups or arrange themselves in different areas of the room.

Take a stand: have students move to a particular area of the room to indicate their thoughts on an issue (e.g. "everyone who thinks x, move to the right side of the room; if you think y, stand on the left").

Movement works equally well to engage sluggish or weary students. A quick bit of physical activity will leave them more alert for the next phase of learning.

12. Read the room

If you're steadily losing students to doodling, off-topic chatter, and the pervasive "need to tear and ball up little pieces of paper", it's time to shake things up.

Cut the activity short if it's dragging, clarify instructions if there's confusion, or switch to a more student-centered activity for greater engagement.

Remember: it's impossible to have every student engaged 100% of the time. The next best thing we can do is to notice disengagement and respond to it quickly.

11. Scaffold tasks with checkpoints

If you dump all your instructions on students at the start of a lesson before turning them loose with an activity, confusion and disengagement will likely follow.

That's why it's important to scaffold larger tasks by breaking them into achievable steps. Each of these can be separated by brief "checkpoints" of instruction reorienting students and reminding them of what needs to be done next. They also serve as a periodic call to attention when students are liable to go off track.

10. Focus on discovery and inquiry

Sometimes the best thing you can do for engagement is to get out of your students' way.

Let them discover learning for themselves without being spoon-fed. They'll exercise critical and creative thinking, and pursue the lines of inquiry that interest them.

This doesn't mean you should retreat behind the teacher's desk. Observe your students, listen to them, and talk to them about what they're thinking. Be their guide as opposed to their instructor.

9. Ask good questions

Ask good questions of your students and you'll drive rich, engaging discussions that are open to everyone.

Good questions should be:

open-ended: to avoid "yes/no" answers

equitable: open to answers of varying depth and complexity

legitimate: asked because you want to hear students' thoughts and opinions, not because you're fishing for a correct answer.

When students answer a question, engage with their response. Even if it's incorrect or misinformed, recognize their effort and use it to refine the question further (e.g. "you're on the right track, but could we also think about...").

8. Allow for think time

It's gratifying to see hands shoot up as soon as you ask a question, but letting your students think it over has two benefits. It leads to more considered responses that drive engaging discussions, and it also makes the conversation accessible to those who don't have an instant answer.

After you ask a question, insist on a twenty-second pause and give students an opportunity to extend their standard responses further. For example, you might ask "See if you can explain how you came to your answer, too". You'll receive better answers and start to notice some new hands going up.

7. Shake things up

Predictability is safe, but it can get boring. Mix up your staple teaching strategies with new and novel activities from time to time. Talk to other teachers for ideas. In addition to engagement, you'll also be giving your students an example of what it means to take a risk and try something new.

Experimenting with some new parts of the teacher toolkit also makes it easier to differentiate your instruction. A new activity or delivery method might be the trick to engaging that student who has been a tough nut to crack all year.

6. Give brain breaks

Periodically give students a breather with brain breaks. These are short activities that allow students to stretch their legs before returning to work feeling focused. You can find a list of 20 brain breaks at Mind Bloom.

Meritopia in Mathletics is gamified learning at its best and keeps students engaged! When students earn enough points in Mathletics, they get the perfect brain break in Meritopia by discovering new lands and unlocking characters.

5. Be personable

Relationships and rapport are pillars of lasting engagement, and you can't have either without being personable. This means getting to know your students and letting them get to know you.

While enthusiasm for the learning content might ebb and flow, your smile, laughter, and conversation will engage students every time they walk through your classroom door.

4. Encourage friendly competition

Use in-class games, quizzes, or gamified learning programs to engage students with friendly competition. For example, Live Mathletics (a feature in Mathletics) allows students to test their mathematical skills by competing in 60-second quizzes against peers in their class or around the globe in real time.

"Friendly" is the keyword here. Make sure competitive activities are low stakes and put the emphasis on learning instead of winning.

3. Start lessons with introductory hooks

Engage students from the outset of your lesson with an introductory hook. This could be anything that piques interest, establishes relevance, or inspires curiosity in the subject of the lesson, for example:

a personal anecdote connected to the subject

a brain teaser or challenge question

a historical example

a multimedia source.

Keep your hooks short and segue them directly into an overview of the learning goal. It's an effective opening that engages while setting students up for the main instructional component.

2. Laugh together

Weaving humour throughout your lesson lightens the mood and makes for a more fun experience. Laugh with your students, and don't be afraid to let them laugh at you from time to time!

1. Gamify learning

Games are the most powerful source of engagement for students outside of class, and they're equally effective at driving engagement in learning. Transform activities into games by including levels of difficulty, rewards, and competitive elements. You can read more about gamifying learning here.

You don't have to invest hours in creating rules and drawing up game boards, either. Gamified learning programs can do the work for you. The learning programs in the 3P suite, for example, provide a host of student-friendly games for mathematics, literacy, and science. All you have to do is select the appropriate curriculum and grant your students access.

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20 Student Engagement Strategies for a Captivating Classroom

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Here's our list of the best student engagement strategies to help you create an engaging classroom and better connect with students.

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Education to the Core – 13 Strategies That Work

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Education to the Core – 13 Strategies That Work

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It's always the first thing my principal does when she walks into my classroom. Quickly scanning my students, she counts how many are on task and how many there are in total to compute my engagement percentage. Student engagement has become our school's number one focus. If our students are not actively engaged in their learning, how much are they actually learning? There are so many great student engagement strategies to keep your students on task throughout your entire lesson. #13 is always my go-to!

Student Engagement Strategy 1 - Pair/Share

You can call this a variety of things. (Peanut Butter/Jelly, AB Partners, Talking Buddies, etc.) First, decide how you are going to pair your students. You can choose partners strategically, or randomly. I recommend you choose the partners. This is the person that they have to sit by on the carpet during whole group. It helps to limit behavior issues during instruction.

The benefits of this strategy are that everyone gets a chance to share their ideas and you get the chance to "listen in" on their responses. After partner talk, I always call on a few students to share their answers with the class, just as a quick check. Pair this strategy with Morning Meeting Slides or Math Warm-ups and you can have students partner sharing their responses while you walk around and listen to their conversations.

2 - 4 Corners or 2 Sides

This student engagement strategy gets your kids up and moving while still learning. It is also a great activity to use when reviewing. If you are using 4 corners, pose a question with multiple choice answers (A-D). Your students will go to the corner that is their chosen response to the question.

The same concept applies to 2 sides, as you pose a question (yes/no or true/false), your students will choose the side of the room that corresponds to their response. 2 sides is also a great engagement strategy to use with statements. Do they agree or disagree with what you are saying?

3 - Whiteboards

There are so many activities you can have your students engaged in using whiteboards. As a matter of fact, we create an entire blog solely on whiteboard engagement activities and ideas. Read up on more than 30 Ideas for Whiteboard in Your Classroom.

When using whiteboards, your students are able to show you their work. Just like pair/share, it is an easy way for you to check for understanding, as they hold up their whiteboards with their responses. Or you can walk around and take a peek at their work while all of your students are answering the question.

I also love using whiteboards during writing time. My students construct their sentences on their whiteboards first, we edit them together, and then they return to their seats with their whiteboards and rewrite their sentences on paper and illustrate them.

Student Engagement Strategy 4 - Physical Response

Another way to get your students moving and engaged in learning is with physical responses. It can be as simple as thumbs up or down, showing a number to a math problem on their fingers, or making hand motions to symbolize vocabulary words. So that students can keep their responses private, I will have them hold their hand signals against their chest instead of up in the air.

Your students can also have larger movements, like stand up or sit down, reach up high or touch your toes, and jump up or lay down. Just a note of caution, make sure that students have enough personal space to make these movements without bumping into one another.

5 - Choral Chants or Songs

Okay, who doesn't like to sing or recite a chant?! Your students will have an easier time remembering content when it's in a song or fun chant. They can repeat after you, or it can be something that you practice every day and becomes a part of your warm-up. By having to say something, your students will be engaged in the lesson.

6 - Whip Around

This engagement strategy is an easy way to review a skill or set of skills and it quickly gives everyone a turn to share an idea with the class. Students can sit in a circle, or stay at their desks. You pose a question to the class, such as "Tell me a word that contains the bossy e". Start with a student, they will quickly state a word and then you move on to the next student in the circle, or at the next desk. Keep whipping around the classroom until every student has had a turn to share.

(Thing to remember... after asking the question, or saying the category, give your students a little bit of think time before starting. This gives your students time to put together an answer before it is their turn.)

Student Engagement Strategy 7 - Pass the Page

Writing can be a difficult time to keep your students engaged in the lesson. It tends to be a lot of teacher instruction and less student doing. Passing the page is a great way for your students to be active participants in the writing lesson! Give each student a piece of writing paper and have them write their name on the top. Display or state the prompt, along with the particular writing skill you want to focus on for this lesson. (ex. dialogue, extended sentences, punctuation, descriptive language, etc.)

Each student will have a few minutes to start their story based on the prompt and inclusion of the skill. When the given time is up, they will "pass the page" either to the student on their left or right (your choice). Set the timer again for a few minutes. Then this student has the opportunity to add to the story started by their classmate, remembering to include the target skill and have the story make sense. Continue these steps for as long as you like.

Once the last student has written the ending to the story, they return the paper to the original author (whose name is at the top). Your students will have fun reading the additions their classmates made to the stories. As an extension, you can also have them go through the text and circle, underline, or highlight the examples of the target skill used. I pair this student engagement strategy with Writing Mini-Lessons. The lessons help me teach the target skills, and passing the page helps my students put them into practice.

Student Engagement Strategy 8 - Bring in a Ball

So this student engagement strategy definitely comes with some classroom expectations, as well as teach discretion. There have been some years that I didn't use a ball to engage my students in a lesson because they had a very hard time sticking to the rules. Depending on your class dynamic, you can use a beach ball (preferred), rubber ball, squishy ball, etc. as a way for your students to respond to different questions.

First, decide whether they are going to toss or roll the ball to each other. As a teacher of young learners, I've found that it is much safer/easier if they are sitting in a circle and rolling the ball during this activity. Ask a question and hand the ball to a student to answer. Once they've answered, another question can be posed, or they can roll the ball to a classmate to add on to or elaborate more on their original answer.

I've also used this when we are reading a group text. The person with the ball reads then passes it to a classmate to pick up where they left off. You can give students some choice and allow them to read as much or as little as they want before passing.

9 - Write the Room

Another "get up out of your seat and move around" engagement activity. Write the Room can be used for both ELA and Math concepts. Place the cards for that particular skill around your classroom. (If you plan to use this activity during centers, you may want those cards away from your teacher's table.) The recording sheet goes in the basket for your students, or you can pass them out. They will move around the classroom, locating the card with the corresponding number on it, and recording their answer to the question on their paper. Your students will be learning while getting a bit of a movement break at the same time.

Student Engagement Strategy 10 - Games, Games, and Games

I'm not talking about board games, but web-based games. There are so many web game makers out there you can use to keep your students actively engaged in a lesson. Create a Jeopardy Game to answer comprehension questions about story elements. Use Kahoot to identify different parts of speech. Bingo Cards can have the answers to math problems on them. Spin the Wheel to practice producing words with various Phonics Skills. The possibilities of using technology to create games for your students are endless.

11 - Brain Breaks and Dancing

Not necessarily an academic engagement strategy, but something that your students need throughout the day to stay engaged in the academic lessons you are teaching. Put on a quick video or song and have your students get up and move around. They get their wiggles out, blood gets flowing again, and afterward, they can come back and focus on new learning. Don't spend your time searching for brain break videos, just save this list and have immediate access to 25 videos you can play today.

12 - Partner Match

Just like number one, this engagement strategy is done in pairs, but your students have to find their partner instead of you assigning them. They also have the opportunity to move around the room here too. Pass out the matching game cards randomly to your students. When you give the signal, your students will start moving around the room, looking for the classmate that has their matching card. You can do this with skills such as rhyming pairs, letters of the alphabet (upper/lowercase), math facts, singular/plural nouns, and any other skill that works in pairs.

I like using this as a warm-up and whoever their matching partner is, that is the student they are paired with for this particular lesson. Another great way to randomly assign partners in your classroom.

Student Engagement Strategy 13 - Sticky Notes

Sticky notes are a great engagement tool. Students love writing notes down and sticking them places. Use your sticky notes as a warm-up, where you pose an introductory question and students write down their responses. Hold a Gallery Walk and students write their thoughts on sticky notes and put them on the different posters around the classroom. Check for understanding by putting a question on the board and students answer it on their sticky notes. Then you can sort by who understood the lesson and who needs extra practice. (Great for targeted small groups, especially in math.)

My favorite way to use sticky notes is to keep my students engaged during transitions with an "Exit Ticket" board. Have your students write either their number or name on the sticky. Once they've written their response, they leave the sticky on your designated Exit Ticket board in the classroom. Use this at the end of the day, on your way to lunch or specials, or while everyone is cleaning up and moving on to another subject. You get to see who "got it" and who needs extra practice. And your students have something to do, so it keeps behaviors at bay.

Student engagement strategies are so much more than just making sure your students are doing something when the principal walks in. LOL They help to ensure that everyone in the class is working, producing responses, and learning. We are not just calling on those with their hands raised. Student engagement strategies help to keep behaviors in the class to a minimum by providing a task for every student throughout the entire lesson. I hope that you found a few strategies you can put into place tomorrow in your classroom. And I am always looking for new ways of engagement with my students, so if you have a favorite please share it in the comments below.

Written by - Janessa Fletcher

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13 Student Engagement Strategies for Elementary That Work

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Boost learning with these 13 student engagement strategies for elementary students! Keep lessons fun and effective-try them today!

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This fact sheet provides information about important considerations when evaluating English learners for dyslexia. Classroom teachers may find it helpful as they observe students for possible referral for further assessment. It also includes guidelines for assessment specialists who may provide screening and assessment support.

Why Focus on English Learners?

Five million English learners attend public schools in the United States. Because these students represent 10% of the school population, it is important to understand the issues surrounding early identification of dyslexia and other reading disabilities among English learners. This fact sheet addresses those issues and offers some recommendations for the identification process.

When discussing English learners and dyslexia, keep in mind that although 400 different native languages are represented within the English learner (EL) population of students, 75% of these students speak Spanish in the home. Therefore, much of what we know about English learners comes from research involving Spanish-speaking English learners.

Importance of Early Identification

Early identification of reading disabilities in all students is very important. When it comes to students whose first language is not English, however, researchers have found that non-native speakers with dyslexia are sometimes less likely to be identified, while at other times, they are over-identified.

In a recent study, English learners with dyslexia and African American learners were less likely to be identified with reading disabilities than other students. This finding was true not only in schools with small numbers of English learners, but also in schools with a higher percentage of EL students. Another study found that EL students might be less likely to be identified with dyslexia early on, but later might be over-identified as having dyslexia. In this case, the study found that the proportion of non-native, English-speaking students who were identified with dyslexia in kindergarten and first grade was lower than expected. Yet by third grade, the proportion of non-native, English-speaking students identified with dyslexia was higher than expected.

Why might this happen? Schools may fail to identify dyslexia by attributing any English reading and writing difficulties to their status as English learners, even if those students also exhibit characteristics of dyslexia. On the other hand, a student with limited opportunities for developing English oral language proficiency and English literacy (Hispanic English learners in particular) might be increasingly likely to be misidentified with dyslexia as they progress in school, when the issue might actually be limited skills due to lack of exposure to English. There is clearly a need to define the important factors to keep in mind when identifying reading disabilities, such as dyslexia, among English learners.

General Considerations for Early Identification of Dyslexia Among English Learners

In 2002 the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) adopted the following definition of dyslexia: " a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge."

Screening and assessments for dyslexia must include an evaluation of the primary characteristics of dyslexia: phonological awareness, decoding, fluent word recognition, and spelling. It is also important to determine the resulting impact these difficulties can have on measures such as reading comprehension, vocabulary, and background knowledge.

To identify English learners with dyslexia, consider the following variables during screening and assessment:

1. Determine the number of years of high-quality, native language instruction in reading and writing, as well as instruction in English language and literacy, to ensure that the difficulty is not due to a lack of instruction.

2. Examine the variables that may be causing any difficulties with reading and writing in English. A lack of proficiency in spoken English will affect the ability to learn to read and write English. In addition, assess the student's ability to read and write in the native language. If a student has difficulty in their native language, that might point toward dyslexia. However, if a student seems to have literacy skills in their native language but struggles with English, the issue might be related to limited exposure to high-quality instruction in English. Teasing apart these two factors is important for an accurate identification of dyslexia.

3. Review the family history. Because dyslexia is hereditary, a family history of dyslexia-or symptoms that might point to dyslexia or other related conditions-should be documented.

4. Note that when comparing literacy skills across languages, students with dyslexia may appear to be within normal limits for decoding skills when they are reading and writing in transparent languages (those with reliable and stable letter-sound correspondences, such as Spanish) due to the regular and reliable patterns of the language. As a result, when screening or assessing in transparent languages, reading fluency and spelling skills may be better indicators of dyslexia.

5. Consider performance, during the screening and assessment process, in relation to peers with similar native languages and background experiences. This comparison is especially important if the available tests do not include a significant number of English learners in the sample used to determine what is expected for the population (the normative sample). This data is another piece of information that can help with the process of teasing apart any possible effects of dyslexia from the effects of being an English learner.

6. Collect samples of the student's work (for instance, written spelling assessment, written expression, and oral reading with error analysis) and evaluate that work along with the results of progress monitoring and other tests to determine the rate of progress achieved and to document any history of limited progress.

7. Review specific error patterns and ensure that they are not a result of overgeneralization from the student's native language to English. Determine if the errors are typical or unusual when compared to other English learners who are native speakers of the same language.

8. Work with the student's parents, caregivers, and educators to determine if any educational, environmental, or personal factors may be related to learning to read. The more data gathered to develop an understanding of the student, the more accurate the assessment and decision-making process is likely to be.

9. Keep in mind that outcomes may vary depending on a number of factors, including the student's first language and the language of instruction (whether English or another language), the type and quality of language and literacy instruction received thus far, and the consistency of its implementation. These variables need to be considered as the student is evaluated for possible dyslexia.

10. Create a team of experts who understand language and reading development among English learners so they may review the data and make decisions regarding the necessary type of instruction and level of intensity.

What to Look for During Screening

A screening is a brief measurement of a set of current skills. Screening tools provide information as to whether students are at the expected level of performance and may also help identify students who are at risk for later skill development.

Dyslexia screening in the early years, such as at the end of kindergarten, typically includes measures of phoneme awareness, rapid naming of letters, and both letter-sound and sound-letter knowledge. For English learners, assessment of oral language proficiency levels is also necessary. By first and second grade, typical screenings may include measures of phoneme awareness, word recognition, reading fluency, oral language, reading comprehension, and spelling. However, for English learners it will be important to monitor progress in each of these areas more frequently than twice per year.

Another important consideration is the language of instruction. Some English learners receive language instruction in their native language. Screening measures should therefore be conducted in that same language to ensure alignment with the language of instruction. Other English learners may participate in English as a Second Language classrooms. They will be screened in English, but it is important to keep in mind that these students will be developing their proficiency in spoken English at the same time they are developing English literacy skills. If proficiency in spoken English is impeded, it will affect the student's ability to progress with reading and writing.

For these reasons and more, it is important to pay particular attention to English learners' progress in English as well as their native language and to compare their progress to their peers who are also English learners. If a student is not making expected progress in English, compare the development of those same skills in the native language and evaluate the results based upon the language of instruction (which is often English). If skills are below the expected level in both the native language and English, further testing should be conducted to determine if the student is exhibiting a reading disability such as dyslexia. The need for further testing should be determined based upon the factors discussed above, including the type of language instruction the student is receiving and the recommendations of teachers, parents, and others involved in the education of the student.

Essential Aspects of Assessment of an English Learner for Dyslexia

An assessment for dyslexia is a more thorough analysis of student performance and is intended to dig deeper than a screening. An assessment will include measures for each of the components of reading and writing. The assessment should be conducted by an individual who is knowledgeable in testing and measurement and understands first and second language and literacy development.

Specific components to assess include the following:

The student's understanding and use of language in general, aligned to the language of instruction

Phoneme awareness

Rapid naming, which can include letters, numbers, or pictures

Word reading skills, including reading of real words and pseudo-words

Word reading fluency, including accuracy and rate

Sentence reading fluency, including accuracy, prosody, and rate

Paragraph reading fluency, including accuracy, prosody, and rate

Reading comprehension at the sentence and paragraph level

Written language skills to include word-level spelling as well as writing composition (narrative and informational) at the sentence and paragraph levels

Factors to Consider When Evaluating Assessment Results for English Learners

To determine the presence or absence of dyslexia in English learners, it is essential to separate the effects of second language acquisition from effects that would result from dyslexia. Therefore, when evaluating the results of standardized tests, a student's literacy levels and environmental and schooling factors for the native language should be compared to their performance in English or any other second language. A list of recommendations follows below:

1. Identify whether diverse populations are included in the normative sample of any test. As an examiner, you must review the characteristics of the population that were used to determine the expected result to establish whether English learners were included in that population.

2. Observe the language or vocabulary that is used within the test directions. Determine if some of the vocabulary will be difficult for the English learner to understand. Review the test manual for any recommendations for testing English learners.

3. Determine if the test items reflect cultural bias. Will some of the test items be irrelevant to the individual student's world experiences?

4. Remember that at the early stages of second language or literacy acquisition, the reading level of an English learner may not be as strong as their monolingual English-speaking peers. However, as the English learner becomes more proficient in language and literacy, the second language skills can be expected to become comparable to the performance of native English-speaking peers.

5. Use multiple measures and formats for testing.

6. Consider the specific context of learning opportunities in both native and second languages. The key to an accurate diagnosis of dyslexia for an English learner is ensuring that the difficulty exists in both the native and second language.

Next Steps
The number of English learners attending schools in the U.S. is continuing to grow. Early identification of dyslexia in English learners is important and can be achieved by understanding some essential considerations for identification. These considerations include a thorough developmental history, a review of the language in which the student is being taught, and the specific approach to literacy instruction that is being used, along with other environmental factors. The tests used to screen and assess must also be valid and reliable for English learners: check to see that English learners have been included in the normative sample and compare the student's progress to that of other English learners. Failure to consider all of these factors is likely to result in over- or under-identification of a reading disability among English learners.

A comprehensive and collaborative team approach can assist in the early identification of dyslexia. Once identified, English learners can benefit from structured literacy instruction with accommodations for language proficiency and, wherever possible, cross-language instructional techniques that capitalize on the similarities of the native language.

It is certainly possible for English learners with dyslexia to learn and achieve second language literacy. Accurate identification is the first step toward this goal.

References

Catts, H., & Petscher, Y. (2018). Early identification of dyslexia: Current advancements and
future directions. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 44, 33-36.

Compton, D. L., Fuchs, D. Fuchs, L. S., & Bryant, J. D. (2010). Selecting at-risk readers in first
grade for early intervention: A two-year longitudinal study of decision rules and
procedures. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98(2), 394.

Francis, D. J., Santi, K. L., Khalaf, S., Bunta, F., Rojas, R. Gusewski, S., & Heibert, L. (2020). Identification of disabilities in Spanish-speaking children in English-speaking contexts. In Grigorenko, E., McCardle, P., & Shtryrov, Y. (Eds.), All about language: Science, theory, and practice (pp. 155-170). Brookes.

International Dyslexia Association (2002). The dyslexia definition project. Retrieved from
https://dyslexiaida.wpengine.com/definition-of-dyslexia/

Klinger, J. K., Artiles, A. J., Kozleski, E., Harry, B, Zion, S., Tate, W., Duran, G. Z., & Riley, D,
(2005). Addressing the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education through culturally responsive educational systems. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13(38).

McFarland, J., Hussar, B., de Brey, C., Snyder, T., Wang, X., Wilkinson-Flicker, S.,
Gebrekristos, S., Zhang, J., Rathbun, A., Barmer, A., Bullock Mann, F., & Hinz, S.
(2017). The condition of education:2017 (NCES) 2017144). Washington, DC: National
Center for Education Statistics.

Odegard, T. N., Frarris, E. A., Middleton, A. E., Oslund, E., & Rimrodt-Frierson, S. (2020). The characteristics of students identified with dyslexia within the context of state legislation. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 53(5), 366-379.

Petscher, Y., Fien, H., Stanley, C., Gearin, B., Gaab, N., Fletcher, J. M., & Johnson, E. (2019). Screening for Dyslexia. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from improvingliteracy.org

Samson, J. F., & Lesaux, N. K. (2009). Language-minority learners in special education: Rates and predictors of identification for services. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 49(2), 142-162.
The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) thanks Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, Ed.D., for her assistance in the preparation of this fact sheet.
The International Dyslexia Association (IDA). IDA encourages the reproduction and distribution of this fact sheet.
If portions of the text are cited, appropriate reference must be made. Fact sheets may not be reprinted for the purpose of resale. © Copyright 20223. The International Dyslexia Association (IDA). For copyright information, please click here.

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English Learners and Dyslexia - International Dyslexia Association

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Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
- Alfred Hitchcock

One of my favorite movies is The Princess Bride, which is based on the novel by William Goldman. For those of you haven't experienced this classic, the movie begins with a little boy who is sick and home from school, and his grandfather, who offers to read the boy a fairy tale that he had enjoyed when he was young. The boy isn't very interested at first, but soon realizes that he has nothing better to do, and agrees to at least hear the beginning. The story that follows, of course, is an enchanting tale filled with unforgettable characters and exciting plot twists. Despite his best efforts to resist getting drawn in, by the end, the boy is begging his grandfather to finish the story and even admits that he would be ready to hear it all over again if his grandfather returns with the book the next day.

What resonates with me in the movie is the experience of a child falling in love with a good story. While that experience is magical in its own right, it's also an important part of becoming a strong reader. Engagement is a critical piece of building reading and comprehension skills and plays an important part in reading motivation as well.

When English language learners (ELLs) read, they may have difficulty engaging with a story if:

they lack the background knowledge to understand the plot, setting, and characters

they have not had much practice "putting themselves in the story"

they only get one or two opportunities to read a text before the class moves on to something new.

ELLs can benefit greatly from having opportunities to read a text many times because this helps them develop fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. One way to reread a text while keeping it interesting for students is through Reader's Theater. In a Reader's Theater activity, students read stories that have been scripted like a play, and they act out the story together. Students may practice their parts several times before acting the story out in front of the class, which gets them thinking about their characters and the plot in a focused way. Rather than using elaborate props, costumes, or scenery, students can be encouraged to use vocal, facial, and physical expression to engage with the script and their character.

As students continue their repeated readings of the script, they are improving their reading skills and comprehension. They also will have the opportunity to practice speaking skills, such as pronunciation, inflection, expression, and varied volume. Since the activity is meant to practice reading, students don't need to memorize their lines, which keeps the spotlight on the reading practice, not the performance.

Reader's Theater offers ELLs an opportunity to completely immerse themselves in a story, and it gives students the chance to think about how engaged readers interact with print, such as by seeing pictures in their heads - very similar to watching a movie or play. Teachers can help ELLs make this connection by explaining how they can visualize the plot in their heads while they read and as they practice bringing stories to life.

Reader's Theater has something for all students, regardless of their language level. Beginning English speakers can have a small role with one or two short sentences, or if the student is at the "silent period," he or she can be assigned a non-speaking role such as an animal character. The more advanced a student's speaking skills are, the more the student can focus on improving expression and clarity in their role.

How to Get ELLs Started with Reader's Theater

Take a look at the way Amber Prentice uses a concept sort for teaching vocabulary before starting a Reader's Theater activity based on The Great Kapok Tree!

One of my colleagues in the St. Paul Public School District, Amber Prentice, frequently uses Reader's Theater with her seventh- and eighth-grade ESL students. She explained to me how she does it from start to finish.

Introduction

When she first introduces Reader's Theater to her students at the beginning of the school year, she talks a little bit about what to expect and explains that this activity is meant to help them improve their reading and speaking abilities.

Story Selection

Amber tends to get her scripts from Reader's Theater books or websites. She notes that it can be difficult to find stories with enough parts for all students in a class; while some teachers may choose different stories for different groups of students, Amber uses the same story for the entire class. If only a few roles are available in the story she has chosen, she breaks the class down into separate "casts" so that all students have a part.

Amber thinks this is helpful for her ELL students because it provides them with maximum exposure to the plot. Students will understand the story very well by the end of the activity, and they will be able to laugh at all the right lines and be more involved in other groups' performances.

Vocabulary

After she has chosen a story, Amber goes through it and selects the vocabulary words students will need to know in order to understand the plot. She then previews the vocabulary with a variety of activities until she is confident that they have mastered the definitions.

Read-Through

Next, Amber reads the whole play out loud to her students and asks comprehension questions to make sure they understand the story.

Roles

She then assigns roles or allows students to choose parts in the play, depending on the level of the students. She makes sure students know how to read the script by highlighting their parts and helping them understand that reading cues such as "Narrator" or "Woman enters the room" should not be read.

Practice

Amber gives her students ample time to practice their play and read their parts. She circulates through the room and gives feedback to students as they read. If students are reading without expression, she prompts them to try the line with more feeling. If students are stumbling with pronunciation, she models the correct pronunciation for them.

Staging

Before students do their performance for their classmates, they practice the staging and create any simple props they think will be helpful to the story.

Evaluation

Before the performance, Amber explains how the students will be graded. She reviews each element in the following list, making sure that students understand what each part means and showing examples of what she wants to see from the students as they are reading.

Students are evaluated based on:

As students become more proficient at Reader's Theater, they can use the list to evaluate each other, as well as give helpful feedback.

Performance

Once the students have practiced their lines, prepared simple props, and understand how they will be evaluated, they are ready to perform! Each group presents its version of the story, which also gives students an opportunity to compare how each group's interpretation is similar or different.

Amber has found that students approach Reader's Theater in a variety of ways. She had a group of boys that she thought might not like the activity because they would be afraid to look silly. Instead, the boys were very enthusiastic, found costumes, made masks, and gave animated performances to make the story a true dramatic success. Other students have taken Reader's Theater a little more slowly and want specific instructions as to how to put their story together.

Benefits of Reader's Theater

From the start of the activity to the finish, students read through the story about 15 times. Amber acknowledges that her students would never want to read a story so many times if it weren't for Reader's Theater. Within the context of this engaging activity, however, it has proven to be popular with the students, and she has seen noticeable improvements for her students as a result of repeated exposure to the text. They begin to develop fluency and comprehension because they become very familiar with the text and the plot structure. They also improve their pronunciation and presentation skills because they have so much practice reading and listening to the stories. Finally, the students begin to show more self-confidence while reading out loud and getting up in front of the class.

Since it's an activity she uses on a fairly regular basis, her students now know what to expect, and they can jump right into new scripts as soon as they receive them. Amber noted, too, that there is a lot of potential for using Reader's Theater to bring history and science to life, as well as narrative stories.

Variations on Reader's Theater for English Language Learners

Student Scripts

Rather than using prepared scripts, students can write a script on a topic of their choosing, or they can summarize a book by using the Language Experience Approach to re-tell the main parts of the story. The teacher then works with the students to create dialogue that makes sense for the parts of the story and formats it into a script that students can use that for their performance.

This exercise can be used to reinforce content-area concepts. For example, in history class, students can re-enact an event such as the Boston Tea Party by making up dialog to match what happened. In a science class, if the students are learning how a vaccine works, they may want to create a script about the development of vaccines, with characters who discuss how vaccines are created and used. They may wish to cast famous scientists as the main characters of the play.

Memorization for Beginners

For ELLs with emerging literacy skills, it may be easier for teachers to repeat lines verbally to help students memorize them. Also, it may be appropriate for students to first do the play in their native language, and then again in English. This helps reinforce their understanding of the story and allows them to transfer the confidence they feel from their native language performance into their English language performance.

Peer Interaction

Another way to practice the read-through is to pair students as they are rehearsing their parts with another student who can model and support the fluency of the ELL.

Diversity in Subject Matter

Teachers should try to find scripts that represent a variety of cultures, including folk tales that ELLs can relate to. Students may be able to tell the class stories that they grew up with. For example, many cultures have different versions of stories like Cinderella that students will find familiar.

Performance Opportunities

Teachers may want to create opportunities for ELLs to perform for audiences other than their classmates. This is especially beneficial if there are younger grades the ELLs can visit. For example, after performing the piece in class, ELLs can perform it for a younger child or class of children. After practicing in class, students should be comfortable performing the story in a different setting.

I believe that one of the most important things we can do as teachers is to help our students fall in love with reading. Reader's Theater is a wonderful way to engage ELLs and get them excited about great stories. Please see the Hotlinks section for more information on how to use Reader's Theater in your classroom. You'll find links to websites that offer free scripts for learners, as well as instructions for using Reader's Theater effectively. Happy teaching and happy acting!
Reader's Theater: Giving Students a Reason to Read Aloud
This Reading Rockets article explains how Reader's Theater offers an entertaining and engaging means of improving fluency and enhancing comprehension.
Reading AtoZ.com: Reader's Theater Scripts
Reading AtoZ offers scripts for all elementary grade levels which are sorted into different reading levels.
Teacher Vision: Reader's Theater
Here you'll find an article by Sam Sebesta describing Reader's Theater and its benefits, as well as a listing of recommended reading.
Teacher Vision: Popular Drama & Literature Resources
This website has "Popular Drama and Literature Resources," including links to Reader's Theater scripts. Although a membership is required to access most of the resources, the site is worth looking at, just to get ideas for the different kinds of scripts that can be used in Reader's Theater. The site also offers a free seven-day membership.
Introduction to Reader's Theater: A Guide to Classroom Performance
This book by Gerald Lee Ratliff includes background on Reader's Theater, lesson plans, recommended readings, and scripts that can be used in the classroom. The book is available for sale on Amazon.com.
Reader's Theatre Strategies in the Middle and Junior High Classroom
This book by Lois Walker discusses using Reader's Theater in language development with adolescent students.
Reader's Theater Tips
This informative site from Aaron Shephard site has step-by-step instructions on how to implement Reader's Theater in the classroom, as well as a link to a book by Aaron Shephard called, "Readers on Stage."
Reader's Theater Scripts and Plays
This section from Teachingheart.net offers links to numerous scripts, as well as some books with collections of Reader's Theater plays and activities.
Literacy Connections: Reader's Theater
This webpage has description of Reader's Theater and links to many useful websites that offer tips for doing Reader's Theater in the classroom, including where to find scripts online.

Classroom Video: Concept Sort

Take a look at the way Amber Prentice uses a concept sort for teaching vocabulary before starting a reader's theater activity based on The Great Kapok Tree. You can see more strategies from Amber's classroom and her complete interview in our Meet the Experts section.

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Reader's Theater: Oral Language Enrichment and Literacy Development for ELLs

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Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. - Alfred Hitchcock One of my favorite movies is The Princess Bride, which is based on the novel by William Goldman.

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Consider this interaction between a teacher and his students, most of them English language learners, in a ninth-grade English language arts class:

Teacher: Who wrote The Pearl, Carmen?

Carmen: Steinbeck wrote The Pearl.

Teacher: Very good. And Rosa, who is the main character in this novella?

Rosa: I guess the main character is Kino, although his wife, Juana, is also important.

Teacher: That's right. And why do we say The Pearl is a novella? Jim?

Now contrast it with the interaction other ninth-graders had in their English language arts/English language development class:

Teacher: As we begin to explore this short story, "The Necklace," written by a French author from the 19th century, Guy de Maupassant, I am inviting you to read the first four paragraphs with your partner using types of "Question-Answer Relationships."* We have practiced this process several times, so unless we require some explanation-[students signal they do not]-then, please get started. As you engage in reading and discussing, I would like you to focus on the character Mathilde and think about what kind of person she is. We will then focus on the problem she faces.

Rodrigo (after reading the first paragraph of "The Necklace" aloud to his partner, Martha): OK, I am going to ask you a "think and search" question. Did Mathilde grow up in a rich family?

Martha: I am not sure. I think no, because the paragraph says she could not marry a "rich and distinguished man" and had to marry a little clerk. Is that an employee? [Rodrigo nods his assent.] I guess it is because she is not rich. But she was very pretty and charming, right?

So now I am going to read the second paragraph. [She proceeds to read aloud to Rodrigo, then pauses and thinks.] I am confused, so I guess I will ask you a think and search question. The text says "with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth." Is the author saying that for women, money does not matter? Why did she marry a clerk then?

Rodrigo: Yeah, I agree. I don't fully understand. You said she was pretty but not rich. Now the second paragraph says that's in place of family and birth, so does that mean richness? Does it not matter if women are pretty? Does it matter or doesn't it matter? [Both students decide to raise these questions later during the whole-class discussion. Then Rodrigo proceeds to read the third paragraph to Martha.]

We have all observed classes resembling the first example, where the teacher already knows the answers to the questions being asked, as do most students. The exchange is just an exercise in reiterating the known using complete sentences. In contrast, students in the second example must actively consider the possibilities related to the text, by asking and responding to questions that reveal their understanding.

How do we ensure that all English language learners have opportunities to productively use oral language in academic settings? And how do we ensure that teachers leverage the power of classroom interactions to simultaneously foster language development, content knowledge, and analytical practices? In this article, we offer answers to these questions-and clarify common misconceptions-by presenting guidelines supported by both research and classroom practice.

A Framework for Oral Language

If English language learners (ELLs) are going to productively engage in classroom discourse and express their thinking related to content learning goals, teachers must create a trusting classroom culture in which students feel that whatever level of language they can produce, their contributions will be valued by their teacher and peers and will never be subject to ridicule, sanctions, or negative comparisons. ² Establishing classroom norms such as close listening to understand the ideas ELLs are conveying and showing respect to each other during their interactions (learning, of course, from the models their teachers provide) is essential for successful oral language use. Students need to know that interrupting their peers as they are formulating ideas and finishing their sentences for them are not desirable classroom norms.

As teachers plan to engage students in oral interactions, the framework shown in Figure 1 below can help guide their support for their students' work and language development. The framework comprises six interconnected levels.
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First, teachers need to ensure that students clearly understand the purpose of the interaction they are being asked to undertake. For example, are they supposed to read a text and elaborate their thinking, highlighting what they understand and what they don't? Are they engaged in describing a scene to somebody who has not seen it? Are they being asked to make a prediction after observing phenomena they will later investigate?

Second, teachers need to make sure students have ideas upon which they will elaborate. For example, have they noticed the most important aspects of the scene (the background, main character(s) presented, what they are doing, other relevant details) on which they will center their description?

Third, teachers need to help students organize their thoughts and ensure their language follows specific patterns. For example, descriptions of a scene from a text cannot begin with sentences such as, "He kicks it, it breaks." Students need to first indicate the setting of the scene, then introduce the characters, describe them, and explain what they are doing. This sequence is essential to help participants engaged in a conversation paint pictures in their minds. Organization is marked by phrases that can be provided to students as formulaic expressions (which we discuss later in this article) to use: ³ "The picture we have shows a..." "We can see a..." "Our scene takes place in a..." "Based on my observation..." "The two historical contexts are..."

Fourth, teachers need to consider the types of sentences students produce and judiciously highlight how they may be combined and expanded to produce more complex language. Increasing complexity can be accomplished with the use of connectors and conjunctions, such as "besides," "furthermore," "additionally," "however," etc.

Fifth, teachers must pay attention to the words students use. Is one word repeated several times in an interaction? If so, teachers can take the opportunity to introduce a synonym. Do students incorrectly or imprecisely use a term? Teachers can take a moment to clarify usage and meaning.

Finally, when students are ready to present their work to others, teachers can focus on the pronunciation of carefully selected elements-only those that interrupt understanding.
Traditionally, many educators have been taught to focus on correcting student utterances by zeroing in on form and not on meaning. As a result, our framework may initially feel counterintuitive, but the more educators rely on it, the more it will assist them in supporting students' language growth.

Productive Talk

As a general pattern, we educators often talk too much, no doubt influenced by our "apprenticeship of observation" that began when we were students ourselves. ⁴ However, given the centrality of talk in learning, this pattern needs to change. By some estimates, ELLs spend less than 2 percent of their school day in oral interaction. ⁵ Teachers must find ways to provide students learning opportunities that engage them in productive talk and then listen carefully to the language they use in order to support their continued growth.

By productive talk, we mean speech that has the following characteristics:

Has depth: the specific idea being discussed is central to the theme of the lesson, is presented in interconnected ways, and engages students' analytical thinking.

Is sustained: one student's statement is followed by another student's response, which extends, refutes, or questions what was first said.

Is student controlled: students control what they say, not the teacher. But teachers set up parameters for the interactions, sometimes framing questions that start the conversation. These questions are intended to communicate new related ideas, propose counter ideas or examples, and in general enhance the theme at work.⁶

Now consider these characteristics in an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class, which comprises students with varied levels of English competence. ⁷ "Language" is the theme of the students' exploration, and this was the third class on the topic. Table 1 below shows the deliberate moves of the teacher, Mr. DeFazio, during the lesson and the students' interactions. The text in the table indicates the multiple instances of productive talk that he promotes with his directions and actions.
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Let us look more closely at a specific interaction that occurred in the lesson after a student, Lavinia, reads the beginning of a letter she wrote about animal communication, and another student, Julio, reacts to one of her statements that animals do not have language.

Julio: Animal communication is not a language? It is a language-that's what I think-because they are communicating with each other.

Lavinia: But they don't speak.

Class: [Many students agree with Julio, saying "Yes, they do," or nodding.]

Julio: You said a language can have words, sounds, gestures, and everything.

Class: [Many students are in agreement with Julio's ideas once again.]

Lavinia: But they don't have words. They don't say "mama."

Julio: They don't need to. They have other characteristics. In animal language, some of the characteristics that you said are present-sound, pitch, gestures-so it is a language.

Mr. DeFazio: Julio is arguing very strongly that animal communication is language. Lavinia is saying that it's not. What do you think would be a way to help them resolve that argument in their writing?

Class: [The discussion continues and a resolution emerges. Then Julio reads a section of his letter.]

Mr. DeFazio: A lot is going to depend on how you define language, OK? You can define it in such a way as to exclude what animals do; you can define it in a very broad way, as a system of communication that includes everything. You are going to find linguists and zoologists who disagree, and if you are interested, I can give you some readings that were in the journal Science last year, people arguing back and forth.

Julio (reading his letter): First of all, I think that language is a way to inform others around you, your feelings, or just a simple thing that you want to let people know what is the deal. And it can be expressed by saying it, looking at a picture, or hearing it, you know what I'm saying? I don't know if you have heard about the kangaroo rat that stamps its feet to communicate with other rats. It's really funny 'cause we humans have more characteristics to communicate to each other, but we still have problems to understand other people. Characteristics like sound, grammar, pictures, and body language are some of them, while the rat only uses the foot. [Julio stamps the ground.]

Mr. DeFazio: Excellent! [The class applauds.] I never even heard about the kangaroo rat. Nice job, nice job. [Mr. DeFazio shakes Julio's hand.]

Applying the framework illustrated in Figure 1 to this interaction, we notice that students are clearly aware that the purpose of this exercise is to compare diverse positions on communication and to debate whether animals have language or not, providing evidence for their positions. They have ideas, and they choose which ones to debate based on a diversity of opinions. Mr. DeFazio's opportunity to correct student work, suggest changes, ask for elaboration, and so forth comes in the letters he is asking his students to construct. This written product is intimately tied to oral production. Oral activity feeds into writing, and writing produces oral activity.

In terms of productive talk, in Mr. DeFazio's class, students' analytic thinking is engaged, their interaction is sustained, and they control what they say. Mr. DeFazio has chosen a theme for the lesson that appeals to the students, and he has deliberately planned their active engagement throughout. As a result, the interaction engages students in deep thinking as they compare views on language.

Now that we have seen the characteristics of quality interactions for ELLs in practice, in the next section, we provide guidelines for promoting quality interactions during content lessons.

Six Guidelines for Promoting Quality Interactions

1. Design lessons that involve ELLs' participation in subject-specific and substantive oral practice to accomplish clearly defined lesson goals: Planning a lesson always begins with establishing the destination: Where do teachers need to lead students? Teachers should ask: Are my goals closely related to content standards? What is the knowledge that will be constructed? Which analytic practice will be promoted? What is the language (beyond isolated words or sentences) that will need to be developed? Unless teachers themselves are clear about the goals of a lesson, they will not be able to plan the tasks and activities that support students' language and conceptual development.

2. Construct tasks that appropriately scaffold student participation and growth: Tasks need to be deliberately constructed to engage students in working beyond their current competence. Such tasks should promote worthwhile interactions for students to acquire new conceptual understandings and analytical skills and language. They should also have appropriate scaffolds, which entail teachers closely observing students to ascertain whether the support is working, whether it is still needed, or whether it needs to be modified or replaced.

3. Make sure the task is designed to meet its purposes and the materials used are appropriate to support students working at the edge of their competence successfully: Learning is most effective when tasks are designed to match students' current competencies and also challenge them to move forward, with support.

4. Make sure that activities or tasks follow and precede others logically to build coherent lessons: Leading students to increasingly more complex demands is essential if teachers want their lessons to flow smoothly and to incrementally build ELLs' understanding.

5. Integrate reading and writing into oral development activities: Oral interaction while reading texts not only allows ELLs to understand the text more deeply but also helps them develop awareness of what they understand as they read and what they can do to solve problems in reading.

6. Be selective in addressing errors and intentional in providing feedback: When ELLs use English to develop their understanding of content and their use of analytical practices, often their language will be neither accurate nor fully formed, although the intent of their communication will be apparent. Imagine, for a moment, the impact on ELLs' motivation and self-esteem if teacher responses to inaccuracies constituted a constant flow of error correction. Instead, consider formative feedback to students as invitations to understand how they are progressing in language development and to provide a resource for how they can advance. When feedback is given to students about language while they are learning discipline-specific content, the feedback should focus on language so that students can make sense of the academic content, rather than on correcting errors of language production. As such, feedback can increase the students' awareness and help them troubleshoot their own performance and eventually correct their own language.⁸

There is no hard and fast rule about how much feedback students should receive or how often it should be provided; this is a decision teachers will need to make for themselves, given their knowledge of their students, their language and content goals, and the students' current language use. However, because of the powerful impact that feedback can have on learning, ⁹ we advise teachers to make providing feedback a regular and routine part of their classroom practice.

Common Misconceptions

Designing and facilitating meaningful classroom talk is essential for ELLs-indeed for all students-to develop more extended and sophisticated language use while simultaneously learning subject matter. Yet in too many U.S. classrooms, we find ELLs sitting silently, watching their teachers do all the work, and waiting for opportunities to fully engage cognitively and linguistically.

By way of concluding thoughts, we outline five pitfalls to avoid in thinking about language learning, and we provide suggestions for how teachers can engage students in sustained, high-quality classroom talk.

Misconception 1: Sentence frames that provide students with a way of expressing their ideas about specific situations are helpful to them.

A sentence frame is basically a fill-in-the-blank type of activity that invites only one correct answer. Sometimes it can be open and provide starters for students (also called sentence starters for this reason) to be filled in any way. However, these starters may not provide students with phrases they can use time and time again in academic situations. ¹⁰ For example: "The main character in The Pearl is a modest and loving man, furthermore..." "His wife, Juana, loves Kino and Coyotito, their baby, and because of that..."

In addition to using sentence frames, we suggest teachers use formulaic expressions, which are phrases that help start or link ideas and can be used in many situations. Initially, students learn them as unanalyzed chunks, almost as if they were one word. Later on, as students learn more English, they begin to realize the formulaic expressions are formed by several words. Formulaic expressions are extremely useful in students' development of English and in making their interaction with peers possible and more effective. Examples of formulaic expressions are: "I agree with you, and I can add that..." "May I suggest a couple of other ideas? One example I can offer..."

Misconception 2: Correct mistakes students make as they talk or they will "fossilize."

Historically, correctness has been regarded as paramount in second language learners' use of English. More recently, however, researchers' attention has shifted to the larger components of communication, as discussed before: purpose, ideas, organization, types of sentences, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Fossilization, a concept popular in the 1980s, refers to the inability of second language learners to learn the correct forms of language if they continually misuse them. Our perspective, consistent with that of multiple applied linguists, is that language keeps evolving as a result of continuous practice. It may fossilize if it is no longer used productively or receptively. However, in their schooling, students will be invited to engage in uses of language continuously, and thus, they will have ample opportunities to correct themselves or be corrected by others.

Misconception 3: Rather than correcting students' ungrammatical oral language, it is better to provide them with recasts, which model correct English in response to students' mistakes.

It is common for teachers to believe that rather than correcting a student's mistakes-and putting him or her on the spot-it is better to repeat what a student has said, this time changing the student's utterance into grammatical English. They think that recasting saves a student's face and that it is a less authoritarian approach.

Research, however, shows that these implicit corrections may not be productive. ¹¹ Students do not take teachers' recasts as corrections, but rather as reiterations of the idea and as acceptance of students' comments as being right. When the time is appropriate to focus on selected language forms to study and correct, the correction and expansion activity needs to be made explicit.

Misconception 4: Sustained, focused interactions are possible starting in fourth or fifth grade, but lower elementary students are not mature enough to carry them out because they get too impatient with the task and with each other.

Recently, during an open house at an elementary school in Portland, Oregon, one of us (Aída) had the opportunity to visit three classes. The first one was a kindergarten class. The teacher, Mr. Andanen, was preparing students to read and discuss Julius, the Baby of the World, a book by Kevin Henkes, an author the students were already familiar with because they had enjoyed reading three of his other books in class.

To introduce the book, Mr. Andanen set up nine stations around the room and invited students to walk through them. At each station, a picture illustrating a scene from the book was prominently displayed. Students were asked to rotate around the stations every three minutes. At each station, students needed to stop, look at the picture, and explain what they noticed. The teacher had asked students to use a "talking stick" so that the turns to speak were democratically divided within the group at each station. Peers had to listen attentively to the speaker and agree with, disagree with, or expand on what the student said. Formulaic expressions such as "In this picture, I notice..." and "I noticed that, too, and I want to add..." were familiar to the group. At one station, Aída heard the following exchange:

Student 1: I notice a woman holding a big baby. Her mouth is open. I think she is crying.

Student 2: I also noticed she had her mouth open, but I don't think she is crying. I think she is singing.

Student 3: I also noticed the woman with the big baby, and I want to add that he is very heavy. Perhaps that is why she is screaming.

The exchange shows that Mr. Andanen has created an environment that enables young children to notice and use language in purposeful ways. Although the students were only in kindergarten, they clearly articulated their ideas and listened to others. They showed they will soon be ready to start exploring the book more deeply so that they can eventually write an opinion piece based on evidence from the text about which Henkes book was their favorite.

Misconception 5: All students in a class need to master the same levels of oral development as a result of participating in lessons.

Because not all students in a class will be at the same starting point, a robust activity provides multiple entry points for all students to engage as they learn. The important idea is that they should all be gaining-not that all of them will arrive at the same point, in exactly the same way, developing at exactly the same level. This would only be possible if what is learned is limited, and if the learning demands recall. This is not necessarily what we want in education. Rather, we want to produce individuals who are thoughtful, engaged, and conscious of their own development.

English language learners bring valuable assets and immense potential to school. The role of educators is to realize that potential in deep and accelerated ways. Each classroom teacher must ensure the path to that development is paved with meaningful interactions to help students develop language skills, gain conceptual understanding, and learn academic content. Our students deserve no less.
Aída Walqui is the director of the teacher professional development program at WestEd. Previously, she taught in the Division of Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Margaret Heritage is a senior advisor at WestEd and was previously an assistant director at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California, Los Angeles.
*Taffy Raphael's Question-Answer Relationships framework ¹ is intended to call students' attention to the kinds of questions that may be asked about a text. In this class, students work in pairs, announcing first the type of question he or she will ask to increase the other student's awareness of the types of meaningful connections the question seeks. ( back to the article)

Endnotes

1. Taffy E. Raphael, "Teaching Question Answer Relationships, Revisited," The Reading Teacher 39 (1986): 516-522.

2. Alison L. Bailey and Margaret Heritage, Progressing Students' Language Day by Day (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2018).

3. See Rod Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education, 2005).

4. Dan C. Lortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

5. Diane August, referenced in Ivannia Soto-Hinman, "Increasing Academic Oral Language Development: Using English Language Learner Shadowing in Classrooms," Multicultural Education 18, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 21-23.

6. Aída Walqui and Leo van Lier, Scaffolding the Academic Success of Adolescent English Language Learners: A Pedagogy of Promise (San Francisco: WestEd, 2010).

7. Anthony DeFazio and Aída Walqui, Where Do You Want to Go Next? (San Francisco: WestEd, 2001), DVD.

8. David J. Nicol and Debra Macfarlane‐Dick, "Formative Assessment and Self‐Regulated Learning: A Model and Seven Principles of Good Feedback Practice," Studies in Higher Education 31 (2006): 199-218.

9. See, for example, John Hattie and Helen Timperley, "The Power of Feedback," Review of Educational Research 77 (2007): 81-112.

10. For more on sentence frames, see Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition.

11. Ahlem Ammar and Nina Spada, "One Size Fits All? Recasts, Prompts, and L2 Learning," Studies in Second Language Acquisition 28 (2006): 543-574; Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition; and Roy Lyster, "Differential Effects of Prompts and Recasts in Form-Focused Instruction," Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26 (2004): 399-432.

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Consider this interaction between a teacher and his students, most of them English language learners, in a ninth-grade English language arts class: Teacher: Who wrote The Pearl, Carmen? Carmen: Steinbeck wrote The Pearl. Teacher: Very good. And Rosa, who is the main character in this novella?

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione shares five key challenges related to the oral language development of ELLs, as well as tips for addressing each of the challenges.

Dr. Moses Guccione is the co-author of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies That Cross Proficiency Levels ( Heinemann, 2009).

Getting Started

As a former elementary teacher in a bilingual school, I developed a love and passion for finding effective ways to support oral language and oral reading development of emerging English language learners (ELLs). I discovered this passion when I began my first year of teaching in a second-grade classroom, where I encountered a handful of challenges related to my students' oral language development.

Many students were transitioning from a classroom with Spanish instruction into my classroom with instruction provided in English. I had students ranging from monolingual English speakers to students who had just recently moved to the U.S. from a Spanish-speaking country. The range of language proficiency levels crossed the entire spectrum. Having minimal experience with this range of diverse students and needs, I began reading, researching, and implementing new instructional ideas into my classroom. With each challenge I encountered, I gained new information about my students and their parents. I also began learning more about my own methods of instruction, and I learned a great deal each year about new challenges and successes.

Currently, I am fortunate to work with many teachers who have the opportunity to impact the lives of children and families who speak more than one language. As I work with these teachers and families, I have found five common and reoccurring challenges that they seem to face in the area of oral language development that parallel my own experiences. I detail these challenges and questions below, as well as suggestions for addressing each challenges based on strategies I used in my classroom.

Questions and Classroom Scenarios

1. What do I do if they don't know ANY English?

Understanding the characteristics of language learners at different proficiency levels helps to think about how we can best support students in their oral language and reading development. Below is a chart that gives a description of the first two levels of language proficiency as well as implications for using oral reading. This is a nice place to start when thinking about how to interact with and support our Starting and Emerging English speakers.

Levels of Language Proficiency

Description

Implications For Using Oral Reading

Level 1: Starting
Students are in a silent period in which they listen, but do not speak in English. They may respond using nonverbal cues in attempt to communicate basic needs.

The teacher and other more advanced students should model oral reading. Students in the silent period should not be forced to speak, but should be given the opportunity to participate in a group activity where they won't be singled out.

Level 2: Emerging
Students are beginning to understand more oral language. They respond using one- or two-word phrases and start to produce simple sentences for basic social interactions and to meet basic needs.

Teacher and students should continue to model oral reading. Students should be encouraged to begin taking risks with simple, rehearsed oral reading in non-threatening situations.

Opitz & Guccione (2009). Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies that Cross Proficiency Levels.

2. How do I provide instruction and support for the ELLs without holding back the students who are fluent in English?

Differentiation is the key to effective instruction for all students. Students of varying proficiency levels can learn the same content when the teacher provides a wide range of learning opportunities for students with different academic and linguistic needs. Three key strategies for this approach include differentiating or modifying the texts, creating grouping structures, and targeting the amount and nature of support based on students' needs (Opitz & Ford, 2008).

Modifying the text: Teachers can differentiate the text by selecting various levels of text difficulty on similar content, or they can also divide the text up into smaller portions appropriate for certain groups/individuals for a jigsaw activity. Another idea is to summarize text that might be too difficult and provide ways to make the text more accessible (such as vocabulary support, visual support, connecting to background knowledge, etc.).

Creating grouping structures that set students up for success: While some grouping structures can be established according to language or literacy skill levels and needs, it is also important to think about providing students exposure to interact with peers who demonstrate a wide range of different language and literacy skills. Additionally, teachers can improve engagement and motivation by creating choice/interest groups where students gather, read, discuss and work together on topics of common interest.

Targeting the amount and nature of student support: It is important to think about scaffolding the experience and using comprehensible input to make it accessible for all students. Comprehensible input means that students should be able to understand the gist of what is being said or presented. There are many ways to do this, such as selecting key vocabulary, using context or visual cues, building background knowledge, building on experiences the students have had, using consistent language, and providing images or visual representations to support vocabulary and content. Teachers can support their students by embedding comprehensible input into their whole-group instruction, but this also becomes particularly effective when used in the different grouping structures. Teachers can also modify the amount of support and interaction between teachers and students depending on their individual and group needs.

3. This student knows English - I hear him talking to his friends and on the playground. He just doesn't want to try in class.

I have heard many teachers discussing variations of this same idea. However, I would caution teachers and parents about jumping to this conclusion. Academic language (or the language specifically related to school and/or academic content) can be complicated to acquire. Students often first develop social language and demonstrate near proficiency or proficiency in English in social settings. A student may be demonstrating sophisticated use of social language, but they may have difficulty using language in more formal settings such as school.

Much of the academic language required to be successful in school - everything from instructions to expectations to content-specific vocabulary - requires assistance in acquiring. Students hear and use their social language in various settings from home, community, and school, but academic language is often only used in the school setting. These students need specific instruction and support surrounding their language development in this area.

The same children who appear to be functioning at a high level of English proficiency in social settings may actually be functioning at a beginning stage in other settings, depending on how they are called on to use language. The students need to feel safe and in a low-anxiety environment in order to begin to feel comfortable taking risks with their oral language. When they have less exposure and instruction related to academic language, this can often cause students to feel intimidated and less likely to be willing to share in class.

One idea for reducing anxiety and encouraging students to experiment with language might include allowing students to read, practice, and discuss their responses in partners and small groups before sharing out to the entire group. This allows students an opportunity to hear language modeled by peers, practice what they want to say, and possibly revise their original thought and/or language before sharing it in a public way. As students find more success with their language production and classroom participation, they will be more likely to share and take risks, and in turn continue building their confidence.

4. How is the child ever going to learn English if they don't speak it at home?

It is important to celebrate being bilingual and biliterate. Research has shown that development of a students' first language can facilitate development in the second language (Genessee, Geva, Dressler, and Kamil, 2007). Understanding this helps parents, teachers, and children to encourage the use and development of the students' home language while they are at home. All of the home literacy activities that we recommend for English speakers, such as reading aloud, making lists, discussing books, reading environmental print, etc., should also be encouraged for the English language learners in their home language. Students can begin to use more English as they feel comfortable in different settings, but it is important to note that speaking two languages will not hinder their English development.

Another important idea to remember is that we want to invite parents to feel confident in their interactions with their children regardless of their English proficiency level. As they begin to read or retell stories and discuss them at home, they are developing vital oral language and comprehension skills, and these skills will transfer over into their school language.

5. What kinds of activities should I be doing to help the student develop their oral language and oral reading?

McCauley and McCauley (1992) report four factors as necessary for acquiring a second language: a low-anxiety environment, repeated practice, comprehensible input, and drama. These are all important components of setting children up for success and language development.

A low-anxiety environment includes a setting where students feel nurtured and supported by their teacher and peers, and in turn, they feel safe to take risks without the fear of being laughed at or made fun of.

Repeated practice is just like what it sounds! Students need repeated practice hearing and using a new language. They need multiple opportunities to comprehend and express their ideas in a new language. Like with anything new that we learn, practice helps us get better.

Comprehensible input, as explained above, means finding different ways to make what is being said comprehensible and easier to understand. Things to consider with comprehensible input might include using speech that is appropriate for students' language proficiency, providing a clear, step-by-step explanation of tasks, and using a variety of techniques to support their understanding.

Drama, or a sense of excitement and engagement, can be found in activities like Reader's Theatre, dramatic play, puppetry, narrating wordless picture books, etc. All of these activities also have the other three factors embedded within them. These activities assist in the development of oral language in addition to introducing students to oral reading and rich literacy experiences and responses in a classroom setting.

Closing Thoughts

As you can see from these questions and examples, there are a lot of different approaches to helping ELLs build their oral language development skills, and you may have to try different activities until you find what works for your students. The most important thing, however, is to build your students' confidence while giving them new words and phrases to practice. Don't be afraid to try something new - and most of all, don't be afraid to have fun doing it!

About the Author

Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione is a coauthor of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies that Cross Proficiency Levels. She is an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado and teaches courses in Early Childhood Education, Literacy, and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education. She is a former elementary teacher of English language learners and is currently researching how ELLs make sense of texts.

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Oral Language Development and ELLs: 5 Challenges and Solutions

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione shares five key challenges related to the oral language development of ELLs, as well as tips for addressing each of the challenges. Dr. Moses Guccione is the co-author of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies That Cross Proficiency Levels ( Heinemann, 2009).

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Recently, the Darden teaching faculty gathered for one of our periodic seminars on case discussion leadership. Colleagues Jim Freeland and Mike Lenox focused our thinking on how to deal with slumps in student energy. At about this time in the calendar year, many instructors experience a flatness among formerly energetic students. What, if anything can the instructor do to achieve the kind of dynamic discussions that promote great learning?

Teachers instinctively sense that high energy is an indicator of high student interest, readiness to participate, and commitment to the course. Freeland and Lenox invited us to consider some tell-tales of lagging energy. The students are abnormally quiet. A growing number of students come to the instructor before class asking, "please don't call on me today; I'm not prepared." There is little or no eye contact between the teacher and students-the students stare intensively at their notes, or worse, the screens of a cell phone, tablet, or computer. Or maybe the body language speaks volumes: poor posture, leaning back in chairs, and that hang-dog look. Or maybe students are voting with their feet: the number of voluntary absences increases.

Freeland and Lenox invited us to think about the causes of low energy. As the faculty discussion gathered speed, it seemed that causes clustered into three groups:

· Micro: these are causes specific to the classroom and course. Classes that meet at 8:00 am present a challenge to night-owl students, who don't really get going before noon. Perhaps the teacher has chosen some cognitively difficult or boring material. Maybe the teacher experiences a slump in energy that gets taken up by the students. Or maybe the teacher fails to respond to the sag in classroom energy.

· Meso: these are causes specific to the school and local community. At Darden, first year student get back their first round of grades about now, some of which can be discouraging. If a feeling of incompetency grows, some students will grow fearful of being wrong in their contributions to discussions. Distractions (such as job recruiting) can cannibalize student preparation. And some local events can distract student preparation-Central Virginia enjoys the Foxfield Races twice per year, which occasions some hard partying.

· Macro: these are causes impinging from the wider world. Days grow shorter, possibly deepening a sense of gloom. The presidential election in 2008 generated huge distractions. Terror attacks (9/11/2001), war news, and macroeconomic phenomena (the Great Recession) can pre-empt the best efforts to kindle excitement for ideas. These are the kinds of causes of low student energy over which the instructor has no control. (A challenge for the instructor is how to make it safe for students to express their concerns and distractions with what goes on in the wider world-but that's a subject for a longer and different blog post.)

Some favorite techniques of the Darden faculty for re-energizing the case discussion experience include these:

1. Vary the format. During class time, send students into "buzz groups" to prepare responses to the case. Set up debates or team presentations. Cold-call students throughout the class period, not just at the beginning. Sustain the element of surprise.

2. Vary the tempo. Some Darden teachers stop the discussion and ask students to stand up and do exercises. To break up long class sessions, some colleagues have conducted mindfulness exercises-these tend to refresh the students and center them back in the moment of the class discussion.

3. Press reset. You could simply observe to the students their low energy level and ask them what is going on. You could ask the students to relate the material of a couple of weeks ago to what is being discussed that day-this tends to reinforce the importance of paying attention. Or during the case discussion, you could challenge the students with "Where are we so far in resolving the problem in the case? And what do we have left to do?" Or you could ask, "This isn't relevant to you, is it?"

4. Ask better discussion leadership questions. Questions that begin with "what" tend to generate short answers, typically regurgitating case facts. Questions that begin with "how," "who," and "where" get deeper into processes. And questions that begin with "why" demand the deepest thinking of students. The energy in the class typically lives in part with the quality of the questioning.

5. Diversify your engagement with students. Don't keep calling on the same students (the "experts")-doing so discourages novices from participating.

6. Know thy students. Are you pitching advanced material to raw novices? Is English a second language for your students? Are they holding down jobs while taking your course? Having a serious understanding of the students you are teaching can help you calibrate the assignments, discussion leadership questions, and your own expectations.

7. Make the case for active participation. Explain why the success of a course, and of the individual student's learning, depends on active class participation. One colleague asserted, "Don't waste your money by sitting passively through a course."

8. Don't be afraid of silence. Introverts and students for whom English is a second language will inevitably take a bit longer to process a question and frame a response.

What if the instructor doesn't feel particularly energetic? This may be a matter of psychological preparation to teach. The Chess Grandmaster, Bobby Fischer, used to program himself to be ready to play. Performing artists and athletes do much the same. Regular exercise can help to create the physical resilience necessary for energetic teaching. Caffeine can give a temporary boost. And you might check your own expectations: do you set an impossibly high standard for energetic teaching? If so, consider lowering your expectations a tad. Some of Darden's highest-performing teachers are relatively quiet personalities, and yet highly effective. And colleagues acknowledge that some days, you just have to fake it 'till you make it-obviously, this may be unsustainable, stretched over a semester or a year. So check your own level of interest in teaching the material and the students.

Energy in the classroom matters. It matters not merely for the sake of popularity-and students do like to be around teachers who give off positive energy. No, the most important focus on energy has to do with the deeper purpose of the educational enterprise. Benjamin Franklin said, "Energy and persistence conquer all things." A teacher who promotes energetic engagement by students promotes the conquering of important lessons.

A coda: the Darden faculty have been meeting this year on a variety of teaching topics. See the following for earlier discussions.

1. Teaching the "Seasoned Learner"

2. Teaching with Technical Notes

3. Getting the Best out of the Quiet Student

4. Getting started in the classroom: How to break the ice on the first day of class and set up a great classroom culture

5. Engaging the Students

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Robert F. Bruner - Managing Student Energy

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November 5, 2017 - Recently, the Darden teaching faculty gathered for one of our periodic seminars on case discussion leadership. Colleagues Jim Freeland and Mike Lenox

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Welcome to Room 327! Here, on a warm day in May, you'll find thirty third graders reading independently. The room is silent, save for the occasional chuckle or sound of disbelief you might expect from children fully immersed in their reading. Meanwhile, I'm conferencing with individual students, running guided reading groups, or holding book club meetings. This scene continues for over fifty minutes until I ring the chime, signaling the end of independent reading.

"What?" "No way!" "That felt like 10 minutes!" From the looks and sounds of the students' reactions, they want to and could stay reading.

Was this what you would have seen if you'd visited at the beginning of school? Absolutely not. Earlier in the year, this group of third graders couldn't sustain their focus for more than a few minutes at a time, with reading or any other independent work. They'd get up and wander the room, fidget with their pencil cases, or let their eyes wander off the page. Lacking the skills to stick with the task at hand, they were easily distracted and quickly tired.

It's important to deliberately stretch students' ability to focus-because without that ability, they'll find it harder and harder to feel the joy in learning, and harder and harder to do the rigorous work being asked of them in this age of the Common Core State Standards. So how can teachers help students build stamina for sustained focus? Over my ten years of teaching, I've found that the following strategies work well.

Teach What Staying Focused Looks Like

I make sure students know what staying focused looks, sounds, and feels like. Using Interactive Modeling, I teach and have students practice how to keep quiet, talking only when truly necessary. I model exactly what their eyes, mouths, hands, and feet should be doing when they're focused on a quiet independent task. I also teach "personal management"-for instance, how to take bathroom and water breaks if needed.

Relate Academic Stamina to Physical Stamina

I frequently use the analogy of marathon training when helping students build endurance for focusing. "Marathon runners can't run 26.2 miles on day one. They build endurance day by day. Maybe they run three miles at first, then four, and so on. Eventually they build to twenty or more miles. This is similar to the way we'll build our reading stamina. First we'll begin with three minutes, then five minutes, and then ten. Our goal is to read on our own for twenty minutes by the end of the month."

Teach how to Refocus

One important way to help students build stamina is to give them strategies for getting back on track when they lose focus. For example, I model breathing techniques (such as inhaling and exhaling slowly three times) and then students practice them. The goal is for students to have ways to take small breaks without disrupting their concentration or others'.

Use Visuals to Highlight Progress

Students are motivated by seeing their progress. My class uses a simple graph to show their progress in reading without distraction or teacher reminders from week to week (and eventually month to month).

Avoid "One Size Fits All"

For various reasons, some students will be able to build endurance more quickly than others. Increasing stamina is our common goal, but I differentiate how I help individual students get there. For instance, an accommodation I'd make for a student who isn't yet able to sustain independent reading for as long as the rest of the class might involve reading for less time and then working silently on a related activity such as a word search.

Reflect Regularly

Students need time to reflect on what's working well and what's challenging about sustaining focus. Sometimes I have them reflect on their level of concentration by writing in their notebooks or sharing during closing circle. I encourage students to name what gets in the way of focusing (such as sitting near a friend, having worried thoughts, or being hungry) and to address those issues if they can. I've found that hearing their peers identify difficulties motivates the class to work together to overcome those challenges.

Planning interesting and appropriately challenging lessons is certainly important when it comes to academic engagement. But we must also teach students to build stamina for sustained focus so they can become immersed-and successful-in their learning.

Kate Umstatter is a Responsive Classroom teacher.

Tags: Engaging Academics, Independence, Quiet Time

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Welcome to Room 327! Here, on a warm day in May, you'll find thirty third graders reading independently. The room is silent, save for the occasional chuckle or sound of disbelief you might expect from children fully immersed in their reading. Meanwhile, I'm conferencing with individual students, running guided reading groups, or holding book club meetings.

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References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

Barkley, R. A. (1997). ADHD and the nature of self-control. New York: Guilford Press.

Barkley, R. A. (1998). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for treatment and diagnosis. New York: Guilford Press.

Hallowell, E. M., & Ratey, J. J. (1994). Driven to distraction: Recognizing and coping with attention deficit disorder from childhood through adulthood. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Hallowell, E.M. & Ratey, J.J. (1994). Answers to distraction. New York: Pantheon.

Levine, M. D. (2002). Educational care: A system for understanding and helping children with learning problems at home and in school. Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: Educators Publishing Services, Inc.

Levine, M. D. (1998). Developmental variation and learning disorders. Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: Educators Publishing Services, Inc.

Ratey, J. J. (2001). A User's Guide to the Brain. New York: Pantheon Books.

Thomas, A., Thorne, G., Small, R., DeSanti, P., and Lawson, C. (1998). MindWorks... And How Mine Works: A book about learning and thinking, and learning how you think. Covington, LA: Center for Development & Learning.

Thomas, A., Thorne, G., & St. Germain, C. (2002). Learning Connections Training Binder. Sixth edition. Covington, LA: Center for Development & Learning.

Thomas, A., ed. (1997). PLAIN TALK ABOUT K. I. D. S. Cambridge, MA: Educator's Publishing Service.

Thomas, A., ed. (2004). Plain talk about kids: A summit on teaching and learning. Covington, LA: Learning Success Press.

Thomas, A. & Thorne, G. (2005). Learning Profiles Teacher's Binder. Covington, LA: Center for Development & Learning.

Thorne, G. & Thomas, A. (in press). Paying attention to attention. Covington, LA: Center for Development & Learning.

Thorne, G. & Lawson, C. (2005). Behavioral, academic and neurodevelopmental surveys. Covington, LA: Center for Development & Learning.

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15 Strategies for Managing Attention Problems

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Click the "References" link above to hide these references. Barkley, R. A. (1997). ADHD and the nature of self-control. New York: Guilford Press. Barkley, R. A. (1998). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for treatment and diagnosis. New York: Guilford Press. Hallowell, E. M., & Ratey, J. J. (1994).

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10 Strategies to Help Students Focus

Classrooms are busy places! A student's visual focus and attention can dart around the room due to the many distractions. Other students, teachers, doors opening, windows, lights, bulletin boards, whiteboards, computer screens, the list goes on and on of what can disrupt students' visual focus and attention. Here are 10 strategies to help students focus in the classroom:

1. Reduce visual distractions in the room such as pictures on walls, mobiles or hanging objects. Research indicates that children in highly decorated classrooms are more distracted, spend more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed. Read more here.

2. Modify worksheets by reducing non-essential visual stimuli. When a teacher makes copies of a worksheet, try covering up and pictures, fancy borders etc. to reduce visual clutter.

3. Provide only one task or assignment at a time. If a student has to complete 3 sections on a worksheet, try cutting up the paper into three different parts. Or place the paper in a folder and cut the folder into thirds. Open up one section at a time to complete the work.

4. Use preferential seating. For example, seat the student close to the front of the room to reduce distractions of other students.

5. Use contrasting colors to increase visual focus. For example, use yellow chalk on the blackboard or color code outlines.

6. Cover up shelving with games, materials, etc. with a sheet. This is a great technique in early elementary classrooms. There can be many temptations to want to play or touch other materials in the classroom. If the student can not see them, the visual distraction is reduced.

7. Use natural sunlight or lamps instead of fluorescent lighting.

8. The teacher can modify his/her own actions and behaviors to increase focus. For example, the teacher can stay in one location without visual clutter behind his/her while they teach.

9. Vary the type of lessons by using a multisensory approach. It may be easier for some students to visually focus during kinesthetic lessons versus auditory.

10. PRACTICE. Visual focus and attention can improve through practice. Work on sustaining visual focus for longer periods of time.

Read 10 Sensory Quick Fixes to Increase Attention Span.

If you need to practice visual scanning and focus activities check out Ready, Set, Scan - this digital download includes 12 visual scanning and discrimination activities. How fast can you scan, find and mark each item? There are 12 challenges in all with different themes including: shapes, animals, fruit, party, travel and babies. Just print and start the search. Follow the directions: start a timer, scan for one object at a time, mark each object and stop the timer. Record your time in the box provided. Dot markers work great for marking the item. Use a different color dot marker for each item.

Need visual discrimination activities? Check out this figure ground and visual discrimination bundl e for a huge selection of activities at a discounted price!

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10 Strategies to Help Students Focus - Your Therapy Source

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Classrooms are busy places! A student's visual focus and attention can dart around the room due to the many distractions. Other students, teachers, doors opening, windows, lights, bulletin boards, whiteboards, computer screens, the list goes on and on of what can disrupt students' visual focus and attention.

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

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How educators can make this small group exercise work better in their classrooms

When you find yourself reading a good book, whether you're on the edge of your seat wondering what a character will do next or amazed by the poetry of a descriptive passage, you probably want to share what you've read with someone - not write a book report or build a diorama, as students are often asked to do.

"There's an excitement around sharing words," says Harvard Graduate School of Education senior lecturer and Jeanne Chall Reading Lab director Pamela Mason, whose work and research focuses on developing culturally responsive and effective literacy and reading instructional practices. "Children have a right to those experiences, and they want those types of experiences. That's what makes learning fun and engages them in school."

So how can educators encourage natural discussion and enthusiasm for books in the classroom while also ensuring students understand what they're reading and continue to grow as readers?

Why Literature Circles?

Literature circles - a small group of students that gathers to discuss a book, much like a book club - are not a new idea, and in fact, remain quite popular because they are incredibly effective. Indeed, many studies of developing reading comprehension, including those by Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Catherine Snow, have emphasized the positive impact of having kids talk about what they read.

Talking about reading also helps build a classroom culture around books. "It's motivating," says Mason. "We've found from the research that, regardless of what you read, the more you read, the better you get. And the better you get, the more you like it. The more you like it, you feel competent at it, and it's this virtuous cycle. [Reading becomes] something I do, that my friends do."

"There's an excitement around sharing words. Children have a right to those experiences, and they want those types of experiences. That's what makes learning fun and engages them in school."

Those conversations allow readers to hone their critical thinking skills. They might think about the decisions a character makes or whether they agree with something a classmate has said as they make connections between the book and themselves, other books they've read, or something they've seen on the news or heard about in their communities.

Using Literature Circles Successfully

Mason has a few ideas to make them more successful and to help educators overcome common hiccups, like differentiating appropriately and avoiding overly teacher-led conversations, when implementing literature circles.

THE PROBLEM:

Balancing reading requirements with student choice. Students devour the latest Percy Jackson book but are less enthusiastic about picking up their assigned reading from The Odyssey.

From required summer reading lists to being told a book is too difficult or too easy, school-age children aren't always given a choice when selecting reading material. Yet according to Mason, choice is essential. It's part of what makes reading fun for adults and that needs to be extended to children as well. With so many choices, including graphic novels and e-books, teachers can have children reading the same book or following the same storyline in different media.

It's also important to think about whether the text students are reading reflects their backgrounds and interests. "Think about the texts you're offering - are they varied in terms of content, representation of characters, and settings that represent the learners in your classroom? Are they multilingual?" says Mason.

THE PROBLEM:
Students have a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses as readers, yet you want to avoid stigmatizing students based on their assessed reading level.
Mix up the reading groups so they aren't always based on assessed reading levels. It can be important to have students read texts that are accessible and to do so alongside readers who can also access those books. However, there are other factors to take into consideration. "Teachers can give students a test and a score - but that score doesn't measure motivation, doesn't measure background knowledge, or the type of text a learner might be able to access because of those knowledges," says Mason. Nonfiction texts can also be used in literature circles - consider mixing up the groups and allowing students to choose their literature circle based on a shared topic of interest.

Mason also notes that readers don't always need to be challenged. Given the right kind of framing or thought-provoking questions, a simple text can still hone a reader's skills. For example, asking high schoolers to revisit some of their favorite picture books from childhood and to think critically about how they absorbed that message can be powerful. For example, what does Where the Wild Things Are say about anger?

"We've found from the research that, regardless of what you read, the more you read, the better you get. And the better you get, the more you like it. The more you like it, you feel competent at it, and it's this virtuous cycle."

THE PROBLEM
Students look to the teacher after answering questions, rather than turning to each other.
Evaluate how you model discussions in your classroom. Do the students respond to each other? Or does one student respond and then you speak to the next student? Try calling students in to the discussion by asking if they have something to add. Also, ask them what they think of what another student has said. Taking turns, stepping back and allowing someone else to talk, being curious and not judgmental, and perspective-taking should be part of community agreements in the classroom and modeled in all subject areas.

THE PROBLEM
Students struggle to stay on-task in small groups or give one-word answers to discussion questions. Maybe some students aren't as involved in the conversation as others.
Typically, literature circles include assigning roles to students. While these roles can become stagnant and rigid in some circumstances, they can be a great way to add structure and coax reluctant participants into contributing. Some examples of roles include a student who is making connections, finding a passage that strikes them, or illustrating a scene. Mason recommends, though, that students rotate roles so all learners can gain experience contributing in a different way and, once the discussion starts to flow regularly, phasing out the roles.

Tips from a Teacher

Robin Loewald, a 2019 master's graduate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, works as a high school English teacher in Melrose, Massachusetts. Here, she provides a few key takeaways on how she's used literature circles.

"My biggest role as an educator is to create a space and structure for a discussion to be successful," says Loewald. To do that, she dedicates time early in the year to establish expectations and set the tone. "We play a lot of games, things like rock, paper, scissor tournaments, so kids get to know each other and are comfortable using each other's names. This makes them more comfortable talking about things that are important or serious later on."

She's also found that literature circles can be a powerful way to connect students, even during remote learning. Letting students choose the book is also important and can promote engagement. "Even in remote spaces, when they're talking about a book they care about, you can feel the investment, emotion, and pride in their conversations."

Use the opportunity to tackle difficult subjects. Loewald lead a voluntary book club over the summer because students expressed a desire to talk about race. "It helps students feel like they're able to engage in a conversation that can be challenging. [The book] gives them a reference point and a shared vocabulary to talk about really important things."

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How educators encourage can natural discussion and enthusiasm for books in the classroom while ensuring students continue to grow as readers.

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Book clubs bring challenges in class management and assessment, but they can lead to improvements in students' reading ability.

Over the summer break, I've been thinking about what improvements I can make for next year, poring over student feedback from June and remembering aspects of the school year that caused me the most anxiety-and my chest begins to tighten as I think about choice reading book clubs.

I try to figure out how to monitor whether students are really reading their books, how to effectively manage a classroom with five groups discussing different books, and how to properly assess students' learning when their readings are different.

These issues alone seem reason enough to abandon book clubs, but then I think about the research demonstrating that independent reading and student choice in reading are significant factors in helping students improve as readers. So as I resolve to keep book clubs, I attempt to identify a few keys to making sure they're successful.

Share With Students Why Reading Matters

At the beginning of the year, I tell students that I believe reading is essential to a well-lived life and share research indicating that reading is linked to overall academic and economic success.

But we don't just talk about why reading matters, we live it. During choice book clubs-an exercise we do twice a year-I ask students to look for quotations that transcend context and exemplify how fiction can reveal truth. We share these passages along with the wisdom they reveal by creating posters with Sharpies and designing Padlets, and we discuss these ideas in pairs and small groups. Recently, one of my students quoted Akhil Sharma's Family Life: "Vanishing into books, I felt held." The truth he drew from this was: "When we read books, we feel less alone." The lessons we learn and the ideas that resonate ignite our desire to read, and remind us of the value of reading.

Provide Meaningful Selections

During book clubs, I offer five or six books that are related either to a whole class text or to each other by topic, theme, genre, or author. In 2016-17, my ninth graders read popular young adult titles by authors such as John Green, Rainbow Rowell, and Ernest Cline. Last year, in an effort to bring in diverse perspectives, we selected coming-of-age stories by male and female authors from Nigeria, India, Korea, and Sri Lanka.

When I introduce book clubs, I explain why I selected the books and seek to generate interest by sharing a brief summary of each one along with an excerpt I particularly love. I also provide students with links to reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, and class time to choose a book.

Provide High Interest Activities

In a classroom with five or six groups discussing different books, the challenges are many. Teachers have to ensure that students are prepared to engage in meaningful discussions, provide questions and conversational moves that work for multiple texts, and monitor discussions.

In my class, book club days are predictable and organized, yet they still provide variety. Each book club has a specific focus, such as character, theme, writing style, or how fiction reveals truth. Students arrive having read the agreed-upon number of pages (as decided by their book club) as well as having prepared a task for the day's focus (as decided by me).

Students begin by writing and responding to targeted prompts designed to generate ideas for the day's focus. The targeted prompts vary. For a book club focused on character, for example, I tasked students with tracking one character and marking in their book where they learned about the character through what he says, how he acts, and what others say about him. Some of the writing prompts included: What are your initial impressions of the character? What predictions can you make about how the story will progress based on your understanding of the character?

During book club discussions, students refer to their notes on these questions and their prepared task, along with conversational moves I've provided to ensure a thoughtful, civil discussion. Toward the end of class, students have time to reflect on the discussion, set future goals, and decide how many pages to read before their next discussion.

What About Assessment?

I've had to accept the fact that choice reading is messy and that assessing it must be as expansive and imperfect as books themselves. So I check journal entries and the completion of book club activities, and as a culminating assignment students write a formal reflection on how their book changed their view of themselves or the world, using specific textual evidence to support their assertion.

I know that these assessments don't prove that all students have read their books. Generally most kids will read, and a few will not. But in my classes, these book clubs have generated more excitement about reading and higher levels of insight than any other reading we do.

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Book clubs bring challenges in class management and assessment, but they can lead to improvements in students' reading ability.

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Reader’s Theater: Giving Students a Reason to Read Aloud

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The reader’s theater strategy blends students’ desire to perform with their need for oral reading practice. Reader’s Theater offers an entertaining and engaging means of improving fluency and enhancing comprehension.

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Text-based writing prompts with rubrics and Standards-aligned passage-based texts for grades 3-11

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Text-based writing prompts with rubrics and Standards-aligned passage-based texts for grades 3-11

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Assessments designed to illustrate the ELA/literacy Shifts and expectations of college- and career-ready standards

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Identify decoding strengths and weaknesses with free diagnostic surveys for targeted literacy instruction.

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multiple phonemic awareness assessments

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Phonological Awareness Assessment measures six layers of phonemic awareness, including phoneme isolation, blending, segmentation, addition, deletion, and substitution

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To access a fun activity, word list, & phonological awareness survey, don't miss our Teacher Tips, Fun Facts, Check It Out!, and Word of the Week at the end of the blog!

What Is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonemic Awareness is the awareness of and ability to manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words (Kilpatrick, 2015). Phonemic awareness is a subset of the broader category of phonological awareness, which is one's conscious awareness of and ability to "play with" the sound structures in oral language (Paulson & Moats, 2010).
Download our Phonological Awareness Assessment>>
Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness: Improve Students' Reading Using Their Ears

Reading With Your Ears? What if we told you that you could improve your students' ability to read unfamiliar words without showing them a single printed letter? As crazy as it sounds, it's true! This is because one of the major skills underlying the successful decoding of printed words, phonemic awareness, is a purely auditory and oral skill. It may not be "reading with your ears" in the literal sense, but the sounds we hear and play with words are what allow us to ultimately pull the print off the page with our eyes when we decode.

Read our Blog What Is the Difference Between Phonological Awareness & Phonemic Awareness?

What Is the Importance of Phonemic Awareness in Decoding?

Kilpatrick (2015) tells us that phonemic awareness is an essential part of the process of storing words in one's sight word vocabulary; that is, the body of words (high-frequency or not) that an individual can decode quickly and effortlessly. "Phonemic awareness is what allows us to anchor the sounds in a word to the written sequence of letters that represent those sounds" (Kilpatrick, 2015). This process is called orthographic mapping. Studies have shown that students with better phonological awareness skills can handle this mapping process more proficiently than those with weaker phonological awareness skills (Kilpatrick, 2015). The goal of decoding is to build words into our sight word memory, and phonemic awareness allows this to happen!

Why Are the Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness Essential to Learning to Read?

Adams (1994) emphasizes that while phonemic awareness is essential for learning to read, it is not easily established, and children need explicit instruction to gain the necessary skills. This makes it extremely important for teachers to understand that there are various layers of phonemic awareness and that each of these layers represents a skill that can be developed through targeted instruction and practice. These layers build from the simplest phonemic awareness skills at the bottom of the pyramid to the most complex at the top. These are skills that can be modeled, practiced, and established through oral wordplay.

The Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness: Definitions & Examples of Instruction at Each Layer

Phoneme Isolation: Hearing and isolating the individual phonemes (sounds) in spoken words represents the first layer of skilled phonemic awareness. Isolating phonemes entails knowing that a word is made up of a sequence of sounds and that the individual sounds in words can be differentiated from one another. Beginning sound isolation activities are a great way to help students develop their phoneme isolation skills. Beginning sound isolation is simply pulling the first sound off of a spoken word. Students can isolate the first sounds in words, as in /b/, bear, or /s/, soap.

Blending: Moving up the pyramid, we come to a slightly more complex phonemic awareness skill, phoneme blending. Phoneme blending, which is basically combining sounds, involves listening to and pulling together isolated phonemes to create words. This process requires a student to hold the individual elements in his/her mind as the word is created, thus challenging a student's active working memory. When beginning readers sound out a word, they use letter-sound knowledge to say each sound in a word (/b/ /ă/ /t/), and then blend the sounds quickly together to read the word ( bat).

S egmenting: The third layer in the pyramid is phoneme segmentation. This is the ability to divide a spoken word into its component sounds (phonemes). In a segmentation activity, students are given a word like mad, and then they segment it, or "stretch" the phonemes, /m/ /ă/ /d/. As they are saying the sounds, they can extend a single finger for every phoneme that they hear, starting with the thumb: /m/ (extend thumb), /ă/ (extend index finger), /d/ (extend middle finger). Lastly, they blend the phonemes together as they bring their hands back to their chests and say the word, mad.

Manipulation: Truly refined phonemic awareness includes even more advanced skills, like phoneme addition, deletion, and substitution, all three of which are considered phoneme manipulation. These are the top three layers of the pyramid. Phoneme manipulation is generally more challenging than segmenting and blending phonemes. Manipulation requires students to hold phonemes in their working memories long enough to isolate specific phonemes, add, delete, or substitute (delete and then add) specific phonemes, and then blend the phonemes back together to form a new word. These types of activities are an excellent way to build refined phonemic awareness, particularly for students who may have already mastered phoneme segmentation and blending.

Phoneme Addition: Phoneme addition involves adding phonemes to a given word to produce a new word. For instance, starting with the word we and adding the phoneme /k/ to the end turns it into week. Phoneme addition can be done with more complex words as well; starting with the word bell and adding the phoneme /t/ at the end turns it into belt.

Phoneme Deletion: Conversely, starting with the word guide and deleting the final phoneme, /d/, creates the new word, guy. A more complex example of phoneme deletion might include removing one phoneme from a two-sound blend. Starting with the word blast and deleting the initial phoneme, /b/, results in the new word, last.

Phoneme Substitution: Phoneme substitution, the most advanced of all the manipulation skills on our pyramid, requires that a student knows how to both delete and add phonemes. In a phoneme substitution exercise, a student might be asked to drop the short i sound in kit and replace it with the long i sound. When they do, kit becomes kite. This is done through a few intricate steps that are performed automatically and without conscious thought for strong, fluent readers. These steps include recognizing the component parts of the known word (segmenting the word into its phonemes), isolating a specific phoneme, deleting that phoneme, adding the new phoneme, and blending the phonemes together to say the new word. Did you notice that these steps include every one of the lower five layers of the pyramid? That's right -phoneme substitution, our top layer, encompasses every single layer of the phonemic awareness pyramid. If even one of these lower skills is weak, students will struggle to substitute phonemes.

The Importance of Phoneme Substitution

Teachers are often comfortable with and therefore put the instructional focus on the phonemic awareness skills toward the bottom of the pyramid, particularly phoneme blending and phoneme segmentation. Although these skills are undoubtedly important in helping students as they are learning to decode, it is actually the top of the pyramid, with the more complex phonemic skills, that is often left out of classroom instruction and, where we need to pay the most attention, particularly as students move beyond the primary classroom. Kilpatrick (2015) tells us that research suggests that "phonological manipulation tasks are the best measures of the phonological awareness, skills needed for reading because they are the best predictors of word-level reading proficiency" (page 155) because phoneme manipulation (adding, deleting, and substituting) is actually the layer of phonemic awareness that is the most closely related to reading connected text (Kilpatrick, 2015).

Phoneme substitution is the critical breakthrough skill a child needs to teach themselves how to read new words. As illustrated in the images above, if a student encounters a new unfamiliar word, like moth, they can use their knowledge of a word that they already know (like math) to teach themselves how to read this novel word. Remember that manipulation activities require students to hold phonemes in their working memory long enough to isolate specific phonemes, add, delete, or change specific phonemes, and then blend the phonemes back together to form a new word. Kilpatrick (2015) states that "training in phonemic manipulation has a substantial long-term impact on reading."

Fun Strategies to Use
Sneak some advanced phoneme manipulation practice into the school day!

"Reading problems can be prevented if all students are trained in letter-sound skills and phonological awareness, starting in kindergarten."

- Kilpatrick (2016)

When I first learned about phoneme manipulation, I thought there is no way that my kindergarten students will be able to do that this year. I was AMAZED at how quickly my students caught on and they had so much fun doing it. They're more prepared for 1st grade than any other class I've ever promoted, and I have DIBELS data to prove it!

-Jenna K, Teacher, New York

Download our complimentary Teacher Resources
Phonological Awareness Survey.

This survey enables one-on-one assessment of phonological and phonemic awareness skills that are essential underpinnings of accurate and automatic decoding.

Discover Reading at the Word Level

Click here to link to a word chaining activity we call Word Math>> Add word chaining activities to your day and help students practice their advanced phonemic awareness skills. Use deletion, addition and substitution to chain these words:
strap → trap → rap → rash → ash → lash → latch → batch → botch → blotch
This activity can be done as a pure phonemic awareness exercise without showing students any letters. However, in our illustrate that these advanced phoneme manipulation skills can also be used with word chaining activity we letter tiles to help students encode and decode complex single-syllable words with digraphs, 2-sound blends, and 3-sound blends.

We Love Educator Feedback & Questions
Contact us anytime. Our mission is to provide educators with the most efficient and effective tools for teaching phonemic awareness, phonics concepts, word attack skills, accurate reading and fluency. Student outcomes are our number one goal. No one knows their students better than educators. Therefore your thoughts, strategies, student successes and feedback are held in high esteem!

References

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Six Layers of Phonemic Awareness - Really Great Reading Blog

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row][oneThird] Subscribe to our BlogTo access a fun activity, word list, & phonological awareness survey, don't miss our Teacher Tips, Fun Facts, Check It Out!, and Word of the Week at the end of the blog![/oneThird][twoThird] What Is Phonemic Awareness?Phonemic Awareness is the awareness of and ability to manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words

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First Sound Fluency (FSF) - Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF)-Spelling Inventory for K-6- Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) 

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First Sound Fluency (FSF) - Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF)-Spelling Inventory for K-6- Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) 

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Why Use Acadience Spelling?

Acadience Spelling is an optional measure that can be used along with Acadience Reading K-6. Spelling is a helpful tool for educators because it:

is a brief assessment that can be used to screen students for reading difficulties including dyslexia

has a history of strong technical adequacy and meets or exceeds the reliability and validity criteria for screening decisions

may be group or individually administered

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Acadience Spelling is an optional measure that can be used along with Acadience Reading K-6.

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Phonological Awareness Screening Test measures phonological awareness at the syllable level, onset-rime level, and phoneme level

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The PAST can be downloaded above. Please also download and carefully read the instructions before using. Information can also be found in the manual “Equipped for Reading Success” by David A. Kilpatrick, Ph.D in chapter 11 on how to effectively use the test. Make sure to also practice using the test before using it with […]

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Acadience® is a proprietary name referring to the work of Roland Good, Ruth Kaminski, and Acadience Learning Inc. (ALI). The intent of ALI is to make the current Acadience assessment tools and materials downloadable from this website available to schools, school districts, and multi-district agencies for the limited purposes, and on the terms, described in this Educational Use Agreement. Such use, however, is not intended to and does not place the Acadience assessment materials in the public domain.

Photocopy masters of the Acadience assessment materials are available at a host website designated by ALI solely for the purposes described in this Educational Use Agreement. Schools, school districts, and multi-district agencies may themselves make unlimited photocopies of the Acadience assessment materials for internal educational use, subject to the terms of this Educational Use Agreement. No outside printing services or other vendors may make photocopies of the Acadience assessment materials. No Acadience assessment materials may be sold or licensed without the express written consent of ALI. ALI has licensed Voyager Sopris Learning ® to sell the print version of the Acadience assessment materials and to distribute the Acadience Learning Online progressive web application that incorporates the Acadience assessment materials ( www.voyagersopris.com).

As a part of ALI's program to provide the photocopy masters and permission to photocopy for free as described above, ALI requires all users to register on the host website designated by ALI, to evidence their assent to the terms of this Educational Use Agreement, so that we may document usage as we pursue additional research and development funding, and so that we may notify users when new and improved materials are available. Users should not use a prior version of Acadience assessment materials when a new and improved version of the Acadience assessment materials are available.

This Educational Use Agreement also requires that users copy and use the Acadience assessment materials without modification (including, without limitation, without removing logos or acknowledgments for contributions to the Acadience assessment materials), except as agreed to in advance and in writing by ALI in its sole discretion. Any uses of the Acadience assessment materials that are inconsistent with the provisions of this Educational Use Agreement are strictly prohibited.

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Acadience Learning Materials | Acadience Learning

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Acadience® is a proprietary name referring to the work of Roland Good, Ruth Kaminski, and Acadience Learning Inc. (ALI). The intent of ALI is to make the current Acadience assessment tools and materials downloadable from this website available to schools, school districts, and multi-district agencies for the limited purposes, and on the terms, described in this Educational Use Agreement.

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Phonemic Segmentation Fluency (PSF) measures the ability to break a word into its individual phonemes

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This manual includes information about DIBELS 8, how DIBELS 8 differs from previous editions of DIBELS, how to administer and score DIBELS 8 subtests, and how to use DIBELS 8 data to inform instructional decision-making.

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This manual includes information about DIBELS 8, how DIBELS 8 differs from previous editions of DIBELS, how to administer and score DIBELS 8 subtests, and how to use DIBELS 8 data to inform instructional decision-making.

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About Us

The Coalition to Support Grieving Students is a unique collaboration of the leading professional organizations representing classroom teachers (including teachers, paraprofessionals, and other instructional staff), principals, assistant principals, superintendents, school board members, and central office staff, student support personnel (including school counselors, school nurses, school psychologists, school social workers, and other student support personnel), and other school professionals who have come together with a common conviction: grieving students need the support and care of the school community.

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Home Page - Coalition to Support Grieving Students

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The Coalition to Support Grieving Students is a unique collaboration of the leading professional organizations representing classroom teachers (including teachers, paraprofessionals, and other instructional staff), principals, assistant principals, superintendents, school board members, and central office staff, student support personnel (including school counselors, school nurses, school psychologists, school social workers, and other student support personnel), and other school professionals who have come together with a common conviction: grieving students need the support and care of the school community.

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The NACG is the only professional member organization specifically addressing issues about childhood bereavement.

Our network is comprised of professionals, institutions, and volunteers who promote best practices, educational programming, and critical resources to facilitate the mental, emotional and physical health of children who are grieving and those who support them.

Join the Alliance today!

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National Alliance for Children's Grief | Home Page

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Our network is comprised of professionals, institutions, and volunteers who promote best practices, educational programming, and critical resources to facilitate the mental, emotional and physical health of children who are grieving and those who support them. Join the Alliance today!

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In a video that has gone viral after the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, a father comforts his son, who is worried about "bad guys" shooting them.

"They might have guns, but we have flowers," the father says, referring to the impromptu memorials people had been laying out to honor the victims. "France is our home."

After some back-and-forth, the boy ultimately seems comforted by his father's words-and millions of viewers have been moved by the man's tenderness, patience, and care.

The video reminds us that while we can't always protect children from witnessing violence and tragedy in the world, we can comfort and communicate with them in the most healing way possible.

But many of us don't always know the best way to do that-we may lack the confidence and presence of mind demonstrated by that father, later identified as Angel Le.

Fortunately, parenting and education experts have produced a wealth of resources for having difficult conversations with kids about tragedies like the Paris attacks. Below are nine tips distilled from these many resources; more detail and links to others are provided at the bottom of this list.

1. Initiate the conversation

Just because children aren't talking about a tragedy doesn't mean they're not thinking about it, experts say. They may sense your discomfort and not want to upset you by bringing it up, or they may be too overwhelmed by their own feelings to express them.

"Without factual information, children (and adults) 'speculate' and fill in the empty spaces to make a complete story or explanation," explains psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry in a guide for the nonprofit ChildTrauma Academy on " Helping Traumatized Children." "In most cases, the child's fears and fantasies are much more frightening and disturbing than the truth." As soon as the child asks questions or seems to be thinking about the event, it's time to have a conversation, Perry advises.

Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR), in a guide called " Talking with Children about War and Violence in the World," suggests that children as young as four or five can benefit from talking about the event. To open up the conversation, you might start with questions like these:

"How do you feel about what's happening in the world?"

"What are you or your friends thinking and talking about in terms of the world situation?"

"Are you and your friends talking about what happened in Paris? I'd be really interested in hearing about what you think. Let me know if you want to talk."

2. Reassure them

Tragedy can rattle our sense of safety, and our children's. One goal of this conversation is to provide them with the reassurance that:

Things will get better.

You will be there for them.

They can ask you questions anytime.

They are safe, and so are the people they care about.

To make your reassurances more believable, you can point out some of the safety measures that are being taken, like explaining what security guards do. "Children need to hear very clearly that their parents are doing all they can to take care of them and to keep them safe. They also need to hear that people in the government and other grownups they don't even know are working hard to keep them safe, too," reads a quote from Fred "Mister" Rogers on his website, which contains a section dedicated to helping children after tragic events.

3. Listen

Although we always want to be good listeners for our children, it's especially crucial in the wake of traumatic events. That means giving them our full attention, and not jumping to judge or minimize what they're saying-no matter how silly or illogical it may seem. For example, if a child is afraid that every plane overhead carries a bomb, it might be better to say, "I understand why you're scared, but actually..." instead of stuttering out a horrified "No, of course not!"

"By your ability to listen calmly, even to concerns which might seem unrealistic, you communicate that their fears are not too frightening to deal with," the ESR guide explains.

If children's fears sound vague or jumbled, parents can help by gently summarizing what they're hearing: "It sounds like what you're feeling is..." A few clarifying questions can also help:

"That's interesting, can you tell me more about that?"

"What do you mean by...?"

"How long have you been feeling...?"

4. Find out what they know

By listening, parents can discover the snippets and rumors that their children have already absorbed about a tragedy. If it's unclear, a simple "What have you heard about this?" should do the trick.

A key purpose of this conversation is to correct any misconceptions children may have picked up while at the same time offering more concrete information. You can tailor the level of detail depending on their age and how many unanswered questions are weighing on their minds.

Some of those questions may be tricky to answer-and in that case, ESR suggests responses like these:

"I don't know the answer to that and I'm not sure anyone does. I do know, however, that many thoughtful people throughout the world are working hard to understand this issue."

"That's an interesting question, and I don't know the answer. How can we find that out together?"

"The process of figuring out where to get the information, and going through the steps to obtain it, can be a powerfully reassuring experience for children, especially when a trusted adult participates with them," the guide explains. "In a small but significant way, this experience can demonstrate for young people that there are orderly ways to go about solving problems and that the world is not beyond our understanding."

5. Encourage children to share their feelings

Sadness, anxiety, fear, stress, even excitement-all feelings are possible in response to tragedy and violence. Whatever children are feeling, Mister Rogers encouraged parents to show understanding and acceptance:

"If we don't let children know it's okay to feel sad and scared, they may think something is wrong with them when they do feel that way," he said. "If we can help them accept their own feelings as natural and normal, their feelings will be much more manageable for them."

We might even encourage children to express their feelings in a non-verbal way, through drawing, writing, singing, or play.

6. Share your feelings

Experts seem to agree that sharing your feelings with your child can be beneficial, with some caveats.

First, you want to communicate that you can handle whatever it is you're feeling. "[Children] get a chance to see that even though upset, you can pull yourself together and continue on. Parents hear it often: Be a role model. This applies to emotions, too," explain the experts at the American Psychological Association in their guide on how to talk to children about difficult news and tragedies. (If your anger or worries threaten to overwhelm you or distract you from your child, you might not be ready to have this conversation yet.)

Another risk is that your feelings might add to or replace the ones children are already experiencing.

"A serious pitfall is that we might burden them with our adult concerns, raising new questions and fears for them, rather than helping them deal with questions and fears they already have," explains the ESR guide. "We might simply find ourselves talking over their heads, answering questions that weren't asked, providing information that isn't useful, satisfying our need to 'give' children something rather than satisfying their need to be heard and understood."

As a result, ESR suggests limited expressions of emotion, such as, "You seem sad when we talk about this. I feel sad, too." This approach avoids the pitfalls mentioned above while demonstrating acceptance, showing empathy, and not denying what you're feeling.

7. Focus on the good

Where there is tragedy, there is also heroism-acts by police officers, doctors, or ordinary citizens that restore our faith in humanity right when it is shaken. The forces of good spring into action with their love, support, and generosity. In Paris, for example, many restaurant and shop owners opened their doors and sheltered pedestrians as the attacks were going on and through the night.

A quote from Mister Rogers is often cited after tragedies to make this point beautifully:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers-so many caring people in this world.

Entire systems exist for this very purpose, such as the Red Cross or the study of earthquake-proof architecture. The University of Michigan Health System encourages parents to use tragedy as an opportunity to educate kids on all the ways people are working to keep us safe. The message is: There are good people all around you.

8. Encourage children to act

When we feel the pain of others, compassion motivates us to help and to transform that pain into a feeling of connection and support. Encouraging kids to do something about what they're feeling can give them an outlet and restore their sense of control.

Some suggestions might include:

Writing letters to victims and their families.

Sending thank you notes to doctors, paramedics, firefighters, or police.

Setting up a community study group to learn more about the issue.

Organizing a town meeting to create an action plan.

Writing a letter to the editor.

Raising money for charity.

"You can help children find a way to step out of their position of powerlessness. You can tell them honestly that their concerns are quite healthy because people's concern is the first step toward doing something to make the world safer," explains the ESR guide.

9. Know when to seek outside help

What does a "normal" reaction to tragedy look like?

There may be no normal, but experts seem to agree that if more than three months have passed and your child is still suffering-from anxiety, distraction, fear, hopelessness, sleep problems, nightmares, sadness, angry outbursts, or headaches-it might be time to consult a mental health professional. Every child is different, and how she reacts will depend on factors such as how close to home the tragedy was, whether she was traumatized in the past, and her general level of mental health.

The good news is that kids are very resilient, and they can even inspire us with their feats of strength and optimism-as that young boy in Paris did.

Want more? 15 resources for talking to your kids about trauma

The following resources, which informed this article, can help parents and educators who are guiding kids through trauma recovery:

1. Educators for Social Responsibility has created an excellent guide, "Talking with Children about War and Violence in the World," that addresses 32 questions about how to broach the subject with students and respond to their concerns.

2. The ChildTrauma Academy's "Helping Traumatized Children: A Brief Overview for Caregivers," written by noted psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry, provides answers to frequently asked questions about children and trauma and even features trauma-related drawings by children.

3. In his career as a child educator, Fred "Mister" Rogers consistently devoted special attention to helping kids cope with scary and even traumatic events. His company has compiled some of his most enduring tips and insights.

4. The American Psychological Association provides tips to help children "manage distress in the aftermath of a shooting."

5. The University of Michigan Health System's "Helping Your Children Cope with Disasters and Traumatic Events" includes helpful ways to find the positives and take action.

6. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) and its tips for "Talking to Children about the Shooting" can shed light on how children make sense of traumatic events, and how to respond to their questions and fears.

7. The NCTSN also has a Child Trauma Toolkit for Educators that explains how school administrators, teachers, and other staff can work with traumatized children in the school system.

8. The Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine offers many resources for dealing with traumatic events in schools, including resources for parents and caregivers.

9. The National Association for School Psychologists has a handout to help children cope with tragedy called "Helping Children Cope with Terrorism-Tips for Families and Educators," including tips for parents, teachers, and schools.

10. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration offers "Tips for Talking with and Helping Children and Youth Cope After a Disaster or Traumatic Event," including how children of different ages tend to react and how to best respond to them.

11. The National Institute of Mental Health's "Helping Children and Adolescents Cope with Violence and Disasters: What Parents Can Do" includes do's and don'ts for talking to children about trauma, as well as tips for interacting with people directly affected by the tragedy.

12. The State of Connecticut's Department of Children and Families offers step-by-step tips on "Talking with Children and Adolescents After a Traumatic Event," including appropriate responses for children of different ages.

13. The State of Victoria, Australia's "Trauma and Children-Tips For Parents" explains how children might react to trauma, what their needs are, and how to support them.

14. Kids Matter, a mental health initiative for young children in Australia, offers a guide called "Managing Tough Times: Suggestions for Families and Staff" with helpful activities for children (and for yourself) after trauma.

15. The American Red Cross explains how to create a healing family environment and when to seek professional help in "Helping Young Children Cope with Trauma."

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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Nine Tips for Talking to Kids about Trauma

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In a video that has gone viral after the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, a father comforts his son, who is worried about "bad guys" shooting them. "They might have guns, but we have flowers," the father says, referring to the impromptu memorials people had been laying out to honor the victims. "France is our home."

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The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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Many refugees, especially children, have experienced trauma related to war or persecution that may affect their mental and physical health long after the events have occurred.

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The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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The US history of colonialism, genocide, slavery, and white supremacy continues to impact BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) children and families through covert and overt forms of racism resulting in the death of Black and Brown lives. These forms of racism manifest in widespread structural and systemic racism, high prevalence of and tolerance for interpersonal racist acts, and intergenerational harm. There are many ways in which children and families are impacted, including:

being born into cycles of intergenerational trauma passing toxicity down in bodies, brains, and spirits

systemic exclusion, targeting, and violence

centuries of history and culture made invisibilized, dismissed, and controlled by white supremacy culture

environmental racism

racist land use and ownership policies and decisions

dehumanization and lack of belonging leading to feelings of isolation, depression, anxiety, and suicidality

being subjected to narratives of "other", "less", or "inferior"

individual, interpersonal, and systemic instances of hate, violence, and marginalization

Throughout our history and in our present in the US, racism and forced assimilation continue to undermine the very identities and value of BIPOC children and families - intentionally stripping away wellness, wholeness, and connection to ancestral practices and traditional ways of healing - and therefore serving as both a cause of trauma and an inhibitor of healing.

For most of its history, the field of child traumatic stress has focused on and given legitimacy to the kinds of trauma that result from individual direct exposures, while ignoring those traumas that are caused by secondary, communal, and/or vicarious exposures. Despite advancements in scientific and clinical knowledge, the field has failed to address exposure to racism as a pervasive child trauma exposure. Further, the field has failed to recognize and address how its own history, culture, and institutions cause race-based trauma and to mount a sustained effort to upend racism and its impact on children and families.

In spite of the lack of recognition and prioritization within the field as a whole, many scholars have worked to define and name the impact of racism on levels of traumatic stress for BIPOC children and families. These include, but are not limited to: Racial Trauma (Kenneth Hardy, PhD, Monica Williams, PhD), Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (Joy DeGruy, PhD), Racial Battle Fatigue (William A. Smith, PhD), Racialized Trauma (Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW), Race-Based Traumatic Stress (Robert T. Carter, PhD), and Historical Trauma (Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, PhD). In addition, there are many others who are unnamed here but who have dedicated their lives to truth-telling and building a greater understanding of these harms and pathways toward healing.

In spite of these many harms, both historical and ongoing, BIPOC individuals and communities have continued to thrive, find joy, create ways to heal, and build toward liberation. In order to address race-based trauma, child and family serving professionals and systems must be willing to name its pervasiveness and impact, and they must commit to amplifying, supporting, and following the lead of BIPOC experts and communities who have actively been doing the work of dismantling white supremacy culture and reclaiming their own healing.

This page is currently in progress and will continue to grow, evolve, and have more information and resources added. If you have questions or feedback, you can email info@nctsn.org.

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The US history of colonialism, genocide, slavery, and white supremacy continues to impact BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) children and families through covert and overt forms of racism...

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Building Racial Equity Through Trauma-Responsive Discipline - ASCD

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This current moment of civil unrest in the fight against systemic racism and police brutality underscores the need for schools to be responsive to students coping with trauma. It is a matter of equity and justice. As the historical ties between race, economic marginalization, and exposure to trauma

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Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented Schools Toolkit - National Center for School Safety

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A toolkit outlining a framework for implementing Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented (TR) approaches in schools and school districts.

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The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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Provides school administrators, teachers, staff, and concerned parents with basic information about working with traumatized children in the school system.

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36 Questions That Can Help Kids Make Friends

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A question-and-answer exercise may help middle schoolers build friendships, including with kids of different ethnicities.

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Cultivate a Positive Classroom Climate for Younger Students

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A collection of practices that can help to foster a safe and connected classroom for younger children

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According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional, Learning ( CASEL), social-emotional learning (SEL) is "the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions."

Social awareness and relationship skills are two of the five components that make up CASEL's model of SEL.

Social awareness involves the ability to understand and empathize with others, particularly with people from different backgrounds than one's own.

A history teacher cultivates students' empathy by encouraging them to "put themselves in the shoes" of people on opposing sides of history to help them understand both how they came to their views in the first place and why certain decisions were made.

Skills that develop social awareness include:

Identifying social cues (verbal, physical) to determine how others feel

Taking others' perspectives

Demonstrating empathy and compassion

Showing concern for the feelings of others

Understanding and expressing gratitude

Recognizing strengths in others

Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones

Recognizing situational demands and opportunities

Caring about and being motivated to contribute to the well-being of one's family, friends, school, community, the environment, and the greater good

"Relationship skills" is the ability to build positive relationships, especially with diverse individuals and groups, using a variety of methods such as active listening, and communication and conflict resolution skills. These skills also include the ability to resist pressure and to seek out and offer help.

To encourage teamwork in lab groups at the beginning of the year, a chemistry teacher has students practice positive communication skills such as listening, conflict resolution, and cooperation.

Relationship skills include:

Initiating contact with others and cultivating friendship

Sharing one's thoughts and feelings (appropriately)

Communicating effectively

Developing positive relationships

Demonstrating cultural humility

Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving

Resolving conflicts constructively

Approaching relationships with positive presuppositions

Resisting negative social pressure

Resisting stereotypes

Standing up for the rights of others

Showing leadership in groups

Seeking or offering support and help when needed

Ultimately, social awareness and relationship skills are closely linked. For example, when students attempt to resolve a conflict between themselves (relationship skills), the process is made easier when both are able to empathize with each other (social awareness).

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SEL for Students: Social Awareness and Relationship Skills | Greater Good In Education

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According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional, Learning ( CASEL), social-emotional learning (SEL) is "the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions."

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Perspective Taking Activities for Kids | Examples and Lessons

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What is Perspective Taking? A child's inability to understand a situation from another person's point of view is called "perspective taking". Perspective taking allows us to feel what it would be like to be in the other person's shoes during a situation.

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Check-In / Check-Out: Providing a Daily Support System for Students

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Why Do This?

If students practice and build executive function skills, they can organize their thinking and behavior to meet goals in order to engage deeply in learning with each other.

When You Might Use This Practice

Integrated into daily schedules as a routine or used as-needed throughout the day

During a designated SEL block of 10-15 minutes per day for Kernels practice or as time allows

During a morning meeting, a middle school advisory period, class transitions, after recess, or at the end of the day

Time Required

Materials

Learning Objective

Students will:

Practice and build executive function skills

Additional Supports

SEL Competencies

Self-Awareness

Self Management

Social Awareness

Relationship Skills

Responsible Decision-Making

Reflection Before the Practice

How well do you focus, remember all the things you have to do, or practice self-control when faced with a challenging or tempting situation? What strategies and practices help you to use these skills (e.g, mindfulness, making a to-do list, taking deep breaths)?

Note: Click here to download and print a card version of this practice that can be added to the other Brain Games practices to make an easy-to-hand-held collection. See the SEL Kernels pack for additional activities.
Overview of Brain Games

Big Idea

Playing Brain Games helps us to build our "brain powers," or executive function (EF) skills.

Executive function (EF) skills are the mental processes required to focus, plan, and control behavioral responses in order to reach a goal.

They're important because... They help students to listen carefully, follow directions, use self-control, and think flexibly. These basic skills are foundational for academic achievement, interpersonal skills, perseverance, and critical thinking.

Three Brain Powers

Focus: The ability to sustain attention and ignore distractions when needed.

Remember: The ability to keep track of, update, and use information over short periods of time.

Stop and Think: The ability to control impulses and to "think before you act."

Where Can I Find the Brain Games?

Below is a list of Brain Games by Power:

Tips for Success

Before playing, take time to introduce the three powers and discuss why they're important. Practice the hand signals together, and brainstorm when they can be used at school/home.

Model with a small group first. Try out the game with a group of 2-3 students while the rest watch.

During and after the game, talk about feelings that arise. Help students recognize feelings are a normal part of school and life.

Celebrate Brain Powers all day. Talk about them and how they're used throughout the day, and notice and celebrate when students use them!

After the Activity, Debrief (more specific questions on each game practice)

What was hard or easy about this game?

What skills did you use to play this game?

Did you use any strategies to play this game?

When are other times during the day that we need to use these skills and strategies? At home? At school? On the playground?

Over the Year...

Ask deeper and more meaningful follow-up questions in your debrief. Ask students to share why it might be hard or easy to focus, remember, or stop and think in the context of real life situations.

Have students volunteer to lead the games.

Ask students to create their own adaptations and share them with the class.

Break students into teams to play games and develop cooperation skills where possible.

Adapt the hand signals to fit the interests and age groups of your students (e.g., turn fist next to temple as if switching on a part of the brain = Focus Power for older students).

Source

This practice is part of the SEL Kernels project developed by the EASEL Lab at Harvard University.

Reflection After the Practice

Do you observe changes in your students' ability to focus, remember directions, control their impulses, or to think before they act? Which games are more challenging for students? Which games are easiest for them? Why?

Evidence That It Works

Children who are able to effectively manage their thinking, attention, and behavior are also more likely to have better grades and higher standardized test scores.

Why Does It Matter?

Children use cognitive regulation skills whenever faced with tasks that require concentration, planning, problem solving, coordination, conscious choices among alternatives, or overriding a strong internal or external desire-all key skills for behavioral and academic success.

These skills enable children to prioritize and sequence behavior (e.g., put their pants on before their shoes), inhibit dominant or familiar responses in favor of a more appropriate one (e.g., raise their hand rather than blurt out the answer), maintain task-relevant information in mind (e.g., remember the teacher's request to wash hands and then put coats on before going outside), resist distractions, switch between task goals, use information to make decisions, and create abstract rules and handle novel situations.

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Brain Games: A Set of SEL Kernels Practices

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Students practice and build executive function skills in whole-class games.

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"You need to calm down." This is something I hear a lot in my work as a behavior specialist when a student starts to get agitated-answering rudely, refusing to work, making insulting comments, or whining. A teacher might tell a child to "go sit in the beanbag chair and calm down" or simply "relax."

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Borrowed (temporarily and without permission) from Geoffrey Roberts.

Hi there! This page is provided as a free resource for anybody who might find it useful. I make exactly $0.00 off of it, though I do incur small hosting and domain renewal costs. If you feel so inclined to contribute to those costs, you can Venmo me by scanning the QR code below.

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Borrowed (temporarily and without permission) from Geoffrey Roberts. Hi there! This page is provided as a free resource for anybody who might find it useful. I make exactly $0.00 off of it, though I do incur small hosting and domain renewal costs.

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One of my favorite ways to talk about regulation with my son and to give him insight into new self-regulation skills is to read books.

Books are such a powerful tool for parents - they are a way to connect, a way to calm down, and a way to teach life lessons. I've listed some of our favorites below.

The first list includes books that directly teach children about self-control strategies and are great to help children reflect on their own ability to self-regulate in various situations.

The second list below includes books that teach children to breathe through emotions, to be able to pause before acting, to be mindful of their bodies and more. Through the methods of mindfulness, children can learn self-awareness and self-calming strategies that will become life-long skills for handling stress and emotions.

And finally, the last list below includes fun picture books that show characters in laughable and relatable situations. Kids will want to read these books over and over, and maybe they will learn a few self-regulation skills along the way.

* This post may contain affiliate or referral links for your convenience. Clicking on these links directs you to a website to purchase the product. Nurture and Thrive receives a small fee for this service. Thank you for your support!

Best Books That Teach Regulation Strategies To Kids

1.What Were You Thinking? A Story about Learning to Control Impulses - This book follows a day in the life of Braden, a 3rd grader who is learning how to control his impulses. Braden wants to be funny and blurts out things he shouldn't, reacts to things he believes to be unfair without thinking, and eats a bunch of cupcakes without thinking about who or what they might be for. Luckily, Braden has some pretty understanding adults in his life who give him some tips on how to start controlling his impulses: Stop, Think and decide if your actions will make the situation Better or Worse.

This book opens a lot of opportunities to talk about -self-regulation in the school setting. Things like when you can be funny when you should be serious, how to react to situations when you are angry, and thinking through issues.

My son especially likes the Better or Worse? question, this is something he says to himself often and I believe helps him think through the consequences of his actions before he acts. If you like this book, there are a few others by the same author which address the executive function skill of flexible thinking: Of Course, It's a Big Deal and My Day is Ruined!

We copied and laminated this page from, What were you thinking? Perfect for putting in your child's backpack as a reminder to think before you leap.

2. What Should Danny Do? - This book also goes through several choices a boy named Danny makes over the course of his week. He loves soccer, superheroes, and ninjas and he has his very own superpower -The power to choose!

The reader gets the power to choose in this book too. The story follows along in a "choose your own adventure" style. Your child gets to help Danny make decisions and sometimes those decisions lead to good outcomes and sometimes not.

The first time we read it, my son made the "right" decisions. It was pretty obvious which the better choices would be. Then he wanted to go back and pick some of the poor choices. This shows kids how actions and choices have consequences.

Many of the consequences are natural and encourage empathetic thinking, but some of them don't fit perfectly with a positive/gentle parenting style. That was okay for us, my son seemed to understand that those were Danny's consequences and his consequences wouldn't necessarily be the same. Overall, he got the idea that your choices lead to certain outcomes.

Where the book really shines is when Danny makes good choices and is proud of his day and also when Danny doesn't make good choices, the passages where his parents reinforce the power to choose. For example, Danny's Dad says: " I heard your day wasn't so good, Danny...Every superhero makes mistakes, and that's okay. But the best superheroes learn from their mistakes and use their Power to Choose Wisely."

I recommend this book - the concept of choosing your adventure is great and the overall tone of the message is positive. Just be aware that if you follow positive/gentle parenting, some of the consequences (going to your room, no chocolate for a week) are "punishment" consequences.

There is a new book in this series that follows Danny throughout a day a school: What Should Danny Do? School Day

3. How to Be a Super-Hero Called Self-Control - Following along on the super-hero theme, this book features a hero called self-control who teaches children (aged 4-7 years) how to handle difficult feelings like anxiety, frustration, and anger. The back of the book has resources for parents. There is a book by the same author older children (aged 7- 14 years) too, The Kids' Guide to Staying Awesome and In Control: Simple Stuff to Help Children Regulate their Emotions and Senses

4. What To Do When You Are Mad: A Workbook for Kids- If your child struggles to regulate big emotions like anger or has a big temper, this workbook is for them. This workbook helps kids mindfully identify signs of anger in their body, how to vent their anger in healthy ways, and how to use their angry energy to solve problems. Based on self0regulation theory, this is a great book to learn how to work through big mad emotions.
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Best Books About Mindfulness for Kids

Mindfulness is the ultimate self-regulation tool. If we can help our children become aware of how their bodies react when stressed and how to calm that stress and the chatter of the mind we are giving them a skill that will use for life. In fact, developmental psychologists have found that mindfulness training has been shown to increase attentional self-regulation in children.

These books capture the essence of paying attention to the inside and living in the moment. We often focus on teaching our children to pay attention to what's going on around them, but really first they must be able to tune in to themselves. This is the first step in mindfulness.

5. My Magic Breath - What a gorgeous book this is! I love this book which teaches children to breathe out their thoughts and feelings right onto the pages of the book. This book introduces the concept as breathing as a way to recenter oneself when thoughts and feelings race through your mind. "Do you have a magic breath? When you are worried, or nervous, or sad, take a deep breath. Now let it go. Did that help you feel better? See? It's magic!" Learning to mindfully take a breath when our thoughts and emotions are out of control is a core self-regulation strategy. Once you have read this book with your kids a few times, the next time they are upset, say - "Let's find your magic breath!"

Beautiful illustrations in My Magic Breath

6. A World of Pausabilities: An Exercise in Mindfulness - Written by Psychologist Frank J. Sileo, Ph.D., this book is a wonderful introduction to mindfulness for children. Children do tend to live in the moment - but like the rest of us, they spend much of there time racing from one activity to the next, never pausing to enjoy something. This book will help your child and your family find some quiet moments in the day - and with it some calm. Learning to pause is an essential component of self-regulation - and it is important to teach our children this skill at times when they are not upset, which is exactly what this book encourages children to do, to learn to pause just like they would learn to play an instrument or ride a bicycle.

7. The Lemonade Hurricane - A Story of Mindfulness and Meditation -This book takes mindfulness one step further, it shows how it can be a calming influence. From the synopsis: "Henry is a lot of fun when he's not storming through the house, so Emma decides to teach him how to be still. By showing him how to sit, bow, and breathe, Emma is able to calm the hurricane within Henry." This book is a good one to help teach kids a balance between go, go, go and stopping and resting themselves and their minds.

Henry learning to be still, from Lemonade Hurricane

8. Mindful Bea and the Worry Tree - This is a brand new book that hasn't been released yet at the time I am writing this post. I am excited about this book because mindfulness is a great tool for children with anxiety. In this book, Bea gets herself all worked up before the start of a birthday party, but after stepping outside in her backyard and breathing mindfully and doing visulations, she able to calm down and join the party. I love that Bea has a worry tree, research shows that being in nature helps calm the mind. This book will be a good tool for parents of children with worries.

9. I am Peace: A Book of Mindfulness - This is a sweet book that teaches children the steps of mindfulness and the beauty of living in the here and the now in a gentle story-book fashion. In the back, there is also a guided meditation for kids that is a nice before bed activity, especially for children with stress or worries. It is a good one to have on the bookshelf that you can pull out when your child has had a trying or stressful day,"There are times when I worry about what might happen next and what happened before. The thoughts in my head are like rushing water and I feel like a boat with no anchor being carried away...I give myself a moment and take a breath. And then I tell myself: It's alright."

- This is also a wonderful book to read when you and your child need calmness and relaxation, 10. Breathe and Be: A Book of Mindfulness Poems"What am I thinking? What comes and goes in my mind? I watch my thoughts. They swim by like little fish. They shine blue, green, red, yellow... there is a quiet place inside my head like an egg hidden in a nest. A place I go when the world is loud." This book teaches the steps of mindfulness, breathing, being aware of thoughts and letting them go by, refocusing on the breath, and finding your own quiet place. This is true for emotions as well.

11. A Quiet Place - This book is a relaxing one to read at the end of a hectic day. It is about finding your own quiet place - by the shore, by the pond, on a mountain, in the snow - or maybe the one just inside of you. This is a great book for showing your child that everyone has a quiet place inside themselves. Teaching your child that they can go to that quiet place is a giving them the gift of peacefulness.

12. My Incredible Talking Body- This book teaches children the first step in being mindful - awareness of the body and how emotions feel physically. "It tells me I am sleepy when my eyes are droopy and I just can't stop yawning." The book goes through the feelings of hungry, thirsty, sleepy, angry, sad, scared and calm. "When I am calm, my muscles feel relaxed like my arms and legs have turned into spaghetti noodles. My breathing is slow and deep like when I blow up a balloon." The book also discussed how to return to calm after feeling anger or sadness and give strategies for calming down. Learning to listen to the body is a good first step in mindful awareness and emotion regulation.

- I love books that give kids a concrete example of how to deal with abstract thoughts and feelings. This book teaches children how to focus on their breath while letting thoughts, feelings, and worries pop away like bubbles. 13. Mind Bubbles: Exploring Mindfulness With Kids"Mind bubbles may float around for , but the interesting thing is that they always pop. Thoughts and feelings change and new ones come along." This is a great book to introduce mindfulness meditation to children.

14. Mindfulness for Vikings: Inspirational Quotes and Pictures Encouraging a Happy Stress-Free Life for Adults and Kids- This one is a little different, but I love it. These are more things and inspirational sayings to think about during mindful moments. It encourages living in the moment - being mindful and appreciating the little things. Being able to be quiet enough to appreciate those things. "Even the little moments are big moments."

15. The Mindfulness for Kids Mandala Drawing Book - Research shows that coloring mandalas induces a meditative state and decreases anxiety in college-aged students. This coloring book for kids introduces mandalas and the concept of mindfulness while coloring or drawing. Then the book goes through different types of patterns and provides grids so children can draw their own mandalas. Using art as a self-regulation tool is a great life-skill. I would recommend this book for kids 8 through 12.

Best Picture Books About Self-Control for Kids (or lack of self-control!)

These last books are all stories - pictures books with stories that illustrate how regulation happens (or doesn't happen) in many kinds of situations. Your child will be able to identify with the characters as they overcome frustration, problem-solve, resist impulses, and wait for something worth waiting for.

16. Nanette's Baguette - This Mo Willem's rhyming book follows Nanette on her first time being responsible to "get the baguette." But will she be able to resist the baguette? It is warm, it smells wonderful!!! You will love the twist ending of this book that shows that sometimes it's okay to give in to our impulses and enjoy. Learning to regulate is not just about suppressing, but also about being able to enhance emotions, savor life - to know when to be able to let go a little.

I love this book about learning how to control impulses, but also when to let loose and enjoy the moment as well, Nanette's Baguette.

17. Waiting is Not Easy - Another great Mo Willems books, this time with Piggy and Gerald. Waiting is easy and your kids will be able to relate to Gerald's discomfort while waiting. But, they will also learn that some things are worth waiting for...

18. The Most Magnificent Thing- Oh to know what you want to do, to be able to picture it exactly how you want it in your head and not be able to build it. This is a feeling our kids are all too familiar with as they are gaining coordination and skills. The main character in this book gets frustrated when her invention doesn't come out- she fumes!! But then, she goes for a walk. She begins to feel different, she calms down. Then she is able to think more clearly again. Will she be able to go back and look at her work with fresh eyes?

What a life-skill! To be able to take a break and go back and try again. This book teaches kids that things don't always happen on the first try, that you can get emotional, but you can regulate that, take a break and persevere.

19. Argle Fox- This is a great book about overcoming the big feelings of frustration and trying again and again. The story is captivating to young children, written with a sense of anticipation. The story highlights big emotions, critical thinking, creativity, and perseverance. Kids will be able to relate very well to Argyle fox's frustration and rejoice when he comes up with a solution at last.

20. Remy the Rhino Learns Patience- Remy is a grumpy Rhino and is irritated by all of the other animals. He angrily tries to get his own way and one day makes a mistake. Will anyone come to his aid? Children will see that anger makes Remy's predicament worse and if he can relax, he might discover a way to solve his problem and make a friend!

- The librarian read this to my son's class on a recent field trip and the kids loved it! This is a highly relatable story about a caterpillar who cannot wait to become a butterfly. Literally, CAN NOT WAIT. Perfect to read before any situation in which your child will have to learn that good things come to those who wait.

I am a developmental psychologist with a passion for understanding how young children learn to deal with stress and emotions. Once I became a mom, I was overjoyed and found myself facing my hardest job yet. Join me on my quest to understand children's emotions, behavior, and how best to support their development! Let's nurture them and watch them thrive!

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The Best Books To Teach Kids Self-Control, Mindfulness, and Regulation

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One of my favorite ways to talk about regulation with my son and to give him insight into new self-regulation skills is to read books. Books are such a powerful tool for parents - they are a way to connect, a way to calm down, and a way to teach life lessons.

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Naming Emotions Onward Workbook Activity.pdf

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According to emotion researcher James Gross, when we regulate our emotions, we are using processes that impact "which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express them." These processes are used with both pleasant and unpleasant emotions, and can be done either consciously (biting one's nails when nervous) or unconsciously (expressing happiness when receiving a so-so gift).

While there are countless way we regulate our emotions, one of the most common methods is suppression, or shoving them deep down inside in order to limit their expression.

In the West, people often suppress their emotions because they don't want to accept or experience them, which has been found to negatively affect a person's physical and mental health, in addition to lessening their social support.

In contrast, East Asians are more likely to value emotion suppression because adjusting one's emotional response to maintain group harmony is of utmost importance. As a result, research suggests that emotion suppression does not have the same harmful effects on people as in the West, however a handful of studies have found otherwise.

A teacher with a diverse group of students notices that not all of her students are enjoying a game from a social-emotional learning curriculum that asks students to outwardly express an emotion. Some look very uncomfortable and a couple are unable to express the emotion at all.

Later, the teacher reads about a study that found Asian-Americans' blood pressure increases when asked to express emotions. She also learns that some cultures discourage outward emotional expression. Both of these findings encourage the teacher to have open discussions with students and their families about expressing and navigating emotions, but she is careful to not stereotype her students based on the research.

Another common method for regulating emotions is reappraisal, or changing how we think about a situation in order to change how we feel. Studies have found that reappraisal is associated with greater life satisfaction and well-being, and less depression.

A new 6th grader who was anxious about starting middle school remembered learning from her 5th grade teacher that when she was feeling scared, she could change how she felt by thinking differently about the situation. So, instead of dreading her new school, this student decided to look at it as an adventure-one that might bring her new friends, wonderful teachers, and exciting opportunities.

Other examples of emotion regulation strategies include:

Checking your beliefs about emotions.

Do you believe emotions are good or bad? Do you believe emotions are controllable or uncontrollable? Research suggests that if we believe emotions are good and controllable, then we are more likely to choose to engage in an emotion navigation strategy that also helps us to feel good.

Writing about your emotions.

Research has shown that writing about our emotional experiences can increase our happiness, reduce anxiety and depression, and improve work and school performance. Writing about our experiences makes us active creators of our own life stories and, as a result, we feel more empowered to cope with challenges.

Using self-distancing or the practice of observing yourself, including your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, as if you were an outside observer.

In other words, imagine you are a "fly on the wall," watching your experience, or talk about your experience in the third person. Studies have found that using self-distancing to understand one's emotions during a difficult situation can decrease the intensity of the emotional experience, make us less likely to ruminate, and more likely to engage in constructive problem-solving.

Practicing mindfulness.

Research has found that mindfulness helps us differentiate our emotions, giving us more information about how we feel about a situation. This, in turn, makes it easier for us to know what strategy to use to navigate our emotions in a healthy way.

Labeling emotions.

One study found that labeling our emotions can actually decrease the amygdala response-or the part of the brain associated with emotional responses. In other words, "name it to tame it."

A student whose teacher has been teaching the class how to recognize and label their emotions writes in her journal that she feels sad and embarrassed that she received a low grade on a recent test. Feeling better, she talks to her teacher about the questions she got wrong on the test.

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SEL for Students: Emotion Regulation | Greater Good In Education

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According to emotion researcher James Gross, when we regulate our emotions, we are using processes that impact "which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express them." These processes are used with both pleasant and unpleasant emotions, and can be done either consciously (biting one's nails when nervous) or unconsciously (expressing happiness when receiving a so-so gift).

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Emotions provide information about ourselves and they shape our relationships with others, in groups, and in society, and can be determined by cultural beliefs and norms.

Here are a few examples:

Emotions and Ourselves

Emotions tell us whether we want to approach or avoid a situation.

Should a high school student approach a friend who is happy about passing a difficult test?

Should a preschooler avoid eating an apple that looks rotten?

Emotions let us know whether an event is relevant to our lives.

A high school student just learned that his best friend got accepted to a college near the one he was planning to attend.

Emotions help us decide what action to take-but they don't require us to carry out the action.

A student failed an important test in physics that he studied hard for. He thinks about dropping the class, but instead chooses to take advantage of the professor's office hours.

A student's seatmate scribbled all over his drawing. He's angry and wants to tell the teacher, but instead tries out his newly-learned conflict resolution skills on his seatmate.

Emotions and Others

Emotions help us understand others' emotions, beliefs, and intentions.

During a class discussion on a thorny political issue, students express a range of emotions, including anger, curiosity, indifference, joy, or confusion, revealing some of their possible beliefs about the issue.

On the playground, a teacher sees a group of students gathered around two students, one of whom is saying mean things to the other. Before interfering, he notices that one student in the group looks angry, making him wonder if she will stand up to the student who is being unkind.

Emotions can motivate or prevent others' behavior.

A teacher gives a stern look to two students who are talking during class, making them stop their conversation.

With the basketball team losing at half-time, the basketball coach gives the players an inspiring pep-talk to motivate them to win.

Emotions and Groups

Emotions help define group boundaries.

In history class, students learn how the Nazis used fear and hatred to ostracize and persecute Jewish people.

Emotions motivate us to avoid certain behaviors.

In order to avoid the pain of social ostracism, a middle school student squashes her goofy sense of humor and instead acts with aloofness-just like the "popular" kids.

Emotions and Society

Emotions help children learn the norms and values of their culture.

A student is praised by her teacher for showing assertiveness when working with her student group. The pride felt by the student helps to inculcate this Western societal value into the student's worldview.

Emotions help shape cultural identity.

Students examine formal portraits of country leaders and discuss what the facial expression of each leader might say about their country's cultural norms. For example, the wide smile of President Obama vs. the slight smile of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Emotions can perpetuate cultural ideologies and power structures.

Students discuss the effects of societal gender stereotypes and beliefs around emotions. For example, women are too emotional, but not allowed to show anger, or the only emotion men are allowed to show is anger.

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SEL for Students: The Basics of Emotions | Greater Good In Education

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Emotions provide information about ourselves and they shape our relationships with others, in groups, and in society, and can be determined by cultural beliefs and norms. Here are a few examples: Emotions tell us whether we want to approach or avoid a situation.

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According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional, Learning ( CASEL), social-emotional learning (SEL) is "the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions."

Self-awareness and self-management are two of the five components that make up CASEL's model of SEL.

Self-Awareness is simply the ability to be aware of one's inner life -one's emotions, thoughts, behaviors, values, preferences, goals, strengths, challenges, attitudes, mindsets, and so forth- and how these elements impact behavior and choices across contexts.

A student who is self-aware may notice her fearful emotional response as she is about to take a test. She may feel her heart beat faster and her stomach clench, making her thoughts race as she worries about failing the test. To get out of the test, she considers telling her teacher that she feels sick, but in the end, she recognizes that this behavior is a result of her emotions and thoughts running amok, and she accepts that these reactions can occur when she experiences anxiety.

Skills that develop self-awareness include:

Identifying and analyzing one's emotions, and how they affect others

Understanding the relationship between one's emotions, thoughts, values, and behaviors

Integrating personal and social identities

Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets

Demonstrating honesty and integrity

Examining prejudices and biases

Experiencing self-efficacy

Having a growth mindset

Developing interests and a sense of purpose

Self-management is the ability to navigate and shift in a healthy way one's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in order to make decisions and reach goals that benefit oneself and others.

A new sixth grader who is anxious about starting middle school remembers learning from her fifth grade teacher that when she is feeling scared, she can change how she feels by thinking differently about the situation. So, instead of dreading her new school, this student decides to view it as an adventure-one that might bring her new friends, wonderful teachers, and exciting opportunities.

Self-management skills include:

Regulating and expressing one's emotions thoughtfully

Demonstrating perseverance and resilience to overcome obstacles

Sustaining healthy boundaries

Identifying and using stress management strategies

Setting personal and collective goals

Using planning and organizational skills

Showing the courage to take initiative

Demonstrating personal and collective agency

Maintaining attention

Using feedback constructively

Practicing self-compassion

Ultimately, self-awareness and self-management are closely linked. For example, being able to stop and calm down when one is upset (self-management), requires skills like recognizing and labeling the emotions and considering how they might be affecting one's behavior choices (self-awareness).
For a deeper dive into the science and practical school-based examples of this science in action, click on the following topics:
SEL for Students: The Basics of Emotions
SEL for Students: Emotion Regulation
SEL for Students: Emotions and Learning
SEL for Students: Emotions and Culture

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SEL for Students: Self-Awareness and Self-Management

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According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional, Learning ( CASEL), social-emotional learning (SEL) is "the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions."

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So I went to therapy. I kept cognitive behavioral therapy worksheets. I took deep breaths, counted to 10 and walked out of rooms. And I even meditated at night.

These strategies helped me manage the anger, but they never really decreased it. It was like keeping a feral horse in a barn. I was contained, but not really domesticated.

Then, six months ago, I was talking with Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University. Right at the end of the hour-long interview, she tossed out this suggestion: "You could increase your emotional granularity."

My emotional what?

"Go learn more emotion words and emotion concepts from your culture and other cultures," she added.

Over the past 30 years, Feldman Barrett has found evidence that anger isn't one emotion but rather a whole family of emotions. And learning to identify different members of the family is a powerful tool for regulating your anger, studies have shown.

Or better yet, as I found, go and make up your own anger categories and start using them.
What is anger?
There's a common theory about anger. You'll find it in text books, scientific papers, news reports - even here at NPR. And some scientists support the theory, says Feldman Barrett.

The idea is that anger is one of several "basic emotions" that are universal, Feldman Barrett says. It's almost like a reflex - hard-wired in the brain. When something unjust or unfair happens to you, "your blood pressure often goes up. Your heart rate will go up. Maybe you'll breathe heavily or you'll have a reddening of your skin," she says. "Then you'll have an urge ... to punch or yell at someone. That's the stereotype of what anger is," Feldman Barrett says.

But it's not the full story.
Anger around the world
What you feel when you're angry depends on the situation, what your past experiences are and how your culture has taught you to respond, she says.

As a result, there is actually enormous variation in the types of anger in the U.S., like exuberant anger when you're getting pumped up to compete in sports, or sad anger when your spouse or boss doesn't appreciate you.

When you look at other cultures, the variation explodes.

Germans have a word that roughly means "a face in need of a slap,"or backpfeifengesicht. "It's like you're so furious with someone that you look at their face, and it's as if their face is urging you to punch them," Feldman Barrett says. "It's a great emotion."

Ancient Greeks differentiated between a short-term anger that doesn't stick around (ὀργή or orge ) with a long-lasting anger that's permanent (μῆνις or menin).

Mandarin Chinese has a specific word for anger directed toward yourself, 悔恨 or huǐhèn. It's literally a combination of regret and hate, says linguist Yao Yao at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. "You regret something you did so much, that you're angry at yourself," she says.

Thais have, at least, seven degrees of anger, says linguist Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong at the University of Hawaii. "We don't walk around saying 'I'm angry.' That's too broad," she says. "We may start with 'I'm displeased' and 'I'm dissatisfied' and then increase the intensity," she says.

And India is a treasure trove of angers.

"There's a common form of anger which means like 'when eggplant hits the hot oil,' " says Abhijeet Paul, who teaches South Asian literature at Middlebury College.

"You suddenly become, like, really angry at hearing something shocking or learning something that you really, really dislike," Paul says.

Indians also differentiate between political anger, which you have for the ruling class or "boss man," and personal angers, which you have for a friend, family or neighbor. You would never mix the two and express political anger in a personal relationship, Paul says.

"There's also a very interesting anger that is a loving anger," Paul says. You express this emotion toward a spouse when your spouse has angered you but you can't help them, only love them, he says. "It's a mixed bag of love, grief, sorrow and anger."
Personalize anger to help regulate it
So in many ways, anger is like wine. There are these major varieties - such as chardonnay and pinot noir - but each vintage has its own unique combination of aromas, flavors and potency. The more practice you have at detecting - and naming - these nuances, the better you understand wine.

And if you learn to detect all the various flavors and nuances of anger and label them, you can start to handle your anger better, says psychologist Maria Gendron at Yale University.

"There's definitely emerging evidence that just the act of putting a label on your feelings is a really powerful tool for regulation," Gendron says. It can keep the anger from overwhelming you. It can offer clues about what to do in response to the anger. And sometimes, it can make the anger go away.

The idea is to take a statement that's broad and general, such as, "I'm so angry," and make it more precise. Take the Thai: "I'm displeased," or the German "Backpfeifengesicht!"

Psychologists call this strategy emotional granularity. Studies show that the more emotional granularity a person has, the less likely they are to shout or hit someone who has hurt them. They are also less like to binge drink when stressed. On the other hand, people diagnosed with major depressive disorder are more likely to have low emotional granularity compared to healthy adults.

"There's a whole arm of research showing how functional it is to have finely tuned categories for our experiences," Gendron says.

Emotional granularity is like watching HDTV versus regular TV. It lets you see your anger with higher resolution, Gendron says. "It gives you more information about what that anger means, whether you value that experience and choices about what to do next," she says.

This last part is key: Being granular with you anger helps you figure out what's the best way to handle the situation - or whether you should do anything at all.

For instance, if you are feeling a quick burst of anger, which you know will fade rapidly, then maybe doing nothing is the best strategy.

And you don't have to limit yourself to the labels that already exist, Gendron says. Be creative. Analyze what's causing your various angers, give them specific names and start using the terms with family and coworkers.

"If you're making a practice in your family of coming up with words and then using them together, that actually can regulate physiology," she says. "That can resolve the kind of ambiguity about the situation."

Personally, I found this strategy the most helpful. I started paying attention to what typically triggers my anger at work and at home. And I found three major types, which I named.

Illogical anger: This emotions happens when somebody at work makes a decision that seems completely illogical. Once I labeled this anger and started tracking what happens afterwards, I quickly realized that trying to convince an illogical person of logic is often futile - and a waste of time.

Hurry-up anger: This is the anger I feel when someone else is not doing something fast enough - yes, I'm talking about the driver of the gray Prius at the stoplight this morning or the 3-year-old who will not put her shoes on fast enough. Once I labeled it, I realized that cars, people and toddlers eventually move. Huffing and puffing doesn't make it faster.

Disonophous anger: This is my favorite anger. And has the biggest impact on my life.

I wanted to figure out how to decrease yelling at our house. So I started paying attention to what often occurred right before the screaming began. It was super obvious: The dog was barking and the toddler was screaming. Basically two loud sounds simultaneously.

So my husband and I made up disonophous anger from the Latin for "two sounds."

Now when my husband says, "I have disonophous anger, Michaeleen ..." we know exactly what to do: Put the dog on the porch and pick up the baby.

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Angry?! How Naming and Understanding the Different Kinds of Anger Can Help | KQED

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So I went to therapy. I kept cognitive behavioral therapy worksheets. I took deep breaths, counted to 10 and walked out of rooms. And I even meditated at night. These strategies helped me manage the anger, but they never really decreased it. It was like keeping a feral horse in a barn.

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Engagement and Motivation- Handout for Home 

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The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has developed a curriculum on U.S. Indian Boarding Schools for teachers and parents to use with their students and children. The Truth and Healing Curriculum is comprised of four (4) robust lessons on Indian boarding schools covering His…

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Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate.

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An effective science learning environment is creating an atmosphere for the most effective science learning to take place. In order to do this we have to put everything together. As teachers we need to integrate NGSS (including DCI, CCC, and SEP), unit planning, bundled standards, big ideas, and big questions to create a student-centered effective learning environment. These practices allow for students to do what scientists do to get engaged in science by using practices, exploring and learning science information like scientists do. To create an effective science environment you need to understand the key concepts, take time to reflect and implement, and critically think and be intentional in developing an effective environment in your future classroom. You want the focus on an environment that offers student-centered learning where students engage as scientists. An effective science learning environment includes but is not limited to the characteristics listed below.

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