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How will we treat each other, ourselves, our equipment, our time as learners? Shared agreements build community. We can intentionally create a classroom culture of mutual respect and collaboration by establishing, modeling, and holding all participants accountable to supportive agreements about how we learn together. You may already have such agreements in place; you may have co-created those with your students.

In establishing class agreements, some teachers present a prepared list for discussions, others bring in a few ideas and let the students refine and revise those, while the most constructivist start from scratch with the discussion question: what do we need as learners in order to thrive together? Whatever your strategy, time invested up front in developing class agreements aligned with your values and beliefs about a learning community reaps tremendous payoffs.

You are responsible for your own learning and for supporting the learning of others.

You are the boss of yourself, expected to make wise choices that support your learning, including where you sit, who you work near, what materials you choose, how you use your time, and how you respond to adversity. Further, you are expected to work and learn in a way that does not detract from the learning of others, including managing your movement, volume, materials, and focus, as well as balancing your own speaking and listening in conversations.

* I see ___ making a wise choice to ask for help when she is struggling to get online.
* I notice ___ choosing a quiet place to finish her work, away from distractions.
* I hear ___ taking time to explain her thinking in support of ___'s learning.

* What is your responsibility as a learner right now?
* How are you supporting _____'s learning?
* What do you need in order to take responsibility for your learning?

Share with humility.

When presenting your thinking with a partner, small group, or in a whole class discussion, share confidently yet respectfully. Allow time for others to respond and ask questions. Appreciate and respond to their questions as probes to deepen your thinking and understanding

* I appreciate how ___ concisely explained her work and then invited the group to ask questions.
* I respect how ___ described her plan so far and then invited input from peers.

* How do you think you sound to your classmates?
* How are you inviting your peers to push your thinking?

Listen with the intent to understand.

When peers or teachers are sharing, focus your mind and body and work hard to make sense of what they are describing

* ___is ready with a question, which shows he has been working hard to make sense.
* I can see that I have ____'s entire attention because he is facing me with curious eyes.

* How can you show you are listening?
* As a listener, what are you wondering?

No one is done until everyone is done, understands and can explain

As collaborators, you need to attend to the learning of everyone in your group: if one person has finished her own task, it is her duty to see how she can support the learning of peers- not just help them complete the work, but truly collaborate until each member of the team understands and can explain.

* This group is deep in conversation, ensuring that all members understand.
* I saw ___ work closely with ___ and support her understanding.

* Does everyone understand?
* Is everyone ready to explain?
* What does your team need in order for everyone to be done?

Creating Classroom Climate
Use this template as inspiration to create or revise your own classroom agreements. Shared, documented understandings about how you will operate and support all learners eliminates confusion around classroom behaviors and procedures helps cultivate an atmosphere of trust and support between students and maximizes time for learning.

Adapted from Cultivating STEM Identities, Strengthening Student and Teacher Mindsets in Math and Science. by Wendy Ward Hoffer

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How will we treat each other, ourselves, our equipment, our time as learners? Shared agreements build community. We can intentionally create a classroom culture of mutual respect and collaboration by establishing, modeling, and holding all participants accountable to supportive agreements about how we learn together.

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6 Opening and Closing Routines for New Teachers | Edutopia

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6 Opening and Closing Routines for New Teachers | Edutopia

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Check for understanding, manage your students, and build classroom community with these six opening and closing classroom routines.

iStock.com/Christopher Futcher

Routines and consistency matter greatly and are necessary for creating a smooth learning environment in your classroom. Routines help with creating community, checking for understanding, and managing the classroom.

Opening Routines

If students come in knowing they'll be required to write, read, or share at the launch of the lesson, they enter the room already anticipating that there is an immediate expectation. (The same goes for closing routines and winding down your lesson.) There won't be the usual litanies of, "What are we doing today?" Students often are calmer knowing a task is at hand.

Share One Word: Ask students to share one word about how they are feeling that day. It can be in general, about a new project, or about something that is happening in their lives or in the world. This is whole-child stuff that tends to the emotional aspect of the student, bringing balance to the academic and intellectual focuses that typically drive the school day. It also builds emotional intelligence.

When I was first doing this opening routine, students would say things like good, OK, tired, and bad, but as they became more comfortable with each other and gained a larger vocabulary of emotion words, they began to share such words as pensive, anxious, serene, and frustrated. To lower the stakes in the beginning, have students share with a neighbor or in a triad, then build to a whip around the room where everyone shares her or his word aloud.

Quote of the Day: Students love to share their opinions-who doesn't? As an opening routine, I used Quote of the Day the first few years I taught high school, and it proved a great success. I would find a quote from a singer, actor, politician, or famous dead person and have it displayed on the board when students walked in. They would sit down and begin writing a response. Under the quote, I would include the same question prompts: What does it mean? How can you relate to it, or make a connection to the world?

The Reading Minute: This one comes from English language arts teacher guru Kelly Gallagher. Find a passage online or in a book-an excerpt of a poem, essay, article, or story-and read it aloud. It might be humorous, interesting, angering, or beautiful, exhibiting great writing. After you read it, students open their notebooks and write either a one-sentence summary to remember what they just read, or a thesis statement.

After you've modeled this for a month, have students sign up to bring in a passage to read aloud for the Reading Minute. At the end of each semester, you can have students look back at their collection of responses and reflect on what was their favorite passage and why-they learned something important, it made them laugh, etc. Check out this video of Gallagher discussing the Reading Minute.

Closing Routines

Cleaning up and discussing homework are important routines for the end of the day, but it's also important to give your students a chance to further process their learning, and even to set a goal. Closing routines allow students to check their understanding and create an opportunity to reflect. A routine is a great way to wrap up your lessons. Closing routines also honor your time together that day, as well as give your students an opportunity to use their voice. The following are three examples of exit slips that can be completed on a small piece of scratch paper or a sticky note at the close of class.

Rate the Learning or Lesson: This exit slip can be accomplished in a matter of minutes. Ask students to rate-on a scale of 1 to 10-how well they understood the learning that day. If they rate their understanding low, ask them to write down what they may need (more time, more explanation, a graphic organizer to help with writing the essay, etc.). Students can also rate the lesson or teaching on a 1 to 10 scale-ask them to write a sentence or two giving feedback on the materials or activity that day.

Collect the slips, and after your students leave, make piles of similar ratings. If you have a lot of 8, 9, and 10 ratings, the lesson went well. If you have lower numbers, it might be time to probe for further information from the whole class the next day, and then review or reteach.

Closing Statement or Question: Ask students to first turn and talk in pairs or in a triad and discuss questions such as: What did you learn? What surprised you? What is unclear? What do you want to know more about? Then ask them to come up with a closing statement or question about the content and write it down. Collect the slips and use them for talking points the next day, answering questions and commenting on statements they wrote.

Grab a Goal: Ask your students to think about a goal they would like to set for themselves. It can have to do with the unit of study, or it can be a personal goal outside of the classroom. Use sentence starters to prompt the writing for this one:

Tomorrow, in class I will be ready to _____.

Tonight, I will _____.

By the end of the semester, I will _____.

Have students share with a neighbor or in small groups, and ask for a few volunteers to share with the whole class. You can share your own as well. Collect the slips-this is a wonderful way to get to know your students.

Writing their names on exit slips was optional for me. You decide-perhaps sometimes yes, and other times no. Students will be more honest if the exit slips are anonymous. Yet with goal setting, there's more accountability if you have names, and you can check in with individuals and offer specific supports and encouragement.

Collaborating With Colleagues

Advice I like to give to new teachers: Go out and collect opening and closing routines from fellow teachers. The internet is not always the best place to seek curricular materials-your colleagues are. Talk with colleagues during meetings and stop by their rooms to take a look at their resources and student products.

A mistake new teachers often make is thinking they have to create everything from scratch. I explain that there are those who have been at this a long time and have honed strategies, collected data and student samples, and adjusted that activity or project to make it even better-and they are there, right next door, ready to share their expertise and resources with you.

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6 Opening and Closing Routines for New Teachers

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Check for understanding, manage your students, and build classroom community with these six opening and closing classroom routines. iStock.com/Christopher Futcher Routines and consistency matter greatly and are necessary for creating a smooth learning environment in your classroom. Routines help with creating community, checking for understanding, and managing the classroom.

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Building Community With Attendance Questions | Edutopia

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Building Community With Attendance Questions | Edutopia

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Taking attendance shows which students are physically present-these questions direct them toward active learning.

iStock.com/monkeybusinessimages

Taking attendance is usually a five-minute task at the start of a class period, but in my classroom, it can sometimes take much longer-on rare occasions, it can even take up an entire class period.

This happened recently when, for 75 minutes, students listened respectfully to each other. No one snuck a peek at phone messages. No one left the room for a washroom break. Not a single student looked bored. There was no technology involved.

All I did was take attendance.

Stretching Our Minds

It's been decades since I stumbled upon the power of what I call the attendance question. I asked each student in my high school English class to tell me what he or she thought the color of silence was while I took attendance. The question was meant to get them thinking metaphorically just before a poetry lesson, but I was surprised to notice the students' interest in each other's responses. Curious about this, I began to use similar open-ended questions in other classes. In social studies, I asked what was wrong with the world. In psychology, I asked about students' favorite childhood toys. In math, I'd ask, "What is the color of 2?"

The most important characteristic of my attendance questions is that there are no right answers. In a setting where being right is critical for success, the attendance question is abnormal enough to get students' attention.

When we trace back the meaning of attend through Old French ( atendre) to its Latin root ( attendere), we can see that when we attend, we are "stretching our mind toward" something. The attendance question gets students to pay attention through inviting them to stretch their minds toward a question which has no right answer.

When we take attendance, we are essentially asking each student, "Are you here?" But are students actually present when their minds are elsewhere? By asking the attendance question, I am indirectly asking my students, "Who are you? How are you? What matters to you?" Through their consideration of a response, I hope they stretch their minds toward presence in the classroom.

Creating a Sense of "We"

The kind of attendance question that I ask will change over the course of the semester. At the beginning, the questions are safe and easy to answer, but toward the end of the semester, they might keep students talking long after the bell.

Questions at the beginning of the semester may be:

What's your favorite food/movie/book/celebrity/season?

What was the best part of the summer?

What was the most beautiful/interesting thing that you saw this morning on your way to school?

What's the taste of happiness/the shape of sadness/the smell of joy?

Questions like these help students to see similarities and differences among their classmates. They can begin to see a "we" in the classroom: We like pizza, we like summer, we're Vancouver Canucks fans. I love watching students who have never spoken to each other discover that they love the same things or that they see sadness in the same way.

Because learning is fundamentally a social and emotional experience, achieving this sense of we is critical before students fully engage in classroom activities. A sense of we creates safety and makes it more likely that a student will risk moving out of his or her comfort zone to try something new-and ultimately learn.

However, it's one thing for a teacher to know this and quite another to actually create a space where students feel safe and comfortable. Even with a plethora of how-to advice on creating community in a classroom, it can be difficult to know what will work best for any particular group of students. But whether the classroom is in Africa or Canada, taking attendance is what all teachers do everywhere, and it's through this simple act that any teacher anywhere can begin building community in his or her classroom.

The type of question that I ask is linked to how cohesive the classroom community is at the time. After those first "getting to know you" questions, I introduce this one: "How is the weather in your world?" If students are feeling stressed or tired, they may answer "stormy" or "cloudy." If they're in a good mood, it's "sunny." The answers give me a sense of the general mood in the room, and I can adjust my lesson in response. (Giving a test makes no sense when the general weather report includes storms with lightning and thunder.)

The attendance question that took up the entire 75 minutes recently was: "Have you ever had the experience of wishing you were the opposite gender in a particular situation?" Students will only answer this type of question authentically if they feel safe. That my students felt comfortable enough to be vulnerable in their answers was a result of months spent learning about each other through responses to attendance questions.

Recognizing What Matters

After decades of finding different ways of asking students, "Are you here?" I'm still learning about the impacts of the attendance question in my classroom. If I forget to ask one, students remind me. And if I post one on our work schedule and then don't ask it, I get lots of complaints.

If you'd like to try this in your classroom, here's an important caveat: Never directly link the attendance question to any curricular content. If you do, the question becomes a test of knowledge and not an invitation to stretch the mind. It wouldn't be an invitation to attend or be in attendance.

More often than not, I've finished taking attendance in the first five minutes of class. But on those days when that process becomes much longer, it's always worth the extra time getting to know who my students are and what matters to them.

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Building Community With Attendance Questions

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Taking attendance shows which students are physically present-these questions direct them toward active learning. iStock.com/monkeybusinessimages Taking attendance is usually a five-minute task at the start of a class period, but in my classroom, it can sometimes take much longer-on rare occasions, it can even take up an entire class period.

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Marzano 13 Teaching Best Practices | Edmentum Blog

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Marzano 13 Teaching Best Practices | Edmentum Blog

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Check out our most up-to-date post on this topic, Marzano 13 Teaching Best Practices for Virtual, Blended, and Classroom Instruction!
As an edtech company, Edmentum certainly believes in the promise of online solutions to improve student outcomes and empower teachers with additional tools to provide effective, individualized instruction. However, educational technology is an incredibly young field, and everyone - educators, developers, and students alike - is still learning how best to use these tools. A lot of brain power is being dedicated to answering these complex questions. One such effort comes from the Marzano Research Laboratory (MRL), whose experts conducted A Study of Best Practices in Edmentum Online Solutions, looking at Edmentum's online solutions in various settings to evaluate the relationship between student learning and effective pedagogical practices with respect to the use of online instruction.

The MRL study considered Edmentum solutions being used in three instructional settings - purely virtual, a blended learning model, and to supplement instruction in a classroom - for the purpose of either original credit, credit recovery, intervention, or Advanced Placement® instruction. The study identified 13 best practices across three dimensions of teacher behaviors and strategies which are correlated to significantly higher levels of student achievement in an online learning environment. Adopting these practices can help teachers effectively engage with their students in an online or blended environment, and get the most out of online tools. Here, we will take a close look at all 13 best practices identified in the study, along with insights into how each can be implemented and common challenges associated with them.
Marzano Dimension One: Strategies involving routine events 1. Communicating course/assignment rules and procedures
Clarifying your expectations is key to a smooth-running classroom, whether it's traditional or virtual. Think about it: if you didn't know to file your income tax return on April 15, wouldn't you be late every time? The concept is even more applicable to children. If they don't know what the rules are, they probably won't follow them.

Mastery of classroom procedures is an academic skill like any other - and it's necessary for student success throughout the school year. Ambiguity can lead to confusion amongst students as to what is expected of them, which in turns makes it that much more difficult for them to actually meet those expectations. Additionally, if students do willfully break guidelines, it is in your best interest to be able to easily prove they were aware of the expectations in place. The same need for clarification also exists for specific exercises and assignments. How can you expect work that meets your standards if your students don't know what is being expected of them? Setting out well-defined expectations and making sure that all of your students are aware of them is a key step to seeing your students achieve the grades they are capable of.

Implementation Tips: Many teachers dedicate the entire first week of school to instructing students in how they want the classroom to operate-including everything from procedures for sharpening pencils to turning in assignments. This same kind of investment of time needs to be made before any exercise or project is given to students as well. Spend an amount of time proportionate to the size of the assignment reviewing expectations. For large or multipart exercises, break up the expectations into manageable chunks and processes based on your students' ages and level of comprehension.

As always, when laying out expectations for the classroom or an assignment, be sure to use best practices in teaching by discussing all learning modalities. If you're covering a pencil-sharpening procedure, actually have the children perform the action. Make written explanations that can both go home to parents and be referenced by the students in their notebooks or folders. Finally, plaster your walls with every rule and procedure that you deem necessary for the success of the class. In an online or virtual environment, make sure you are taking advantage of all the teacher-student communication tools at your disposal. Most of these systems have messaging functionality, individual assignment directions and description features, and places for students to take notes for reference. Covering all of these bases should eliminate "I didn't know that" from your classroom vocabulary.
2. Providing students with all materials needed to complete an assignment
Defining clear classroom and assignment expectations and procedures is only half the battle in ensuring your students have the tools they need to be successful in the classroom. It is just as important to provide your students with the actual materials they need to accomplish the goals you set out. For all classroom activities and assignments, make sure the necessary materials are readily available and easy to access. Think of it this way: you buy a kit to build a wooden picnic table in your backyard. All of the wood is pre-cut, and it even comes with the nails, bolts, and nuts that you will need. However, you don't have access to a hammer or a wrench. You're not going to get very far in building your picnic table.

Implementation Tips: There are many ways to make sure materials are accessible to your students. The best strategies to use in your classroom can largely be determined based on how extensively you use technology. If you are relying on paper for most of your classroom activities, keep a bank of file folders in an organizational rack that are clearly labeled by assignment. As students work through an assignment, all they have to do is go to the correct folder to access what they need. This method also makes it easier for students who missed a class or two to get their make-up work without needing to interrupt class.

If your class relies more on technology, there are plenty of free tools you can use to distribute materials. Consider creating a classroom website where things can be posted and downloaded - try Weebly for Education for free and easy-to-use templates. Another option is to start a folder system, similar to the physical method discussed above, on Google Drive. Or, you can write a post on your classroom blog for each assignment that provides directions and links to any materials for downloading.

Biggest Challenges: Timing can be an issue if you implement physical or web-based systems like the ones discussed above to distribute assignment materials. If you release everything at the beginning of a unit or assignment, there's nothing stopping your high-performing students from working ahead and then becoming bored when they finish. However, if you release materials on a certain schedule, you will likely frustrate students whose timetable doesn't match up with yours. The best solution is to release materials on a schedule, but work to align your timetable to the pace the majority of your class is working at. Be sure to also set aside some time for individualized work with those students who are struggling or in need of enrichment.

Another common problem in implementing this best practice is related to paper-based classroom, and is as old as education itself: the dreaded words, "I lost it." There will always be students for whom organization is a challenge. You can't make unlimited copies of materials without going over budget, and you don't have unlimited time to dedicate to these students. So, make a point of providing instruction on organizational skills early in the year (during the time dedicated to reviewing expectations from tip #1), and then continue to touch on those ideas throughout the school year.

3. Clearly presenting the goal/objective for each assignment
Although there's always room for creativity and experimentation in education, a lesson should never be delivered with an overall "let's see where this goes" approach. Every instructional day, each task should have a clear goal associated with it. The clarity of these goals is key to this tip. Not only do you need to understand the goal each task is working toward, but so do your students. Just like if you were on a field trip, you wouldn't want to leave with a bus full of students and not know where your destination will be.

Implementation Tips: Many schools and districts mandate that teachers post the day's learning goals and objectives somewhere on their classroom whiteboard. However, they often don't say anything about teachers having to use age-appropriate language in those goals or even having to discuss them with their students. This approach is structurally flawed because it doesn't take the students into account.

Instead, each day should start with a frank and age-appropriate discussion of what you hope your students will take away from the day's lesson, what successful completion of the lesson looks like, and what students can expect if they are struggling. When you transition to a new task, even if it's under the same goal, remind your students of why they're doing the work. This is not to say that you shouldn't use your board to post goals; visuals can serve as a great reminder throughout the lesson. Simply be sure to write the goals in language that can be easily understood by all of your students.

Biggest Challenges: It will come as no surprise to any teacher to hear that learners can have short attention spans. If you are in the middle of a multi-day lesson with the same goal or objective, students can feel as if they aren't making any progress, or they may simply lose sight of the goal and become disengaged. If you find yourself in this position, try to break up your overall goal into smaller parts that are easy to follow. Take time to explain the overall goal, but focus most of your attention on covering how the smaller goals fit into the larger objective. This practice will help your students feel invested in what's going on in the classroom every day.
4. Offering encouragement and positive feedback to students
Positive reinforcement is key to instilling a sense of confidence, self-worth, and motivation in children, but for some students those kind of interactions are hard to come by in their lives outside of school. This fact makes it that much more critical that the classroom always be a safe and encouraging environment for students. Without any encouraging words, a learner is likely to shut down from their entire educational experience. By using positive feedback, teachers can be the oasis in the desert for their students. This is not to say expectations should be lowered simply to ensure students will be successful. Instead, maintain high standards for your students and challenge them to achieve difficult goals, but encourage them the whole way. When a student meets a standard or goal, celebrate the accomplishment with them and share it with their parents or caregivers. On the other hand, when a student is struggling with an objective, focus on those aspects where they are making progress to encourage them to persevere.

Implementation Tips: The best thing about working to offer encouragement and positive feedback to your students is that it does not need to take a lot of class time. Be effusive with your verbal praise. The goal should be five positive comments for every piece of negative feedback for each learner. Offering feedback through quick notes on assignments can also go a long way. Although it is more time-consuming, don't be afraid to direct your positive feedback somewhere other than the student, such as to their parents or guardians. Not only will an encouraging call or email home help to build a better relationship with your student's caregivers, but you are also likely to be surprised by how much the student appreciates it.

Also keep in mind that there is no bad time to offer encouragement and positive feedback. It will likely be most impactful immediately after a student experiences a success, but if you miss the exact moment, acknowledging their success at a later time will still be appreciated. You can even set aside dedicated class time to recognize learners who made big progress or breakthroughs during the day's lesson. However, it's important to remember that some students can be shy about receiving praise in front of others; consider whether or not each student will appreciate being singled out before doing so.

Biggest Challenges: Teaching is a demanding job, and on days when your classroom is particularly challenging, remembering to be positive at a 5:1 ratio can be difficult. Just remember that for as much good as some positive feedback can do for your students, it can also help lift your own mood and pull you through a hard day.
5. Allowing students to keep track of their learning progress
Ownership of learning is key to student achievement. Students need to feel invested in their progress in order to thrive academically. All students should know where they stand in your class and with the curriculum at all times. They should be able to see the scoreboard so they know when to feel proud about keeping up or when to step it up to avoid falling behind.

Implementation Tips: Remember the old days when the only way to know where you stood in your bank account was to actually reconcile the checkbook? If you weren't diligent about balancing, you had no idea how much money you had. Now, it's as simple as logging in to your bank's website. Not allowing students constant access to their progress data has the same effect. They have no idea where they stand, so they can't take the appropriate steps for the desired outcome. When should students have insight into their progress?-24/7.

Thankfully, most schools and districts employ an online learning management system (LMS) where students can log in to keep track of their grades. If your school does not have a system like this, make it a point to update students by paper as often as possible. Another option is regular, quick conferences with your students to talk about their progress. Not only does this practice keep them informed, but it also gives you an opportunity to provide the positive feedback recommended in tip #4.

Biggest Challenges: The accuracy of classroom data often comes down to one factor: the speed at which the teacher can grade incoming work. If you're falling behind in grading, students cannot be kept up to date on their progress. Every teacher will get a little behind from time to time, but there are things you can do to help stay caught up. One tip is to use as much automation in your classroom as possible, either with online assignments or through "clicker" programs. Another practice is to employ lots of rubrics. They make grading easier and set clear goals for learner success.
6. Accessibility to students via electronic communication as well as face-to-face
The days of teachers simply lecturing at the front of the classroom are gone. Teachers and students need to collaborate in many different ways in order to advance their common goals. Oftentimes, that collaboration doesn't end with the last bell of the school day. In today's connected world, the key is to find a balance between being easily accessible to your students to answer their questions and provide help without smothering your own productivity and free time.

Implementation Tips: First, any communication between you and your students must be recorded in some manner that is easily accessible and shareable for accountability purposes. Unfortunately, we live in a time where some educators have abused their authority in a variety of ways. You want to be able to easily prove that all of your interactions are above board. That being said, most electronic communication provides a record like this, even texting with a service like Google Voice. To be most helpful to your students, it's also important to make yourself available in a manner that they will be most likely to take advantage of, which may mean via text or on social networks. Be sure to implement any initiative like this in a manner that aligns with your district's policies.

No matter what communication strategy you choose, it's important to stick to a consistent schedule. Make sure your schedule allows time for your personal life outside of school. To encourage face-to-face communication with your students, let them know what time you arrive at and leave school, and invite them to visit before or after the school day. Then, depending on your own needs and your students', consider making yourself available electronically at a certain time (preferably during homework time) every night. You can still watch TV or participate in any other off-duty pursuit-just have your phone or computer handy. Also, remember that you are the one who gets to decide whether something is urgent or can wait until tomorrow. For some students, everything feels urgent. Set appropriate boundaries, and give yourself permission to give important personal matters priority.

Biggest Challenges: The dedication teachers have to their students is what makes them great at their jobs, but it can also be taken too far. Be sure to set aside time for yourself, when you are not available to communicate with your students. Not only does this decrease burnout, but it also helps ensure that appropriate boundaries between you and your students are maintained. There's nothing wrong with building rapport and personal relationships with your students, but it's important to model appropriate communication and save those discussions for suitable times in the classroom.
Marzano Dimension Two: Strategies enacted on the spot 7. Monitoring student work
Without an accurate view of student progress, effective classroom decision making is very challenging. Are your learners ready to move to the next unit? Who is need of remediation? Who would benefit from enrichment activities? Assessments, both formative and summative, are one good way of monitoring your students' development. The goal of monitoring student work is to find out how much progress your students have made in relation to the initial goals you set. Organizing that progress into a four- or five-point scale can help you and your students see the headway that has been made.

Implementation Tips: There are many ways to assess learning without adding to your grading pile. Informal assessment needs to occur regularly during every lesson. Although this type of monitoring usually comes in the form of discussion and circulating the room while your students are working, there are plenty of other informal strategies, like exit tickets and short quizzes, that you can leverage. Familiarize yourself with these strategies, make regular use of them in your classroom, and watch the status of your class become increasingly clear.

Empowering your learners to keep portfolios of completed work and projects also helps engage them in their own progress. This strategy gives your students a broad and tangible overview of their progress throughout the year, which can serve as a powerful motivator. It also gives you evidence of their learning to share during parent conferences and evaluations. In addition, most schools use some sort of online LMS to share grades with students and parents virtually. Try to keep your online gradebook as up to date as possible and leave comments where you can to offer additional insight. Most online curriculum, whether used for enrichment, remediation, or assessment, will have significant reporting capabilities as well.

Biggest Challenges: Teachers tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves when it comes to grading, thinking that it's the only way to get an accurate assessment of student progress. If the grading pile is too high, some teachers forego activities that could be helpful in informing instruction. Keep in mind that effective progress monitoring need not involve much grading-or any at all.
8. Knowing every student by name and being able to recognize them outside of the online environment
Learning your students' names might seem like common sense, but you won't believe how many teachers are unable to call students by name a month, two months, or even several months after the first day of school. There are various reasons for this, but the bottom line is that your ability to form a connection with those students whose names you don't know is severely inhibited. Especially for students with difficult home lives, forming this connection can be critical to their academic success.

Implementation Tips: Students hate seating charts, especially on the first day of school. However, a great way to learn names is to arrange your students in alphabetical order-by first name. Taking attendance every day at the beginning of the school year also gives you added practice in name and face recognition. Don't move students from those seats until you have everyone memorized! Additionally, make sure your school takes advantage of any of the tricks your LMS has to offer, like showing the previous year's school pictures of your students. Print them out and quiz yourself if you have to. In some systems, you can even arrange seating charts using student pictures.

When it comes to name recognition, teachers tend to have the bulk of the responsibility, but it's also important for other personnel in the school to be acquainted with as many students as possible. This can be a challenge, since principals, media and technology staff, and other support staff will be exposed to more students at the school than teachers but will spend significantly less time with them. However, hearing something positive from a principal in the hall can make a student's day-especially if he or she is at-risk.

Biggest Challenges: Learning names is not an easy task. As a teacher, you might have as many as 150-200 students. Other staff might see more than a thousand. Adding to the sometimes impersonal approach of certain blended learning strategies, screen time seems to be increasing the amount of time it takes to learn names. However, learning your students' names might be the most important part of your job in the first couple of weeks of the school year. It lays the groundwork for the rapport you hope to build as you move through the early part of the year.
9. Allowing students to progress through assignments at their own pace
We all know what it feels like to fall behind in a task or project. We also know what it's like to be faster or more accomplished at something than our peers. In both cases, the feeling can be awkward and distracting. Now, think about how students, who are just starting to find themselves and get to know their talents, feel in one of those situations. Allowing students to progress through curriculum at their own pace helps them get to know their own strength and weaknesses, which builds their sense of confidence as well as a willingness to persevere.

Implementation Tips: Small group instruction is a go-to strategy to differentiate pace. This either means grouping students of similar abilities or creating groups of mixed-ability levels so that high-achieving students can help struggling learners move along in the curriculum. In many situations, small group instruction like this can be very effective. Another strategy to consider is using online or computer-based curriculum to supplement instruction. With an adaptive platform, each student can receive instruction in the appropriate areas and at the appropriate speed for their skill level. However, limited resources and availability of class time can be barriers to utilizing online solutions.

It's also important to not give students too much freedom over their own instruction and pace of learning; it's simply too disruptive to the curriculum. However, accommodating self-paced learning over the course of single assignments or class periods can help students take ownership of their learning. Just be sure to have a plan in place to keep fast-working students busy while the rest of the class finishes the activity.

Formative assessment is also key to effectively using self-paced methods. Out of all the assessment practices, formative assessment has the greatest effect on student learning outcomes. It needs to be timely and reflective. You always want to know when a student has fallen too far back or is working too far ahead. Formative need not mean formal. Informal assessment is often the best practice here.

Biggest Challenges: Pacing guides are becoming more prevalent as class time is further compressed by testing and other mandates. Teachers simply need to make sure that everything in their curriculum is covered. This can make differentiation of pace a challenge, but it should still be facilitated whenever possible.

Additionally, the challenge of keeping fast-working students engaged will always be an issue. Spend a great deal of time brainstorming enrichment activities to give to these students before embarking on a self-paced assignment.
10. Providing help to understand and practice new knowledge
This is why teachers teach-to help students acquire and master new knowledge. It's perhaps the most fundamental part of the job. That being said, it might also be the most complicated. Who do you help? When do you help them? How? Even veteran teachers struggle with these questions. And there is no shortage of pedagogies to try to make sense of these practices.

Implementation Tips: Most teachers prefer some sort of gradual release model, variations on "I do, we do, you do." These kind of models are where pacing and formative assessment take precedence. There is, of course, the process of delivering a lecture to present new knowledge and then using homework to help students practice. However, most forward-thinking teachers want to get away from that. There are also approaches that are completely different, like flipped learning. In a flipped classroom, students acquire new knowledge at home using videos and content available online or made by the teacher. Then, they come to class in order to practice those skills and receive help from the teacher. The theory is that class time is used for what's important-practice-rather than rote memorization.

In theory, if curriculum is paced correctly and mastery has been achieved by all students in your class before moving on, no one should need help with the next topic. Of course, that's rarely the case. And that's why it's important to perform some sort of formative assessment or pretest before each major topic or unit, with more informal assessments coming at the beginning and end of each lesson. You should also keep the pulse of your class during a lesson. It may sound like a lot of work, but a deep understanding of informal formative assessment strategies is essential to helping students grasp new material.

Biggest Challenges: The first barrier to effective teaching of new knowledge is simply time. Benchmarks have to be met. Tests have to be prepared for. A lot of administrative minutiae cut into class time. Many times, the students who are struggling the most need to be moved along for the sake of the rest of the class. The other barrier to this practice is a question of differentiation. How do you know where everyone is? Who needs more time? Who's working ahead, and how far? In many classrooms, small groups, formative assessment, and online learning tools can solve these challenges.wledge. It's perhaps the most fundamental part of the job. That being said, it might also be the most complicated. Who do you help? When do you help them? How? Even veteran teachers struggle with these questions. And there is no shortage of pedagogies to try to make sense of these practices.
11. Allowing students to ask questions during online courses/assignments
A teacher's dream class is full of bright, inquisitive minds eager to explore all of the knowledge this world has to offer. Hands always go up. Questions are always thoughtful and on point. The natural conclusion to draw from this is that all teachers would be more than happy to take any question at any time during a lesson in an effort to generate that sort of atmosphere in their classroom. However, in an effort to stay on schedule and maintain hard-won order in the classroom, it's typically not the case. The problem with this reality is that a classroom where questions are discouraged is one where young learners will struggle to stay engage. So, to hold and deepen students' interest in all the topics you cover, make sure that your classroom is one where all questions are consistently encouraged and embraced.

Implementation Tips: There are a variety of ways to encourage students to develop questions that will help the whole class progress through the lesson without completely overtaking class time. First, make your expectations clear. State that questions are welcome at almost any time during the class, but ask that no one interrupt while someone else is speaking and that questions only address the topic at hand. Make sure that these policies are available and easily visible as a reminder to your learners. Second, you should act as a model for your students of best practices for asking questions throughout the year. When your students are speaking, ask questions that drive the conversation forward. Always wait for them to finish a thought before launching in with your questions. And, gently correct bad questioning technique whenever you see it.

Remember that many students are shy about asking questions or speaking in class. Instead of forcefully calling on them, introduce some randomness into the procedure by drawing cards or Popsicle sticks with each student's name on them. You can also use Post-it notes and a poster to let students leave a question or comment about the day's lesson anonymously as they exit the room. Another idea that makes use of technology is the idea of backchanneling. Backchanneling is similar to a discussion board, but it happens online in real time. In the classroom, students can engage in a backchannel chat with their devices while a passive activity, like a lecture or video, is taking place. Students love an opportunity to use their devices, and this mode of communication can feel less intimidating to your more reserved learners.

Biggest Challenges: In addition to the reluctance of some students to speak in class, you can also encounter the opposite side of the spectrum-those students who are all too enthusiastic for any chance to make their voice heard, whether or not it relates to the topic at hand. Again, this is a situation where modeling and timely correction can be effective. And just because you encourage questions doesn't mean you need to receive any and all that your students pose. On the other hand, if you are struggling to get your students to ask any questions at all, quick, informal assessments can help you figure out if it is because the content is too easy for your learners to stay engaged, or because it's over their heads.
12. Treating all students equally
This practice may sound completely obvious, but in truth, it might be the most difficult of all to fully and successfully implement because it goes against basic human nature. Even the most patient and kind teacher may take a sigh of relief when certain students are absent. Others find it difficult to call on everyone in the class equally, skipping some students for a variety of reasons. And some teachers tend to give extra opportunities to the same students repeatedly because they have demonstrated that they can handle them.

Habits like this are incredibly easy to fall into - and all teachers do to some extent at some point or another. They just seem to make days go more smoothly. But for the betterment of every student, you need to be conscious of them, and catch yourself when you feel that you are slipping into such habits.

Implementation Tips: There are a variety of strategies to make sure that all of your students receive equal attention in class. Most have to do with methods to randomly select students, whether by drawing names out of a hat, using popsicle sticks, or some other creative strategy. It's important to establish this precedent early in the school year so that everyone knows they can't hide from your attention. Another tactic is to make a point of having short conferences with each of your students periodically throughout the school year. This is a good way to reconnect with students who perhaps haven't received as much attention recently.

In a blended learning environment, it's actually easier to connect with every student because of the differentiation capabilities of online programs and the fact that there are fewer whole-group exercises. More small-group and individual work means more time for teachers to circulate the room (just make sure you circulate the entire room!). It's also easier to monitor your students' work, which means there are more opportunities to notice something worth bringing up.

Biggest Challenges: Some students thrive on attention-usually with negative consequences. The natural tendency is to reduce negative behaviors by denying them that attention, so these students may rarely be called on in discussions. While this can make for a quieter classroom, these students, who are probably masking social and emotional difficulties, are denied opportunities to progress. Other students may be overlooked simply because they are extremely reserved; they work hard to avoid attention, and when surrounded by a room full of louder, more outgoing students, they succeed. Overcome these challenges by taking time to engage one-on-one with all of your students, to get to know them on a personal level and understand the ways that they tend to interact.
Marzano Dimension: Strategies addressing content
13. Adding external resources to assignments aligned to local objectives

There is no doubt that the scope of education has expanded in the past decade or so. In decades past, curriculum was centered on a textbook, and little thought was given to providing students with real-world experiences. Now, the focus has shifted to immersive educational experiences that better reflect what students will see once they leave school. Part of this shift involves encouraging students to take advantage of the vast amount of information now at their fingertips thanks to the internet. Teachers must embrace their students' ability to extend their own learning, and actively make it a part of their curriculum by having students find and utilize external resources.

Implementation Tips: It is to both your own and your students' benefit for some filtering to occur when students are seeking outside resources for assignments and projects. If possible, provide instruction not only in the curriculum but also in information gathering relative to the subject area your students are working on. Provide acceptable online options for students to consult in the course of their work by using a class website, blog, or other link-sharing system. This isn't censorship; it's a way to optimize the information-gathering process for your students and teach them about appropriate online research methods.

Students, particularly those in online learning settings, also need opportunities to unplug. Pointing out the local real-world resources available - like museums and libraries - to further their studies is a great way to get students to venture out into the community. Consider offering extra credit or extra time to complete assignments in order to motivate your students to engage with the offline world. This also teaches students how to effectively research and use resources outside of the structured environment of the classroom, which is a highly valuable "real world" skill.

Biggest Challenges: Some resources, particularly online ones, simply aren't reliable enough to be consulted in an academic situation. A good use of time early in the school year might be to instruct students on how to discern reliable information and resources for particular subject areas from subpar ones to avoid students forming poor research habits.

Interested in hearing more about the Marzano Research Lab's findings regarding online teaching best practices? Check out how Marzano Research peer-reviewed a research project that we conducted for our classroom practice and assessment program, Study Island!

Advanced Placement® is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this site.

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The Marzano Research Lab conducted A Study of Best Practices in Edmentum Online Solutions, looking at Edmentum's online solutions in various settings to evaluate the relationship between student learning and effective pedagogical practices with respect to the use of online instruction.

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Five-Minute Film Festival: Classroom-Management Techniques | Edutopia

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Five-Minute Film Festival: Classroom-Management Techniques | Edutopia

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Videos, Sites & articles...Great resource for new teachers

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The first few weeks of the school are a crucial time for setting student expectations in behavior and academics. This video playlist of classroom-management techniques will help you refresh your strategies for the new year!

As the new school year ramps up, it's important to pay attention to classroom management. The first few weeks of the school are a crucial time for setting student expectations in behavior and academics. Even veteran teachers can benefit from a refresh or learning new approaches to keeping students on track. Check out these videos, and see if any of the techniques could apply to your teaching style and classroom!

Video Playlist: Classroom-Management Techniques

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube.

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The first few weeks of the school are a crucial time for setting student expectations in behavior and academics. This video playlist of classroom-management techniques will help you refresh your strategies for the new year! As the new school year ramps up, it's important to pay attention to classroom management.

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5 Quick Classroom-Management Tips for Novice Teachers | Edutopia

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5 Quick Classroom-Management Tips for Novice Teachers | Edutopia

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Quick & Simple Changes you can do to gain control & respect

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When it comes to managing a classroom, new teachers mostly learn on the fly, but here are some ideas you can use right away.

I made a good number of blunders my first year teaching that still make me cringe. I learned, though. And it's fair to say that when it comes to managing a classroom, most of what we learn as new teachers is trial by fire. It's also smart to heed the advice of those who have walked-and stumbled-before you. If you're struggling with discipline, here are five tips that you can start using right away.

Classroom Management Tips for New Teachers

1. Use a normal, natural voice: Are you teaching in your normal voice? Every teacher can remember this from the first year in the classroom: spending those first months talking at an above-normal volume until one day, you lose your voice.

Raising our voice to get students' attention is not the best approach, and the stress it causes and the vibe it puts in the room just isn't worth it. The students will mirror your voice level, so avoid using that semi-shouting voice. If we want kids to talk at a normal, pleasant volume, we must do the same.

You want to also differentiate your tone. If you are asking students to put away their notebooks and get into their groups, be sure to use a declarative, matter-of-fact tone. If you are asking a question about a character in a short story, or about contributions made by the Roman Empire, use an inviting, conversational tone.

2. Speak only when students are quiet and ready: This golden nugget was given to me by a 20-year veteran when I was in my first year. She told me that I should just wait and then wait some more until all students were quiet.

So I tried it; I fought the temptation to talk. Sometimes I'd wait much longer than I thought I could hold out for. Slowly but surely, the students would cue each other: "Shh, she's trying to tell us something," "Come on, stop talking," and "Hey guys, be quiet." They did all the work for me.

My patience paid off. Yours will too. And you'll get to keep your voice.

3. Use hand signals and other nonverbal communication: Holding one hand in the air and making eye contact with students is a great way to quiet the class and get their attention on you. It takes awhile for students to get used to this as a routine, but it works wonderfully. Have them raise their hand along with you until all are up. Then lower yours and talk.

Flicking the lights off and on once to get students' attention is an oldie but goodie. It could also be something you do routinely to let them know they have three minutes to finish an assignment or clean up, etc.

With younger students, try clapping your hands three times and teaching the children to quickly clap back twice. This is a fun and active way to get their attention and all eyes on you.

4. Address behavior issues quickly-and wisely: Be sure to address an issue between you and a student or between two students as quickly as possible. Bad feelings-on your part or the students'-can so quickly grow from molehills into mountains.

To handle those conflicts wisely, you and the student should step away from the other students, just in the doorway of the classroom perhaps. Wait until after instruction if possible, avoiding interruption of the lesson. Ask naive questions such as, "How might I help you?" Don't accuse the child of anything. Act as if you do care, even if you have the opposite feeling at that moment. The student will usually become disarmed because she might be expecting you to be angry and confrontational.

If you must address bad behavior during your instruction, always take a positive approach. Say, "It looks like you have a question" rather than, "Why are you off task and talking?"

When students have conflicts with each other, arrange for them to meet with you at lunch or after or before school. Use neutral language as you act as a mediator, helping them resolve the problem peacefully or at least reach an agreeable truce.

5. Always have a well-designed, engaging lesson: This tip is most important of all. Perhaps you've heard that if you don't have a plan for them, they'll have one for you. Always overplan. It's better to run out of time than to run short on a lesson.

From my own firsthand experience and after many classrooms observations, there's one thing I know for sure: Bored students equal trouble! If the lesson is poorly planned, there is often way too much talking and telling from the teacher and not enough hands-on learning and discovery by the students. We all know engaging lessons take both a serious mind and time to plan. And they are certainly worth it-for many reasons.

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5 Quick Classroom-Management Tips for Novice Teachers

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When it comes to managing a classroom, new teachers mostly learn on the fly, but here are some ideas you can use right away. I made a good number of blunders my first year teaching that still make me cringe. I learned, though.

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From Classroom mgmt. to EdTech and conferences

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From classroom management to working with parents, lesson planning to learning environments, this compilation of blogs, videos, and other resources provides an array of tips and advice for teachers just starting out.

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What I Wish I'd Known as a New Teacher | Edutopia

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What I Wish I'd Known as a New Teacher | Edutopia

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It's been two decades since my first year in the classroom. I reflect on that time and wish I'd known a few things about myself, about teaching, and about my students. Some of what I wish I'd known could have been shared with me-some I just had to live and learn.

So I offer this reflection both for new teachers as well as for those who support them. If you work with a new teacher, I'm hoping you might stop by their room in the next few days and share some insights from your own experience. And if you're a new teacher, I'm hoping these reflections might help you feel validated, hopeful, and resourceful.

1. This will get better. The first year of teaching is so, so hard. You don't even know why it's so hard-you can't wrap your head around that because you're in survival mode. It's so hard because you're being asked to push your heart and mind and body in ways you never have. You're making thousands of decisions each day, and there are big parts of you that know you don't know what you're doing. So you question the decisions you're making each day-and questioning is good, it is, but that questioning also makes you feel tired and insecure. It will get better. You're just overloaded. You're learning so much-I know you can't even recognize this because you're so tired, but it'll sink in as the months pass. Nothing will ever be as hard as the first year.

2. Always work from the heart. If your actions and words emerge from the heart, you can't make too many mistakes. Let yourself love your students; don't be afraid of falling in love with them. That's the path to take as a new teacher. Get to know them, indulge your curiosity, spend time learning about who they are as human beings-the rest will follow.

3. They will remember this about you. Your students will remember how you made them feel, whether they felt loved and cared for by you. I know this: I'm in touch with dozens of former students who were among the first groups of kids I taught. They remember my love for them in various ways; they don't remember the lessons that I botched, or that I didn't return their homework within a promised two days, or my disorganization. When I listen to what they remember, I hear that it was my love for them-and I did love them, deeply.

4. Be open to surprises. Students will surprise you-they will learn things you didn't think they could learn, they will grow in ways you didn't expect. You might think that a particular student will struggle later on (he's already been retained in second grade, can't spell his own name, and clearly has a learning disability). Then 10 years later you might find yourself at his high school graduation hearing that he's been accepted to art college, and there'll be tears ruining your makeup and you didn't bring tissues and when he sees you he grins and gives you a huge hug and says, "Ms. Aguilar, I'm so glad you came." You'll still be crying and telling him how proud you are. It will truly be one of the most joyful days of your life. He was also in your classroom that first year, when you thought you'd ruined them all. "You were really nice to me and you encouraged me to draw," he says, and you beam.

5. Find a coach. Find someone who can support your growth, someone who has training to be a coach, someone who will observe you and give you feedback and help you fulfill the vision you have for yourself as a teacher. You won't be able to figure this all out on your own. You can't see what you can't see. You don't know what you need to know. Ask for a coach, beg, search out all possible options-and find someone to help you grow.

6. And if you can't find a coach... Move. Find another school. I'm serious. Find a place where someone will support you in your growth as a teacher. OK, if it can't be a coach, settle for a mentor, perhaps an administrator who will commit to supporting you in a non-evaluative way, or find a partner-teacher who might be a mentor, or a professional learning community of teachers who observe each other. You won't be able to guide your own development by yourself-the weekly (if you're lucky) or annual professional development won't be enough.

As a new teacher, you need a lot of feedback and support. Don't stop searching out support until you get it. If you feel like you're learning and increasingly meeting the needs of your students, you'll feel good. You'll stay. And kids need teachers who stay.

The first year (like a first love) has so many highs and lows, and I still get both dreamy-eyed and panicky when I remember the 1995-96 school year. Capture this year, share stories with people you trust, and then in 20 years, look back and write yourself a "What I Wish I'd Known" letter.

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It's been two decades since my first year in the classroom. I reflect on that time and wish I'd known a few things about myself, about teaching, and about my students. Some of what I wish I'd known could have been shared with me-some I just had to live and learn.

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The Power of the Positive Phone Call Home | Edutopia

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The Power of the Positive Phone Call Home | Edutopia

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When I first started teaching and was overwhelmed by the demands and complexity of the job, my survival strategy was simply to take all the advice that came my way and implement it. So when my wise mentor suggested that after the first day of school I call all of my second grader's parents, I did so.

In spite of my exhaustion, I called each family and introduced myself. I asked a few questions about their child. I said that their kid had had a good first day. I said I looked forward to working together.

Throughout that year, and the years that followed, I continued this practice -- I had an intuitive feeling that it was key: The positive phone call home. After the first days, as soon as I'd identified the kids who might be challenging, I made it a goal to call home with positive news every week. I'd share this goal with my students, greeting them at the door with something like: "I'm so excited to see you this morning, Oscar! I am going to be watching you really closely today to find some good news to share with your mom this evening. I can't wait to call her and tell her what a good day you had!"

When I taught middle school, this strategy made the difference between an unmanageable group of kids and an easy group. You'd be surprised, perhaps, how desperately an eighth grade boy wants his mom (or dad or grandma or pastor) to get a positive call home. On the first day of school I'd give students a survey that included this question, "Who would you like me to call when I have good news to share about how you're doing in my class? You're welcome to list up to five people and please let them know I might call -- even tonight or tomorrow!"

First I'd call parents of the kids who I knew would be challenging, those I suspected rarely got positive calls. When an adult answered the phone, I'd say, all in one long breath, "Hi Mrs. ____? I'm calling from ____ middle school with great news about your son, ____. Can I share this news?" If I didn't immediately blurt out the "great news" pieces, sometimes they'd hang up on me or I'd hear a long anxious silence.

Some of these kids were difficult, extremely difficult. However, I was always able to find something sincerely positive about what he or she had done. As the days followed, I kept calling -- "I just wanted to share that today when ____ came into my class he said 'good morning' to me and opened his notebook right away. I knew we'd have a good day!" Sometimes I'd stop in the middle of class and in front of all the students I'd call a parent. The kids loved that. They started begging for me to call their parent too. It was the first choice of reward for good behavior -- "just call my mama and tell her I did good today."

What shocked and saddened me were the parents who would say, "I don't think anyone has ever called me from school with anything positive about my child." I occasionally heard soft sobbing during these calls.

I'd first used this phone call thing as a strategy for managing behavior and building partnerships and it worked. However, after ten years of teaching I became a parent and my feelings shifted into some other universe. As a parent, I now can't think of anything more I want a teacher to do -- just recognize what my boy is doing well, when he's trying, when he's learning, when his behavior is shifting, and share those observations with me.

I know how many hours teachers work. And I also know that a phone call can take three minutes. If every teacher allocated 15 minutes a day to calling parents with good news, the impact could be tremendous. In the long list of priorities for teachers, communicating good news is usually not at the top. But try it -- just for a week -- try calling the parents of a few kids (and maybe not just the challenging ones -- they all need and deserve these calls) and see what happens. The ripple effects for the kid, the class, and the teacher might be transformational.

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The Power of the Positive Phone Call Home | Edutopia

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When I first started teaching and was overwhelmed by the demands and complexity of the job, my survival strategy was simply to take all the advice that came my way and implement it. So when my wise mentor suggested that after the first day of school I call all of my second grader's parents, I did so.

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Helpful Hints to Improve your classroom management

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Helpful Hints to Improve your classroom management

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PD-Classroom Management- Magali Terry (1)

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Based on H. Wong's "The First Days of School."

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Review routines and procedures daily or on an as needed basis

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10 Things You Can Do In (About) 10 Minutes For A Better Classroom

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10 Things You Can Do In (About) 10 Minutes For A Better Classroom

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When the school year begins, teachers spend a lot of time getting the classroom ready, planning lessons, and getting to know his/her students. The following list includes 20 ideas that you may not have thought of that can help produce a successful classroom. Each item takes no longer than an hour and can make a big difference throughout the year.

1. Set up your classroom in an "active learning" format (15-30 minutes)

Traditional classrooms are normally arranged in a linear format with all the desks facing one direction. Studies suggest that creating a room with no "obvious" front helps students to take a more active role in learning, rather than looking to the teacher.

If your room allows it, arrange the desks in small groups with no obvious front. You can do your instructing from the center of the room instead.

2. Stop starting the day with roll call (5 minutes saved)

To get the day off on the right foot, start with an inspirational quote or quiet meditation. Roll call is a tedious necessity, but you shouldn't have to take up time in your day to do this. The beginning of the day is the most crucial moment for getting off on the right foot. Why not have a sign in sheet when kids walk in? If that doesn't work, assign a responsible student the task of taking roll while you are doing the morning routine.

3. Set up a system for makeup work (30-60 minutes)

With a class size of 16 or more, chances are one or two students will be absent at least a couple times a week. Setting up a system for makeup work ensures you aren't wasting class time (or your precious after school hours) trying to compile worksheets and assignments. In Harry Wong's article about classroom management, he gives examples of teachers who designed a bulletin board with envelopes that contained the day's work.

When a student comes back, they go to the board and take the assignments they missed.

4. Define Class Rules (15 minutes)

When the school year begins, take a few minutes out of your day to sit with your students and design the class rules. Students are more likely to follow class protocol when they have been involved with the creation of it. Use positive rules like "speak kindly to one another" rather than "Don't make fun of other kids."

Once the rule list is made up (i.e. on poster board), have each student sign the bottom of it like a classroom charter.

5. Develop a plan for quieting the class (10 minutes a day for a few days)

How many minutes are wasted trying to get a loud and noisy class to pay attention? The best way to quiet a class is to develop a specific routine from day one. Once you've come up with a plan, practice it several times - without further lecture and instruction. For example, if your procedure is to clap twice and raise your hand, do this and wait for as long as it takes until all students are paying attention.

Keep practicing until they've gotten it down to a reasonable response time. If you lecture them in the middle of the practice, they will come to expect that.

6. Share control with your students (no extra time needed)

Create flexible lesson plans that allow your students some level of control. For example, if your math lesson is about fractions that day, after your fifteen minutes of instruction, provide a list of three different activities they can choose from. Another way to share control is to list the topics for the day and allow them to vote on which topic they would like to tackle first.

The more involved your students are in the learning process, the more likely they are to pay attention and stay motivated.

7. Pay attention to noise and light surroundings, which may distract learning (30 minutes)

Teachers only have so many resources and control over the actual classroom structure. Using throw rugs and curtains help to diminish excess noise from hallways or in the room. If you have a reading area, why not set up a table lamp from home for more cozy lighting? It may not seem like much, but learning spaces play a big role in a student's ability to concentrate.

Do you or your parents have any old furniture at home? Adding a chair or couch to a silent reading area will greatly enhance your student's willingness!

8. Deal with smartphones (10 minutes)

Whether you like it or not, smartphones are working into younger and younger hands. Some schools may have a ban on smartphones altogether, but if your school does not, consider creating a plan that uses smartphones in the classroom. Banning them will only give you a headache as you spend hours trying to referee, confiscate, and deal with unruly students. Who wants to waste time doing that?

Why not create a smartphone area in your classroom? Everyone must put his or her smartphone there at the beginning of the day. For five minutes before lunch or after work is finished, they can go over to that area and use it for research or educational gaming. When you work with your students, you might find they are more apt to compromise as well.

9. Create a list of "question words" that help you with effective questioning (10 minutes)

Create a board or poster with excellent words to use in questioning your students. These words can be used not only for instructing, but when students are asked to question each other. The NDT Resource center has an effective list of words to remember.

10. Involve students in the development of their classroom look and feel (10 minutes)

There is a lot of pressure on that first day of school to have everything looking colorful and sparkly. Rather than using your classroom preparation time to decorate bulletin boards, create a board for each group of desks in the class. Post a note that says, "To be designed by group...." and on the first day of school explain that each handful of students will be required to decorate and design a board throughout the year.

Perhaps you'll have a contest every quarter or some theme they must work within as they display their work. Not only does it create a fun group assignment, it is a great way for kids to take pride in their work. Get your students into the activity by assigning team names for each group.

Action #11 Create a risk reward procedure to encourage kids to not fear mistakes (15 minutes)

Creating a safe learning environment takes some work. Students will be more apt to risk mistakes or error if they know that you are not just looking for the right answer, but for students who are actively involved. Create a risk reward protocol that recognizes those students who go out on a limb to answer a tough question, even when they are wrong. It can be as simple as pinning a student's name to the blackboard to recognize his or her willingness to try on any given day.

When you reward a student's willingness to be wrong in front of the class, you level the playing field between gifted students and the ones that struggle to keep up. Click here to learn more about the value of mistakes.

Action #12 Make a daily evaluation sheet for your students (30 minutes)

It takes a bit of work to create an effective evaluation sheet, but once it's done, you have a valuable tool to use throughout the year. Each day, your students can quickly evaluate how they felt the day went- in terms of assignments, lessons, effort, and behavior. This sort of self-evaluation engages them to look closely at their own progress.

It also gives you a sense of how accurately they perceive their learning and the ability to intervene if necessary.

Action #13 Create a corner of the room for personal needs (30 minutes)

Kids don't stop being kids once they enter the classroom. I remember how distracted I was in the winter when I would have chapped lips or a stuffy nose. Perhaps you can have a small bin for each student to fill with Band-Aids, chapstick, tissues, etc. This way, they can easily get on with their day even when they might be feeling less than 100%.

Having an individual container ensures no one is cross-contaminating each other. You may think, "But that is for the school nurse!" Check out my article on the importance of teaching holistically.

Action #14 Assign a videographer of the day to take a few minutes of footage of learning (30 minutes)

Why would you need footage of your classroom? Because it is a fantastic way to give your students feedback without having to say a word! Use a smartphone and assign a student the task of recording a lesson, group work, or presentation. At the end of the week, your students can watch themselves in the "act" of learning.

If you have kids who struggle to pay attention, it'll be perfectly obvious on the footage without you having to say a word. Then, at the end of the year, you can make a montage of your class. It'll be a cherished memory for them- and you.

Action #15 Start a reference collection area (1 hour)

Most classrooms have an area dedicated for books right? How about adding to that an area for kids to post their notes or study sheets? This works best for older students, but if you have the option for a small printer/copier in your room, put it near a bulletin board and allow students to make copies of their study guides and notes and post them for other kids to use. It's just another way for your class to take pride in their work and foster a community of help and support.

Action #16 Peer-to-Peer support and accountability (30 minutes)

Students do well when they have input from both an instructor and their peers. At the beginning of the year, assign peer-to-peer support teams of two. Throughout the school season, these two people can help with correcting homework, providing feedback and support, and that occasional accountability.

When you feel like you can't get through to your student, a peer just might.

Action #17 Set up a teacher blog or online portal for communication with parents (1 hour)

Some schools have great content management systems that give teachers a place to connect with students and parents. Utilize these resources as much as possible. However if you don't have that option, you can set up a free blog on WordPress to journal classroom progress and events. Parents can then subscribe to the blog and get updates about important happenings.

Since a blog is public, this is a place to showcase the class work, not to discuss private matters like discipline or grades.

Action #18 Assign student jobs in the classroom (30 minutes)

This goes along with shared control. Each student should have a job in the class. Typical student jobs include erasing blackboards, sharpening pencils, passing out papers, etc., but think a bit outside the box. Why not assign a student to take attendance, collect makeup work for the absent students, grade homework, or even teach a lesson?

Assigning some instructive roles to your top students will not only increase their aptitude, it gives the other students a chance to hear from a different perspective. Finally, one of the best places to test someone's knowledge of an area is to have him or her teach it.

Action #19 Enlist parent help (30 minutes)

Do you have parents who work in interesting professions? Perhaps a doctor, musician, or journalist? During your back to school evening with your students' parents, pass around a signup sheet asking them to commit to coming into the classroom to talk about their career. If that isn't possible, maybe you can set up a Skype session so the students can interact with him/her online?

The ultimate goal of school is to prepare children to be effective members of society. Get them excited about work early!

Action #20 Administer a learning styles assessment (60 minutes)

At the beginning of the year, you have a classroom of students that are virtually strangers. The time you take at the beginning to understand how they learn is not wasted. Try out Diane Heacox's book called Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom for ideas about how to test your students' preferences.
This is a syndicated cross-post from opencolleges.edu.au

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10 Things You Can Do In (About) 10 Minutes For A Better Classroom

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When the school year begins, teachers spend a lot of time getting the classroom ready, planning lessons, and getting to know his/her students. The following list includes 20 ideas that you may not have thought of that can help produce a successful classroom.

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New Teachers: Classroom-Management Fundamentals | Edutopia

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New Teachers: Classroom-Management Fundamentals | Edutopia

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Resources for developing routines, fostering classroom community, managing disruptions, and building student relationships.

©Shutterstock.com/elenabsl

Tips for the Primary Grades Tips for the Middle and Secondary Grades
Tips, Advice, and Strategies

Establishing Effective Rules and Routines

Struggling with issues related to managing technology in your classroom? The following posts will help you tackle common issues.

Managing Disruptive Behavior

No matter how engaging the lessons, every teacher is bound to encounter disruptive and off-task behavior in class from time to time, and it's important to develop strategies and interventions to prevent learning from getting derailed. The following posts should help.

Gaining and Keeping Student Attention

Strategies for gaining attention are an important part of any teacher's classroom-management toolkit. The following resources include attention-grabbing ideas for elementary, middle, and secondary classrooms.

Once you've got students' attention, how do you keep it? Explore a variety of resources on Edutopia's Student Engagement page; consider starting with Student Engagement: Resource Roundup.

Building Relationships and Creating a Positive Climate for Learning

Fostering strong and consistent relationships with students can help new teachers build a solid foundation for other classroom-management strategies. Not sure where to start? The following articles and posts describe specific, concrete strategies that new teachers can implement.

Students learn best in environments where they feel respected, supported, and valued. To help students thrive in a safe, positive, and open classroom climate, consider the following tips from experienced educators:

Words of Encouragement From Experienced Teachers

If you're experiencing challenges, remember that you're not alone. These posts offer some encouragement.

1. Teachers who need a pep talk in advance of another day of performance should read Todd Finley's You're Gonna Hear Me Roar: Overcoming Classroom Stage Fright, which is full of useful tips for working through fear.

2. After a rough day in the classroom, it might help to read Don't Quit: 5 Strategies for Recovering After Your Worst Day Teaching.

3. In the face of classroom-management challenges, it's important to take a moment to regain perspective. In Like a Wood Duck: Finding Peace in the Classroom, Ben Johnson offers some suggestions to help you regain your serenity.

Looking for additional resources? Read Resources Toolkit for New Teachers to find other curated guides, and check out the New Teachers page.

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New Teachers: Fundamentals of Classroom Management

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Resources for developing routines, fostering classroom community, managing disruptions, and building student relationships. ©Shutterstock.com/elenabsl Tips for the Primary Grades Tips for the Middle and Secondary Grades Struggling with issues related to managing technology in your classroom? The following posts will help you tackle common issues.

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Teachers.Net April 2007 - HARRY & ROSEMARY WONG: Training Gen Y Teachers for Maximum Effectiveness - EFFECTIVE TEACHING - Teachers.Net

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Teachers.Net April 2007 - HARRY & ROSEMARY WONG: Training Gen Y Teachers for Maximum Effectiveness - EFFECTIVE TEACHING - Teachers.Net

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Effective Teaching...

by Harry and Rosemary Wong

To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu
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This article was printed from Teachers.Net Gazette,
located at https://teachers.net.
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April 2007
Training Gen Y Teachers for Maximum Effectiveness
Districts are gearing up to recruit more teachers to fill the
same positions vacated by teachers recruited the previous year.
Here's why. OMG. Here they come. Generation Y.
Born from 1977 to 1986, Generation Y, or the Millennials, is a potential force of as many as 40 million. The first wave of Gen Ys is just now embarking on their careers as classroom teachers.

They are products of a global economy, a connected, collaborative environment in which technology has allowed them to network. They are knowledge workers with ubiquitous access to powerful laptops and the know how to utilize 21st century technology and digital resources.

They are socially adept at working in groups or teams and are avid users of online social networking, such as MySpace and FaceBook. A learning community is their forte, thus to work collaboratively in a group is second nature to them.

The report of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, "Induction into Learning Communities," states that the development of effective teachers requires an approach that is different in scope and design from much of what currently passes for induction in this country: one-to-one mentoring of a novice teacher. Unless we move beyond the traditional one-to-one mentoring model, we will continue to reinforce the industrial-era practice of stand-alone teaching in isolated classrooms.

The new crop of teachers are tech-savvy and poised to be lifelong learners. If inquiry means deep thinking, then the Gen Ys can already run circles around us veteran educators when it comes to collecting data, finding resources, thinking deeply, problem-solving, reflecting, and inquiring.

They are the most socially conscious generation since the Boomers. Gen Ys are out in force working for social causes ranging from volunteering in international areas of poverty to teaching in urban schools through such organizations as Teach for America.

They exude confidence and informality; they have high expectations and are accomplishment oriented.

The Generation Y can be described in four positive ways:
1. A generation that is confident, self-sufficient, and achievement-oriented
2. A generation that is the most education-minded in history
3. A generation paving the way to a more open, tolerant society
4. A socially conscious generation leading a new wave of volunteerism
Gen Ys Learn Best by Collaboration
The Gen Ys are output oriented, success-oriented, achievement-oriented, and thus student achievement oriented. Gen Ys live in a global society where everyone is on the same, level playing field sharing information and solutions to produce outcomes. They are devoted to helping their students learn more because they are oriented to producing outcomes. We can nurture that skill by allowing them to produce results in groups.

Typically schools expect teachers to be creative and do a good job behind closed doors. Collaboration is rare. Worse yet, new teachers seldom see another classroom. Loneliness and lack of support further exacerbate the problems of beginning teachers.

Susan Moore Johnson of the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education says, "Our work suggests that schools would do better to rely less on one-on-one mentoring and, instead, develop school-wide structures that promote the frequent exchange of information and ideas among novice and veteran teachers."

Surround Gen Y teachers with a community of creative thinkers and the solutions will abound everywhere. They are great team players.

Professionals do not work alone; they work in teams. When teachers meet in teams to focus on a problem, they become part of a team that will work with students who need their help.

"Teachers should be in teams, working collaboratively around problems identified in their schools that are related to students," says Kathleen Fulton, director of Reinventing Schools for the 21st Century for the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.

Collaboration is the most effective way for teachers to learn. Professional development is most effective and teachers learn more in sustained teacher networks and study groups than with individual mentors.

Everyone knows that businesses train workers in teams with specific outcomes in mind. Schools will see improved student learning if they harness the collective intelligence, creativity, and genius of their teachers in consistent teams. It will become easier to do because this is the way of life for the Y Generation of teachers.
Gen Ys Are Our Future Leaders
By channeling their talent for working together we will see improved student learning. Education is a collaborative endeavor. No one individual has all the answers. We depend on each other for the creative solutions to our problems and the collective inspiration to design lessons that will improve student learning.

Millennials like structure and will want schools to give them clear rules and procedures to follow. They need to clearly see the value of their work. They want their work to be relevant, have impact, and offer them a diversity of experiences.

This next generation of teachers is the most intelligent, talented, competitive (and compulsive) group this country has seen. It's a Renaissance generation with much potential if we put the future in their care. They are more interesting, more confident, less hidebound and uptight, better educated, more creative, and even unafraid. The grandeur of the future is in their capable hands.
Do You Recognize Yourself?
If you see yourself in the previous paragraphs, you should be energized with the potential for yourself and your students. However, you need to be in an environment where you can put your talents and strengths to use. If you are a Generation Y teacher and you are looking for a job, here is a question to ask at the interview:

"Does this district or school have an induction or training program
where I can work with other teachers in a learning community?"

If not, consider moving on.

There are ten other questions you should ask during the interview. To see these ten questions, please go to our April 2001 column, " How to Recognize Where You Want to Be."
The Need for Teachers Is Real
Consider these two statements found in the literature:

"We will need 2 million new teachers in the next decade."

"Fifty percent of beginning teachers will leave teaching after five years."

These two sentences have appeared regularly over the past 30 years, yet writers make these statements as if they are brand new. The tragedy is the solution for the past 30 years has always been the same: give the beginning teachers a mentor.

Knowing how Gen Y teachers work and learn best:

Will you be ushered into our profession by giving you a classroom to teach in isolation?

Will you be given a one-to-one mentor to be seen on occasions and then ushered into an isolated classroom after a year of mentoring?

If so, we know that the potential is great that we will lose you. And we will just recruit more teachers for the same positions over and over again.

If we continue to give you a mentor only, the same two sentences will be used for the next thirty years. It will be the students who will suffer from the lack of teacher improvement, because mentoring may improve teacher retention, but there is no substantial research which shows that mentoring improves teacher competency.

The millions of dollars spent on mentoring programs would be better spent on team-based induction allowing a new teacher to smoothly acculturate into existing teams of teachers.

Just think of the impact on student achievement if you, as a beginning teacher, had access to a coach, school-based staff developer, instructional specialist, program facilitator, curriculum developer, and most importantly, an administrator, all as part of your collegial team?
Training Programs that Work Together
Gen Y teachers want to be involved in a collaborative way. Induction programs provide that connection, because they are structured around a learning community where new and veteran teachers treat each other with respect and all contributions are valued. To ask a Gen Y teacher to go solo in a networked world is writing that teacher's epitaph.

Knowing this, the Islip Public Schools on Long Island, New York, has a comprehensive induction program that features collaborative study group activities and networking. This is not a mentoring program. The three-year induction program is under the leadership of assistant superintendent, Linda Lippmann.

At Islip, study teams focus on skill-building strategies such as conducting parent conferences, managing classrooms, crafting lesson plans, and implementing cooperative discipline. The groups constantly work on team building and problem solving techniques. They use model lessons and hold sharing sessions in which teachers learn from each other and build respect for one another. Teacher turnover is negligible and new teachers are immediately ushered into a team-like culture.

In the ten year existence of the Islip induction program, evidence of the success of their collaborative work can be seen in the data. The year the induction program began, 34 percent of their students earned a New York State Regent's diploma. At the end of the 2005-2006 school year, the figure had risen to 97 percent. That's correct-97 percent!

To read more about the comprehensive induction program of the Islip Public Schools and the reaction of Mike Mitchell, Spanish teacher, to new teacher induction, go to
www.NewTeacher.com/pdf/NYSAFLT_Journal.pdf.

Know what a good induction program looks like so you will recognize the characteristics as you discuss your future employment with school districts and principals.
Two More Models to Review Here are two outstanding comprehensive induction programs that warrant your attention and modeling.
Flowing Wells School District. This mother-of-all induction programs has been in existence for over 20 years. Located in Tucson, Arizona, this school district has produced more state teachers-of-the-year than any other Arizona school district. This fact can be attributed to how well they train their teachers to become expert teachers.

To see their eight-year staff development program that takes a novice teacher to become an expert teacher, click here.

To read about the Flowing Wells comprehensive induction program, click here.

Lafourche Parish Schools. This school district's induction program is so successful that the state of Louisiana adopted it for its state model. The director of this program, Annette Breaux, co-authoredNew Teacher Induction: How to Train, Support, and Retain new Teachers. Click here to see this book.

To read about the Lafourche new teacher induction program, click here.

To read the about Louisiana FIRST, the state professional development program for new teachers, click here.
Mentoring Is Not Enough
Everyone in the world outside of schools trains their workers and has them working in teams. Fast food restaurants, convenience stores, giant mega stores, legal firms, hospitals, and even non-profit organizations train their workers to a set of skills and standards. Yet, Ted Britton at WestEd reports that in many schools one-on-one mentoring is the dominant or sole strategy for supporting new teachers, often lacking real structure.

Much of mentoring involves responding to a new teacher's day-to-day crises and provide survival teaching tips. Mentoring, in and of itself, has no purpose, goal, or agenda for student achievement. Thus, there is no evidence of the connection between mentoring and student learning. To see current research on mentoring and induction, click here.

To maximize student performance, all beginning teachers must learn to

teach to established standards,

evaluate the effects of their instruction on student performance,

use student achievement data for planning and curriculum,

tailor instruction to address specific learning needs, and

learn how to thrive in the culture of the school.

This kind of learning can only happen in an
induction process that is comprehensive.
Mike Schmoker reports that "research has not been found that supports the systematic formation of effective teachers solely through the use of mentors, especially mentors who show up after school begins and may not have been trained, compensated, or given direction or goals to attain."
Whereas, induction is a comprehensive, multi-year process designed to train and acculturate new teachers in the academic standards and vision of the district.
New teachers want to see other teachers teach in their classrooms and they want other teachers to come to their classrooms to see and advise them on their teaching. They want to be part of the learning community of the school.

People crave connection. Mentoring, which is a one-on-one relationship, continues the practice of teachers operating in isolation.
What keeps good teachers are structured, sustained, intensive professional development programs that allow new teachers to observe others, to be observed by others, and to be part of networks, learning communities, or grade level/subject matter teams where all teachers share together, grow together, and learn to respect each other's work. The Bottom Line
The bottom line is obvious. Trained teachers become effective teachers and effective teachers are the difference. Districts that provide structured, sustained induction training for their teachers achieve what every school district seeks to achieve-improved student learning.
Be the Difference Y Gens!
To the Y Generation of teachers in or just entering the profession-We're stoked that you are here! You have the 411 to be the force to change the way teachers are ushered into this calling. Your success in the classroom will determine the success for an entire generation of students.

Start your own group of colleagues sharing and growing together if the school or district doesn't present you with the opportunity. You know how to naturally connect 24/7. Wire yourself to like learners who have the same passion and enthusiasm for children as you do.

Your mission and challenge is to get students to be successful. That comes with increasing your skill and effectiveness. It's a very simple equation, but one so hard to implement.

Teacher Effectiveness = Student Achievement

You will not realize this in isolation. Share with us the unique ways that you are using your peer-to-peer network to improve the quality of your teaching. You can help others find a means to release themselves from the seclusion of the classroom and link with each other to grow and flourish and belong.

You can use your innate characteristics to become the greatest generation of teachers ever to enter the profession. We are excited by your potential and eagerly await the results of your future.

Harry & Rosemary Wong products: This printable version is provided for the convenience of individuals.http://EffectiveTeaching.com

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Teachers.Net April 2007 - HARRY & ROSEMARY WONG: Training Gen Y Teachers for Maximum Effectiveness - EFFECTIVE TEACHING - Teachers.Net

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Effective Teaching... by Harry and Rosemary Wong To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu ------------------------------------------------------------------ This article was printed from Teachers.Net Gazette, located at https://teachers.net. ------------------------------------------------------------------ April 2007 Training Gen Y Teachers for Maximum Effectiveness Districts are gearing up to recruit more teachers to fill the same positions vacated by teachers recruited the previous year.