# data[].attributes.headline
Multilingual Newcomers Need More Than Academic Instruction

# data[].attributes.subject
Multilingual Newcomers Need More Than Academic Instruction

# data[].attributes.body
Multilingual newcomers encompass a wide variety of students from diverse experiential, cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, but many enter U.S. classrooms lacking the English language skills that would allow them to equitably access content and learning. However, my experience over the last two decades has taught me that learning can actually be impeded if students’ physiological, psychological, and emotional needs are not met first.

Students who are scared, stressed, worried, or frustrated aren't efficient learners because learning can only be optimized after fundamental needs are met. The brain is not designed to prioritize abstract classroom learning over basic biological needs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"My principal wants him working on grade-level content ASAP," the teacher said, looking at me. We both turned in quiet contemplation to the newcomer sitting in the back of her English I classroom. His name was Karam. He was a Syrian refugee new to the school. He'd been in the country only a few weeks, and subject to who knows what kind of trauma and violence prior to that. I couldn't help but think, catching his skittish gaze, that's not how learning works.

Multilingual newcomers encompass a wide variety of students from diverse experiential, cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, but many enter U.S. classrooms lacking the English language skills that would allow them to equitably access content and learning. However, my experience over the last two decades has taught me that learning can actually be impeded if students' physiological, psychological, and emotional needs are not met first.

Students who are scared, stressed, worried, or frustrated aren't efficient learners because learning can only be optimized after fundamental needs are met. The brain is to prioritize abstract classroom learning over basic biological needs.

Basic needs are frequently expressed in newcomers' behaviors, and sometimes perceived mis behaviors. For example, a kindergartener, frustrated with the inability to communicate, might hit other children (a behavior that generally abates once the child has some basic English language competency). Or a 9th grader might withdraw by taking a nap, hoodie up and head down, because he is overwhelmed by the linguistic load of the classroom. To teachers who are attuned to them, these maladaptive behaviors communicate student needs just as loudly as speech.

Learning can only be optimized after fundamental needs are met.

Newcomers' needs, just like the needs of native English speakers, follow:

1. Physiological needs are the base because they must be met frequently and consistently. A student who is worried about having an accident in their seat is not in a position to learn about division.

2. Psychological needs must also be met for learning to occur. Students must feel safe and have a sense of control over their circumstances.

3. Social-emotional needs also preempt academic ones. Newcomers need to have a sense of community and belonging. They need human connection and meaningful relationships more than they need math.

It is only when students' physiological, psychological, and social-emotional needs are met that they can then focus fully on building English language skills and integrating new content learning.

Meeting Newcomers' Physiological Needs

Educators cannot assume other faculty have taken care of physiological needs or assume newcomers will or can advocate for themselves.

Students may need to be explicitly taught to communicate their needs and how a teacher can meet them. For example, teachers should make sure a student knows how to ask to use the bathroom and also how to use a Western-style toilet. This didn't occur to the 3rd-grade teacher whose student urinated on a tree on the playground. We have also had students squat on top of the seat or throw used tissue on the floor because they didn't realize they could flush it. Ensuring this basic knowledge must be a priority. Here are a few ideas for doing so:

Provide newcomers with picture communication cards that depict basic needs so that they can alert the teacher when they have to use the restroom, are thirsty, or need help.

Create a visual schedule that includes times and pictures of rooms the student will be going to. This will help the student understand when lunch, bathroom breaks, and the end of the day occur, and thereby reduce anxiety.

Begin working immediately on survival English vocabulary, such as bathroom, water, hungry, hurt, and help. Don't worry about sentence structure or grammar initially; focus instead on effectively getting meaning across.

Plan for more frequent breaks and movement. Newcomers may not be used to sitting still and may struggle to pay attention for long periods of time.

Walk students through routines like navigating the lunch line and explain unfamiliar foods. While you're there, make sure there is food available that meets their dietary restrictions (religious or otherwise) and tastes.

Consider creating a quiet corner or area where the student can withdraw and take a break if needed. If there's no quiet corner available, allow the student headphones if they need a break. For older students, consider a schedule that breaks up linguistically heavy classes with classes like art and music.

Leverage free apps, like Google Translate's conversation setting, to seamlessly move between languages, allowing the student to interact with faculty and classmates.

Meeting Newcomers' Psychological Needs

While meeting newcomers' physiological needs is the first step, teachers cannot ignore students' psychological needs. Acculturation, isolation, resettlement challenges, and prior trauma create unique stressors for newcomers. Students need to feel safe and that they have some control over their circumstances. We can address both needs by promoting student agency:

Provide students with a map of the school. When touring the building with newcomers, point out important places and repeat the names of those places.

Post multilingual signage and labels around the school building for newcomer students and their families. This will reduce the chances of the student getting lost and will help foster their independence.

Provide a list of teachers, their photos, titles, and roles. This will help the student know who to go to for help and will increase their comfort level with various adults in the building.

Wear ID badges and/or school shirts, which act as visual cues for newcomers to indicate who can assist them, similar to how hospital scrubs are an identifier for patients to know who a safe person is to ask for help.

Establish routines early on and stick to them. The more predictable the school day, the more confident newcomers will be in navigating through it. When the schedule does change, as it inevitably will, take time to prepare students for variations and alert them ahead of time to things like fire drills, which for students who have experienced trauma.

Tag newcomers' book bags and/or agendas with the student's name, home address, and school, so that if they were to get off at the wrong bus stop, they could show it to those around them to locate an adult who can help.

Students need to feel safe and that they have some control over their circumstances.

Meeting Newcomers' Social-Emotional Needs

Newcomers' social-emotional needs are often the most subtle. Being a newcomer is extremely isolating, and these students may lack sufficient language to build friendships or express loneliness. Moving to a new country is often an emotional roller coaster for students: They may feel excited, scared, lonely, anxious, or angry to varying degrees at different points in the day or all at the same time. Social development as students are acquiring English. Schools can meet students' social-emotional needs by helping newcomers connect with other students:

Start a student ambassador program with students designated to aid newcomers throughout the day. If you know of the newcomers' arrival ahead of time, ambassadors can research the newcomers' country of origin and share this information with the class, create displays or artwork to welcome them, or learn a few phrases in the newcomer's native language. A few personal connections can go a long way in increasing newcomers' comfort levels and willingness to participate. A team approach also prevents any one student from bearing full responsibility for another.

Represent newcomers' cultures and languages in classroom literature and schoolwide displays.

Develop and foster relationships with community members and organizations who can help with translation and support.

Invite families into the school building and get to know them. Keep them in the loop with what is happening at school and how they can help in academic and nonacademic ways.

Use apps like Talking Points, which allows teachers to send messages in multiple languages to families all at once and seamlessly translates replies back to English. This nonprofit combines AI and human translations and offers schools a free app and desktop version.

Have a in place for the roles each faculty member will play in ensuring that students are taken care of.

A few personal connections can go a long way in increasing newcomers' comfort levels.

A Place Welcoming to All

Meeting newcomers' comprehensive needs takes intentionality, flexibility, and creativity. There is no one-size-fits-all formula, but we can thoughtfully plan ways to ensure that our English learner newcomers have the optimal circumstances to learn and grow to their full potential. For students like Karam, we can make sure that barriers to learning are reduced so that he can learn and thrive in the classroom, just like his peers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Multilingual Newcomers Need More Than Academic Instruction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Making sure students feel safe and have their basic needs met should be educators' first priority.

# data[].attributes.body
Some basic guiding questions for formulating a plan for newcomers include:

How will our newcomer have his or her basic needs met during the first few weeks of enrollment?

What vocabulary or language does the newcomer need to navigate the school day?

How can we give some sense of agency to the newcomer to ensure their specific needs are met?

What are our goals for this newcomer within the first week, month, quarter, and year?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It was just a few years ago when a fellow teacher rushed into my third period ESL classroom, her face displaying what could only be called panic. "We've got another newcomer," she said. "Only this one speaks Arabic!" And so began the frantic efforts to establish some form of communication with this student, who not only spoke Arabic, but spoke a version incomprehensible to speakers of Arabic dialects outside her native country. This left the translators we did find frustrated, the student confused, and the rest of us at a complete loss.

Fast forward to the present: I serve as an English learner coach for an urban district in North Carolina, where I'm in and out of 81 different schools. We've now come to realize that "newcomers"-immigrant and refugee students who have recently arrived in the United States-are the new norm. They arrive almost daily-we've had 300 register in the first couple months of this school year-with a wide variety of learning needs and cultural differences.

While some school districts may have special programs to serve these students, many do not, so it falls on each individual school to meet these students' needs. As someone whose job it is to support schools in working with English learners, I've come to recognize that instead of panicking and scrambling for resources when newcomers arrive in our schools, we should be proactively preparing to meet their needs.

Complex Needs

In a district with 100 different languages represented, it's a complex process to meet every newcomer student's needs and make sure that they have the tools they need to adapt to the learning environment. Such diversity can also entail a variety of unexpected complications, such as students who don't know how to use a Western toilet, students who have religious and cultural food restrictions, students whose cultural norms clash with classroom expectations, and students who shut down because of language barriers. Many newcomer students also experience profound culture shock, which can manifest in children as physical symptoms, such as headache, stomach upset, insomnia, irritability, or inattentiveness, or as emotional symptoms, such as sadness, frustration, anxiety, anger, loneliness, and withdrawal.

We need to be equipped to anticipate these issues, which are often physiological, psychological, or social-emotional in nature, and work to address them before they become problems, thereby also ensuring they are not misinterpreted as misbehavior. Schools can sometimes be in such a hurry to meet the great academic needs newcomers have that they neglect these students' more immediate needs.

It's essential for schools today to have thought through what those needs are and to have a plan in place with specific roles laid out for personnel. Without having such a plan worked out, it is easy for these students to fade into the background, invisible until a crisis arrives. Some basic guiding questions for formulating a plan for newcomers include:

How will our newcomer have his or her basic needs met during the first few weeks of enrollment?

What vocabulary or language does the newcomer need to navigate the school day?

How can we give some sense of agency to the newcomer to ensure their specific needs are met?

What are our goals for this newcomer within the first week, month, quarter, and year?

As educators in my district began to think about meeting newcomers' needs in a systemic way, we realized that welcoming these students must be a schoolwide effort. Responsibility should not fall solely on the classroom or ESL teacher. Students' needs are best met as a collaborative effort with predetermined roles fulfilled by specified personnel. To this end, I created a sample breakdown of roles and responsibilities for my district that we've begun to introduce in training sessions (see fig. 1). The exact roles will look different in each school, since staffing and individual responsibilities differ, but they must be part of an intentional, thought-out approach to helping students successfully transition into the school environment.

Anticipating Needs, Providing Support

Schools cannot anticipate every linguistic and cultural challenge that will arise with each newcomer, and building relationships with families and learning about individual students' needs takes time. There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to serving newcomers. But we can anticipate many of their needs and provide comprehensive support to ease their initial stages of adjustment. We can lessen the burden on them so they can focus on learning English and participating meaningfully within their classrooms. We can wrap our arms around these students, as a school community, and ensure that their needs are met from the moment they set foot on our campuses. We can guarantee that newcomers have the equal access to learning that all students deserve.

Reflect & Discuss

➛ How could your school or district's approach to welcoming and accommodating newcomers be improved?

➛ Do educators in your school have a strong enough understanding of the non-academic challenges newcomer students may face?

➛ In your experience, what are the biggest issues newcomers face in adjusting? How could your school be more intentional about addressing these issues?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Instead of scrambling every time a newcomer enrolls, schools must have detailed plans in place to ease these students' initial stages of adjustment.

# data[].attributes.headline
Tailoring Instruction to Support English Language Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
Tailoring Instruction to Support English Language Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At P.S. 249 in Brooklyn, NY, over twenty percent of the students are English as a New Language (ENL) learners, many of them newcomers to the U.S. The school's diverse population includes children who speak Spanish, Haitian Creole, Arabic, Urdu, Bengali, Ukrainian, and Georgian, and many start kindergarten with little or no English. When principal Elisa Brown first came on board in 2000, the school was using a pull-out model to serve these learners. She quickly noticed that by the time students were picked up from their various classrooms and brought to the specialized language learning teacher, they were getting minimal instruction time-maybe ten minutes per day. And often, what they were learning was not connected to what was being taught in their regular classroom.

Brown decided to implement New York state's English as a New Language program, formerly known as English as a Second Language (ESL), throughout the school. In the ENL model, the content is taught in English using specific instructional strategies by a teacher who is certified to teach English to speakers of other languages (ESOL). This way, students receive a full day of instruction in the regular curriculum, but with support from a teacher who is specially trained to work with language learners. Strategies include using academic vocabulary in different contexts often, using routines for tasks and assignments so that students can anticipate what's coming up, and using lots of gestures and pictorial cues to help students understand what's being said. The school now has a designated ENL classroom with an ESOL certified teacher for every grade level, starting in kindergarten and up through fifth grade.

The switch to the ENL model has paid off-the school says the majority of kindergarteners who start at the school with little or no English reach proficiency by the third or fourth grade and "test out" of language learner status. And the data for P.S. 249's ENL classes in each grade level is similar to the data from the rest of the grade-level classrooms. Not only are multilingual students thriving academically, but they are reaching fluency and moving into the regular classrooms at a much higher rate than before.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tailoring Instruction to Support English Language Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Setting up a self-contained classroom for English language learners bolsters academics and helps students reach fluency faster.

# data[].attributes.headline
Bell-to-bell instruction is NOT best practice. Here’s the research.

# data[].attributes.subject
Bell-to-bell instruction is NOT best practice. Here’s the research.

# data[].attributes.body
By Angela Watson

Founder and Writer

I recently had a great discussion with some educators about bell-to-bell instruction: the expectation that students are fully engaged in learning tasks from the first minute of the class period to the last.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bell-to-bell instruction is NOT best practice. Here’s the research.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I recently had a great discussion with some educators about bell-to-bell instruction: the expectation that students are fully engaged in learning tasks from the first minute of the class period to the last. The conversation took place in the live chat during a session in the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Online Summit. (You can still … Continued

# data[].attributes.headline
Finding and Utilizing Culturally Relevant Texts

# data[].attributes.subject
Finding and Utilizing Culturally Relevant Texts

# data[].attributes.body
Classroom texts should represent all children in positive ways, and teachers may have to look for outside resources to make this happen. (There is a great PDF of Bloom's with question stems in this article!)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Culturally Responsive Teaching

Classroom texts should represent all children in positive ways, and teachers may have to look for outside resources to make this happen.

In my experience, most classrooms and school libraries simply don't have enough books that provide representation to students of color, and these texts tend to be supplementary to course content curricula at best.

The report examines racial and ethnic representation in the books used in U.S. curricula and finds that White authors and characters are overrepresented, and portrayals of people of color are often troubling: "When books included groups and cultures of color, they often used stereotypes, disconnected culture from individual people, or portrayed those groups as less than or unequal to others. And, when historical and social topics were included, they were almost always sanitized, told through a singular perspective, or disconnected from the structural realities that help students make meaning of the reading."

Black books by Black authors with stories about the experiences of Black life should be in classrooms and school libraries. The same is true concerning other marginalized racial and ethnic groups. However, it's not enough to simply have these books at your disposal and/or on display.

These books must not be watered down. They should accurately represent the diverse set of experiences and history of the racial or ethnic group(s) represented in the text. That happens best when the author of said text is of the same racial or ethnic background as the group being represented. Also, these texts must be an active part of the course content. In other words, they should be frequently used as part of lessons and in various forms of assessment.

Teachers may desire to do these things but be unaware of where to find these texts and how to integrate them within their already prepackaged course content. Here are a few tips to help teachers make these things happen in their classrooms.

3 Ways to Find Culturally Relevant Texts Written by Authors of Color

1. Visit a bookstore owned by people of color (e.g., Black or Latino owned). These stores can be found in city neighborhoods; some exist in the suburbs. There are also online stores, including Mahogany Books and Brave + Kind Books, as well as publishing houses owned by people of color, such as Con Todo Press and Chau Luna Books.

These establishments specialize in highlighting authors of color and themes specific to the experiences of communities of color. Teachers can find engaging texts for all ages that can be easily integrated into course content.

2. Collaborate with your school or district librarian, or the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) person in your school or district. If teachers are unfamiliar with any diverse books or resources to use for classroom content, they can reach out to school or district personnel who can assist with making recommendations. You can contact your school's or district's DEI director or curriculum supervisor to support you in these efforts.

3. Reach out to parents of color for suggestions found in their own collection of books for their child(ren). Parents of color may have their own set or collection of diverse books as it relates to their racial/ethnic makeup because of the limited options that the Education Trust report mentions. These parents may be able to offer recommendations on what texts you might want to use in your classrooms and why. They can also point you in the right direction-e.g., bookstores to patronize, authors to read, and resources to adopt.

But just having diverse texts in your classroom is not enough. Teachers should be able to use these materials to have students engage in rigorous higher-order thinking.

3 Ways to Prompt Higher-Order Thinking Through Diverse Texts

1. Don't shy away from exploring themes rooted in social issues. Although some politicians say otherwise, exploring themes rooted in social issues is a great way to engage students and bring your content to life. Whether it's climate change, systemic racism, income inequality, or mental health, social issues are connected to lessons on character, mathematics, reading, and writing.

Educators have the unique opportunity to teach students not only about said topics, but also about how to approach discussions on them with facts backed by evidence, sincerity, and civility. Observing the characters in books offers a safe way to do so.

2. Employ Bloom's higher order thinking question stems to have students explore these themes further during reading times. Using Bloom's framework gives teachers the ability to check for student understanding of what's happening in the text and to assist students with unpacking the story and character action to explore the theme(s) that appear in the story.

Through this framework, teachers can introduce students to critical thinking tools to become thoughtful about what it means to both apply learned skills and consider the humanity of everyone. As teachers move up through each level in the questioning, opportunities arise for students to take ownership of their interactions with the text and for assignments and projects to build themselves.

3. Craft assignments and assessments that allow students to display their recognition and application of these themes. Teachers must be careful not to recycle rote evaluations of student learning. Utilizing the highest level of the framework gives students the opportunity to create and to be able to display their learning.

Student creativity can be channeled into a potential service learning project, where young people have the opportunity to pour back into their communities, which have poured into them their entire lives. Learning must present students with opportunities to not only apply learned skills, but apply them for the betterment of society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Finding and Utilizing Culturally Relevant Texts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Classroom texts should represent all children in positive ways, and teachers may have to look for outside resources to make this happen.

# data[].attributes.headline
22 Unexpectedly Effective Teaching Hacks

# data[].attributes.subject
22 Unexpectedly Effective Teaching Hacks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Have you ever received a piece of advice from a colleague that made your life as a teacher so much easier? Maybe it was a recommendation that fundamentally reshaped how you deal with disruptions in your class-or something much smaller, like a hack for how to get marker stains off your whiteboard. We bet that advice has stuck with you and made you want to high-five your colleague every time you pass them in the hallway.

Edutopia wanted to crowdsource and bottle that feeling so that teachers everywhere could celebrate little changes that feel like big classroom victories. On social media, we asked our audience of teachers to share the most unexpectedly helpful teaching hacks they've discovered over the course of their careers. We heard all sorts of advice, from assigning pencil sharpening as homework to the benefits of periodically faking amnesia, and collected them into one list.

As you look through this resource, keep in mind this bit of wisdom from educator Coleman Bruman: Not every single tip will work for you, nor will any one individual hack turn your classroom into a utopia. For the greatest chance of success, try combining a variety of strategies.

"That strategy from PD will pick up 5 kids, while that closing from the book you read will get 6 more, the joke you said grabs up 2, and the connection to real life brings in 10," Bruman writes. "Everything you do helps kids grow."

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

All kids love stickers: Want a quick motivator for students? Look no further than stickers: "All ages love stickers. *All* ages. 🤣," emphasizes educator Christina Cawdery in a well-received Instagram comment. Eighth-grade math teacher Megan Williams adds fragrance to the mix: Her students took their time jumping into warmups "until I started handing out scented stickers to kids who finished."

ASSESSMENT

Try creative reading summaries: Summaries of a text are a staple of ELA classes-but students don't always find them particularly engaging. Instead of asking students to summarize a text like Beowulf, educator Barbara Murray suggests "reinventing" your assignment to something more engaging-like asking them to write a eulogy to deliver instead. "They write summaries without realizing it, add flourishes, get good grades, and we all have fun," Murray writes.

REDUCING DISRUPTIONS

CLEAN AND ORGANIZED CLASSROOMS

Save your knees: One of the awkward moments of teaching is figuring out how best to position yourself when interacting one-on-one with a student. Should you crouch over their desk, kneel down next to them, or what? "I carry a small folding camping stool when my students are doing independent work," writes educator Austin Pinckney. "When they need help, I pop it open and sit next to them." Other commenters opt for rolling stools or even yoga balls. Ultimately, use whatever helps you protect your knees.

Velcro is your friend: Are you hanging stuff this year? (That's a rhetorical question-for a teacher, hanging stuff is kinda part of the job.) Well, if you haven't already, consider Velcro. PE teacher Cindy Colman says Velcro makes "changing out signs, posters, etc." a breeze. Likewise, Candyss Woodberry uses Velcro to make an easily reordered lineup chart for her students.

Use a utility belt: If you're tired of not having the stuff you need on hand, it might be time to take a page out of Batman's playbook. "I wear a gardening belt and carry everything I need as I help students in my STEAM lab: pencils, dry erase markers, a few pens, sticky notes," writes educator Mary Phillips. Or, instead of a utility belt, you can opt for a deep-pocketed apron, comments Elle Be Cee Zee.

TEACHING ADVICE

Steal from colleagues: "Theft is my best hack, like a bandit 😆," writes Facebook commenter Rin Tin. "Walk into my colleague's classroom... Oh I like that, I'm stealing this idea. I'm the Thomas Edison of teaching. Brilliant at theft of great ideas. 💰💡😆"

Watch yourself teach: A great way to improve your craft is to film yourself teaching and watch it back, writes educator Laura Miller. You might be surprised by what you find: "It's eye opening to see what your habits are," Miller says-like starting too many sentences with "So" or "All right." "I also learned a lot about the frequency and type of questions I was asking," Miller writes, which allowed her to adjust accordingly.

HELP OTHER TEACHERS OUT!
We'd love this article to be an evolving document of best practices, so please use the comments to add any unexpected teaching hacks of your own. If we see something we love, we may well add it to the list!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
22 Unexpectedly Effective Teaching Hacks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teachers across the country share the most useful teaching tips they've learned-everything from the utility of Velcro to the power of periodically faking amnesia.

# data[].attributes.headline
How to Turn Your Classroom Into a ‘Thinking Classroom’

# data[].attributes.subject
How to Turn Your Classroom Into a ‘Thinking Classroom’

# data[].attributes.body
The researcher Peter Liljedahl evangelizes for practices that prioritize and stimulate more hard thinking in classrooms.

(Here is the link to the full article: https://www.edutopia.org/article/thinking-classroom-peter-liljedahl-math/)

# data[].attributes.body
Students are still learning, even during brief breaks, which serve to help them decompress, refocus, and process new information.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In middle and high school, incorporating mood-boosting, brain-stimulating attention breaks into lessons can head off student inattention, boredom, and fatigue at the pass. To find many more brain breaks designed especially for older students, read Paige Tutt's article for Edutopia titled " 17 Brain Breaks Tailored for High Schoolers." To learn more about the neuroscience behind brain breaks, see Dr. Judy Willis's article " Using Brain Breaks to Restore Students' Focus" or Ethan R. Buch, Leonardo Claudino, Romain Quentin, Marlene Bönstrup, and Leonardo G. Cohen's 2021 research on how rest intervals strengthen the consolidation of skills.

To learn more about each of the breaks shown in the video, visit these sources:

Think Outside the Box activity from Tina Centineo, via X (formerly Twitter)

Jigsaw Jumble activity from "8 Easy, Awesome Brain Break Games for High School Students," by Jenn Breisacher, Student-Centered World

Sequence of Exercises and Calming Break from "54 Educational Brain Breaks Your Students Will Love," by Stephanie Sanders, We Are Teachers

Balloon Toss from AwesomelyTeacher, via X

Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament from Barre Unified Union School District

Mysterious Image Game from Peter Embleton, via X

Tower of Terror Cup-Stacking Game from Jonathan Alsheimer, via X

Collaborative Class Story from Dora Hartsell, via X

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Students are still learning, even during brief breaks, which serve to help them decompress, refocus, and process new information.

# data[].attributes.headline
Incorporating the Calming Corner Into Station Rotation

# data[].attributes.subject
Incorporating the Calming Corner Into Station Rotation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Incorporating the Calming Corner Into Station Rotation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elementary students benefit from opportunities to take a break from academic learning and explore activities that support their emotional development.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Giving a zero for missed work can make it mathematically impossible for students to recover their grade; here’s what one teacher is doing instead.

# data[].attributes.headline
Making the Switch to Evidence-Based Grading

# data[].attributes.subject
Making the Switch to Evidence-Based Grading

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A desire for fairness and uniformity in grading prompted one district to make a big change.

Districts across the country have made strides toward grading reform, often landing on some version of standards-based grading. Naysayers claim it's just a trend in education, proponents say it's an innovation, but both are left with the question: How do we actually implement a new system and make meaningful changes?

It's simple-you've got to start with the root of the problem. Dive into grade books, and it won't take you long to uncover the discrepancies among teachers who teach the exact same course. Grading is uniformly an inconsistent practice, which can be radically different from teacher to teacher.

For example, we easily uncovered grade book inequities such as a student in teacher A's class performing identically to a student in teacher B's class on tests measuring standards. However, the students' grades differed from a C to an A because of how categories were weighted and how the points were arbitrarily assigned. When you cannot stand by grading practices such as these, you can begin the process of justifying the Herculean task of altering them.

Fargo Public Schools in North Dakota set out to find a practical model and implement it. The district established a strategic plan with an initiative to create a guaranteed and viable curriculum that is both comprehensive and equitable.

Transitioning to Evidence-Based Grading

1. Professional learning community (PLC) teams agreed on which state standards were essential and what their course-enduring skills were.

2. Points and percentages were removed and replaced with a four-point scale using common proficiency scales to report student progress.

3. Volunteer teacher groups piloted the process early to provide a model for others.

4. PLC teams were repurposed to improve collective efficacy and calibrate common assessments to unify grading.

5. Strategic expert personnel were used to guide the implementation process for teachers in addition to the district centering their professional development to support understanding.

6. Teachers were given more time to collaborate by altering the daily instructional schedule to allow for PLCs to meet more frequently. Teachers were also given curriculum release days to meet with their PLC teams for an entire workday to create proficiency scales and common assessments.

Starting in 2019, we found success in switching to an evidence-based model. Evidence-based grading uses a body of evidence to determine student learning toward a set of skills and standards while increasing student agency and efficacy. To embark on this paradigm shift, the following action steps were followed:

A yearly timeline was also established for implementation and to ensure an easier transition, beginning with sixth grade in fall 2021. Grades seven and eight followed in the subsequent years. All secondary courses will be fully implemented by fall 2025; however, because of the success with early adopters, some high schools in the district are at nearly 75 percent implementation, well ahead of the timeline.

The Role of Traditional Letter Grades

To facilitate the transition and adapt to new mental frameworks, traditional letter grades (A, B, C, D, F) remained at the high school level and for all credit-bearing courses at any level. This allows for grade point averages to still be reported, making college and scholarship applications an unchanged process. However, grade books have evolved to encompass student proficiency scores, categorizing them based on the enduring skills for each course.

To achieve an A in any course by the end of the semester, students are required to attain a proficiency level of 3 (proficient) across all enduring skills in the course. Conversely, a proficiency level of 2 (partially proficient) or 1 (developing) in any of the enduring skills will lower the letter grade.

In middle school, a few courses such as algebra and geometry still use traditional grading because they receive high school credit. But largely, middle school students do not receive letter grades. Eligibility for things that require a certain GPA is based on proficiency scores.

This grading system ensures that a student's performance is holistically evaluated, using a body of evidence to account for their proficiency across all enduring skills in the course.

Changes Beyond Grading

The results have transcended simply changing the grading system. The transition caused a shift in mental models for educators around instructional practices, curriculum, and assessments, with one 27-year-veteran teacher reporting that shifting to this model has "made me a better teacher, period."

The hyper-alignment of standards with proficiency scales and specific success criteria needed to reach proficiency has greatly improved communication with students. Students are now active participants in their learning instead of merely recipients. The discussions between teachers and students evolved from "How can I get three points back?" to "What do I need to learn to show proficiency on this assessment?"

This clarity enables students to understand exactly what they need to know (content) and how they need to showcase that knowledge (through a skill). For example, students in a science class recognized that their comprehension of genetics would be reflected in their ability to analyze and interpret data. Meanwhile, in social studies, students would convey the involvement of the U.S. in World War I through the skill of argumentation.

A few years in, we're reaping the rewards. Courses have increased their rigor by introducing standards they've traditionally never taught in previous years. Students are gaining a more holistic skill base by practicing argumentation skills in multiple classes. They are learning what it means to build a line of reasoning as a writer, as a scientist, and as a historian, revealing the success of a cross-curricular approach.

Now our PLC groups are functioning beyond the cyclical planning stage. For the first time, they are analyzing student data to drive and inform their instruction while determining the effectiveness of their assessments. With teachers being more intentional with alignment and using data to drive decisions, they meet the needs of each student, closing learning gaps. Suddenly, grading reform is no longer an initiative in education, but a remarkable and necessary innovation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Making the Switch to Evidence-Based Grading

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After noting vast discrepancies in grading using a traditional model, one district started transitioning to evidence-based grading.

# data[].attributes.body
Ditching these misconceptions about how the brain learns best—and following what the research really says—can help teachers better support students’ development.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Conventional teaching wisdom suggests that tests are a necessary evil without much benefit for learners, but in fact, low-stakes tests actually change and enhance memory. Many teachers still think that students should be taught according to their preferred learning styles-but there's no evidence to support this. And while it may seem that helping students pick up material easily will make the learning stick, engaging them in productive struggle has proven much more effective.

To learn more about the research cited in the video, check out the links below.

Pooja K. Agarwal, Ludmila D. Nunes, and Janell R. Blunt's systematic review of applied research around the benefits of retrieval practice in schools and classrooms (2021)

Shana K. Carpenter, Steven C. Pan, and Andrew C. Butler's review of the science of effective learning with spacing and retrieval practice (2022)

Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork's article exploring whether there is evidence to support learning styles (2009)

Francis J. Di Vesta and Stephen T. Peverly's study on the effects of encoding variability and processing activity (1984)

Dung C. Bui and Mark A. McDaniel's study on enhancing learning during lecture note-taking using outlines and illustrative diagrams (2015)

Christian Andrä, Brian Mathias, Anika Schwager, Manuela Macedonia, and Katharina von Kriegstein's research on how learning foreign language vocabulary with gestures and pictures enhances vocabulary memory in school children (2020)

Robert A. Bjork and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork's article on desirable difficulties in theory and practice (2020)

Manu Kapur and Katerine Bielaczyc's research on designing for productive failure (2011)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ditching these misconceptions about how the brain learns best-and following what the research really says-can help teachers better support students' development.

# data[].attributes.headline
3 Activities That Integrate SEL Into Elementary Math

# data[].attributes.subject
3 Activities That Integrate SEL Into Elementary Math

# data[].attributes.body
When social and emotional learning is woven into core math curriculum, elementary students can grow in their math skills, social awareness, and emotional literacy—all at the same time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Building social and emotional learning (SEL) into elementary math lessons not only is possible but can benefit students' emotional awareness as well as their mathematical thinking and skills. Plus, giving students meaningful opportunities to build empathy and connect their own emotions (and the feelings of those around them) with class content helps them relate to math concepts in new ways.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
3 Activities That Integrate SEL Into Elementary Math

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When social and emotional learning is woven into core math curriculum, elementary students can grow in their math skills, social awareness, and emotional literacy-all at the same time.

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Problem-Solving Skills Through ‘Speed Dating’

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Problem-Solving Skills Through ‘Speed Dating’

# data[].attributes.body
When students solve each other’s problems, they gain confidence in their own skills and witness the power of collaboration in real time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When English language arts teacher Cathleen Beachboard was trying to come up with new ways of encouraging her students at Fauquier High School in Warrenton, Virginia, to be solution-oriented, she noticed that while kids often get stuck on their own problems, they are quick to find solutions to other people's. Her husband jokingly said, "Wouldn't it be cool if you could just speed-date problems?" And the problem speed-dating activity was born. Beachboard has used this quick and simple strategy in her classes ever since.

"Today we were working on argumentative writing. But you could use this in any scenario, in any classroom, for any stuck point that the kids are having with any piece of content," she says.

In addition to hearing multiple ideas for solutions to their problems, kids get to know each other-and learn to see each other as experts in the room.

"Problem speed dating ultimately teaches them that as a society or as a person, you're not alone," Beachboard says. "And reaching out to others is important because that's where the magic happens. It happens when we use each other and we use the strength that every person has."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Building Problem-Solving Skills Through 'Speed Dating'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When students solve each other's problems, they gain confidence in their own skills and witness the power of collaboration in real time.

# data[].attributes.body
The team competition is fierce in this informal assessment activity, in which students have to work together to win.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
To say that students are engaged in Nicole Goepper's French class at Fauquier High School in Warrenton, Virginia, is an understatement. Her lessons are peppered with games, songs, and even dancing, which keeps students on their toes. Her whiteboard relay strategy is especially captivating-and it can be used to assess any concept that can be assigned as a task that students complete by working together.

In Goepper's class, she most frequently uses it for verb conjugation. She calls out a verb, counts down from three, "and it's off to the races!" Each student on the team completes one subject-verb portion of the task and passes to their adjacent teammate, until all subjects are conjugated.

Says Goepper, "If somebody gets stuck, they've got their team to help them, but they're still the one that's actually writing it. Once the task goes all the way around and is completed, they stick the whiteboard on their head and say, "Fini!" And by sticking it on their head, the other teams can't see what they wrote. Also, when it's on their head, they can't change answers. No cheating in this fast-paced game!

Goepper awards points for each round: "First place, they get three points. Second place gets two points. And then if any team just has it correct, they get a point. If they did get it wrong initially, sorry, no points, but if they fix it and show me, OK, you get a point.They are encouraged to go back and fix mistakes."

At the end of all the rounds, the team with the most points gets paper euros, which they save up throughout the year and use for prizes.

The benefits of this strategy are hard to number. In addition to being a fun informal assessment, Goepper adds, "it's an easy prep for the teacher. It can be done impromptu. If you start seeing that something needs to be reviewed, it's easy to go into. Because they're in teams, there's that interaction because they want to win. And by having the pressure from your teammates wanting to win, you get a high level of achievement. It might be messy handwriting, but that's OK. "

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The team competition is fierce in this informal assessment activity, in which students have to work together to win.

# data[].attributes.body
When students need to get their wiggles out so they can settle down to learn, this simple movement-based brain break does the trick.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Third- and fourth-grade teacher Fiona Medley, at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Elementary School (PETES), in Gatineau, Quebec, has a great brain break that brings her learners back to attention when they get restless-she writes action words on Popsicle sticks and draws them as prompts that allow students to explore how to move to the word written on the stick. "[Jitter sticks] are a great way for students to expend their energy and for teachers to focus the students," Medley says. "The movement really activates their brains."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When students need to get their wiggles out so they can settle down to learn, this simple movement-based brain break does the trick.

# data[].attributes.headline
Putting Curiosity at the Heart of Scientific Inquiry

# data[].attributes.subject
Putting Curiosity at the Heart of Scientific Inquiry

# data[].attributes.body
When science teachers ask their classes to formulate good questions, they tap into students’ natural interest in the world around them—and build engagement and motivation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Putting Curiosity at the Heart of Scientific Inquiry

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When science teachers ask their classes to formulate good questions, they tap into students’ natural interest in the world around them—and build engagement and motivation.

# data[].attributes.headline
Helping Students Reacclimate to Being With Others All Day

# data[].attributes.subject
Helping Students Reacclimate to Being With Others All Day

# data[].attributes.body
Many students are still a little overwhelmed at being around their peers, though they’re also excited. Some simple strategies can help them adjust to being back in school.

The start of the 2021–22 school year has been rough. Students across the world are experiencing “broken belongings”—a detachment from others—as the pandemic created conditions of relative isolation and a significant amount of chronic unpredictability within communities and home environments during the past 20 months.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The start of the 2021-22 school year has been rough. Students across the world are experiencing "broken belongings"-a detachment from others-as the pandemic created conditions of relative isolation and a significant amount of chronic unpredictability within communities and home environments during the past 20 months.

We can observe this detachment in student behaviors, which are signals of a nervous system dysregulated by often toxic levels of stress. Our schools are being challenged to return to some type of normalcy even as we move through the third academic year of a global pandemic. The social loss our students are carrying is palpable.

Two mornings and afternoons a week, I am co-teaching in seventh-grade classrooms in a large middle school, and as I walk down Hallway B, I feel the tension in the air. As a staff, we are wondering how to reclaim feelings of safety and connection so that sustainable learning can occur. The nervous system is social, and has plasticity, but we require safety and a sense of belonging to access the frontal regions of the brain that hold our abilities to problem-solve, pay attention, emotionally regulate, and thoughtfully respond, which we all need to feel competent, autonomous, and motivated.

The destructive TikTok challenges that have gone viral in many of our secondary schools, accompanied by defiance and destruction of school property, are behaviors that demonstrate how distorted belonging feels better to students than the isolation of the recent past-these highly irrational challenges are often driven by the developmental need for attachment to others.

We need to harness students' energy and attachment to each other, and follow the nature of the child. Our seventh-grade team has been meeting to cultivate ways we can begin to rebuild trust and connection through our procedures with the increase of predictability, safety, and relational conditions. We are and will be continuing to integrate these practices at the beginning and end of classes and during transitions.

Focusing Students' Feelings of Attachment Productively

Board games: We are setting up board game days twice a month in our advisory classes in our middle schools, and two times a week in the elementary schools, integrating these times within our procedures and setting up station rotations where students move from Battleship to Guess Who, Operation, Connect Four, and many other games focusing on cooperation, collaboration attention and fun. The goal here is to have students rotate to different games and different partners to relearn how to be with one another without technology.

We will not be using our Chromebooks or phones as we set up group norms-through discussions with the students-to establish expectations and predictability:

What does cooperation look like?

How do we disagree?

What are the best ways to move from station to station?

The focus is not on winning but on collaboration and inclusion. What will this look like?

Creative expression: When we draw, journal, and create with free-style art mediums, we can express beliefs, feelings and sensations of pain, hurt, disappointment and loss, creating images of these emotions and conditions. This kind of expression can help students share their unique identities through language, beliefs, and cultural celebrations, which schools often misunderstand because they come from social and cultural norms and values of a community different from the social and cultural norms and values of the school.

Focused Attention Practices

Focused attention practices require connection with others as they help prepare our nervous systems for a state of calm alertness. We integrate these practices throughout our procedures, providing practices that deepen collaboration and empathy.

Dedicate This One: In this focused attention practice, students create an image or write a few words that they want to share about someone they appreciate. As they think of this person, they breathe deeply for one minute, sharing their love and hopes through images or words of gratitude and comfort. They then have the option of sharing their dedication with a partner.

Sharing Worries and Celebrations: Students write down or draw a worry, problem, or even a celebration they want to share. Folding up the paper, they hand it off to a partner. Partners then respond to one another with an image or words. Before implementing this practice, we need to discuss agreements and trust within our classroom, and doing this activity should always be a choice.

Coregulating With Your Partner: Have a student choose a partner. Without talking, one student should find a rhythm in their breathing, body percussion, or drumming on the desk, and see if their partner can match the pattern. Then they can change it up as the other person takes the lead.

Mirror Me: In this coregulatory practice, one partner creates a pattern of body movements-such as a jumping jack followed by squatting or arm movements-that the other person will mirror back. It's fun for students to speed up and slow down these movements to see how closely their partner can follow. Students in each pair take turns leading.

Dual Drawing and Journaling: In this coregulatory practice, partners share a sheet of paper for one to two minutes. When the time starts, one partner draws a line or shape and then passes it to the other person so they can add a line or a shape; they continue to do this for the set time period without talking to one another. When the time is up, they can talk about what they drew together, giving it a title and any description that feels appropriate to both of them.

In a variation on this, students can use the same pattern with dual journaling or storytelling. For the set time period, students pass a sheet of paper back and forth, contributing a sentence or two at a time to create a story together. The teacher can provide prompts about places, objects, or other themes so that students can connect their stories to what they're learning or to each other. They may write about their similarities, differences, interests, or passions.

Compassion for others draws upon brain networks for empathy, and when these networks are activated, we develop the nervous system states that cultivate kindness-and kindness is the most therapeutic practice for transformational change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Helping Students Reacclimate to Being With Others All Day

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The start of the 2021-22 school year has been rough. Students across the world are experiencing "broken belongings"-a detachment from others-as the pandemic created conditions of relative isolation and a significant amount of chronic unpredictability within communities and home environments during the past 20 months.

# data[].attributes.headline
When student behavior is challenging, a blend of grace + consequences can help.

# data[].attributes.subject
When student behavior is challenging, a blend of grace + consequences can help.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I remember when my school stopped allowing teachers to take away recess time for misbehavior.

Some teachers lamented that they couldn't give kids laps around the track anymore or have them sit out to finish missing work. This was never a classroom management tool I personally ascribed to, but I was tempted!

Some days I just couldn't seem to think of the right response to a student's misbehavior. When students make a poor choice, you want the outcome of changed (improved) behavior. Since recess, choice time in the classroom, and eating with friends tend to be desirable, teachers will reach to take away these positive experiences as a punishment hoping it will drive a student to do the right thing so they don't miss out again.

I've heard some adults say things like, "You wasted my time, so I'm wasting yours." While this may sound spiteful (and I believe some "classroom management" can fall into that trap) I understand the motivation on the part of the teacher. It's frustrating to deal with undesirable behaviors.

If we do take away these desired activities for something unrelated, however, we are harming that relationship with the student. If we take away a pleasurable activity for goofing off on the computer in class, talking to a friend, passing notes, talking back rudely, destroying school supplies, making a mess and not cleaning it up, saying a curse word, or a host of other things, the punishment often feels disconnected from the loss.

The result is that students feel resentful of the teacher, and there's rarely a sense of repentance.

Many responses are then focused on good behavior. Some teachers reward good behavior with weekly treasure chest trips or classroom economy systems. We know we should affirm positive choices directly to students.

I personally have struggled with systems where rewards are tied to nearly every behavior. I want students to work hard because they are empowered to learn not because they will earn popsicles or extra recess. I never liked the idea that I was constantly bargaining for time or attention with kids as if I had to prove that learning was "worth it" only because worksheet completion = toy chest. If every response is to give stickers or tickets or fuzzy balls for good behavior, the advice "Focus on the positive" may leave you exasperated, saying, "I know! But what about the bad behavior?"

Listen to the audio below,
or subscribe in your podcast app

As a co-teacher of mine used to joke, "You never see a cop pull someone over and say, 'Great job driving. Don't be like that person speeding up there. You're doing the right thing.'" That's not to say positive praise and reinforcing language doesn't go a long way. It absolutely does. Ignoring some behaviors also has its moments. At some point, though, there need to be consequences, right?

Here's my approach.

Choosing consequences

In the world of behavior, ABC is an acronym for antecedent, behavior, and consequence. The antecedent is what comes before the behavior; the consequence is what follows.

Often, if we can get to know students really well, we can prevent undesired behaviors by controlling the antecedent or at least mitigating the impact (notifying students of transition time, giving a break when the class seems restless, stopping an activity short that's not going well, adjusting expectations or stepping in with scaffolds when frustration peaks).

A consequence might just be a natural outcome of a behavior. For example, if you touch a hot stove, you get burned. If you are rude to a friend, they walk away and won't play with you. Sometimes, these connections are obvious to students; other times, they may need some guidance to help draw those connections. Consequences can be intentional on the teacher's part in order to guide students to draw a strong connection between the chosen behavior and the consequence. The term "logical consequences" is one I've heard primarily through Responsive Classroom.

I am a big fan of Responsive Classroom. If you've never heard of this classroom management philosophy, I encourage you to check out the articles or books available on their website.

The three types of logical consequences in a Responsive Classroom are:

Take a Break (a positive time out system to regain focus)

Reparations (You break it, you fix it through cleaning up a spill, apology letters, helping someone you hurt)

Loss of Privilege (taking away something that is a privilege in the classroom, not a need)

Take a Break is something that is often used with very young children due to the "time out" association, but I found it extremely helpful with older children, too. It is helpful to remember for adults even; I'm sure you can imagine a time when you just needed to take a break! If a student is distracted or doing something at an inappropriate time or calling out, taking a break is by far the best strategy I've had for dealing with this.

Since I set up this routine so positively in my classroom, I think some students don't look at it negatively. I know this might cause concern for some if a student is not feeling guilty for calling out for example, but the thing is - it works. Taking a break works.

Having students step away, think about their behavior, mess with a few fidgets, and return to their desk really does make them more well behaved upon return. When faced with classroom management decisions, we should be less concerned with whether students are guilty or bothered by their misbehavior and more concerned with whether our choices as teachers are resulting in positive behavior outcomes.

R eparations is the type of logical consequences that I've found easiest and most meaningful. Children are often taught how to apologize when hurting someone's feelings. Teens and adults might not want to "make it up" to someone, but they often recognize that they should and how they could do it. Apology letters take time and can be meaningful, so don't forget about this option.

Loss of Privilege, though, is one that could be misguided, because we first need to ask ourselves, "What is a privilege that can be taken away?"

Removing privileges

A privilege is something that can be replaced with an alternative or taken away without severe repercussions. You might need to get creative. Here are some things I could take away if they were being misused:

Computers. If a student isn't using their computer correctly or they are on a non-approved website, I take it away immediately. The immediacy of my response is what helps solidify the connection. Almost anything can be done on paper instead; even many online assessments can be printed.

Stuffies, play-doh, or fidgets at desks. I have taken to letting kids have a special something at their desk. It makes them comfortable and gives them something to play with. I have specific times of day when it's appropriate to use things and other times when it's not. If rules aren't followed, it goes to me for the day.

Flexible or Choice Seating. If a student isn't following directions or quietly working in a spot or staying focused, move them back to an assigned desk or spot that is theirs. Even at the epitome of my flexible seating arrangement, I still had one table spot or desk space for each student so that they knew that was their home base to go to.

Pencils. If a student isn't using a pencil correctly or can't hold onto any, give them something else - a crayon, a crazy large pen that you'll remember they have, a colored pencil, whatever. They may need something to write with, but it does not have to be a pencil. The same is true of markers, etc.

Classroom Jobs. If they're not doing their classroom job, I just take it away and give it to someone who will do it. I've done this and had the original student really step up and take it back on as a result.

Games. If students are too loud while playing a game or not focused on the academic aspects enough, they can just do more of their worksheets or read independently. The days I just stop an activity (such as a fun Jeopardy-style game) before we're even finished really solidifies for students the effect. The immediacy of "this volume = we have to stop now" really helps them know exactly what I mean by "too loud". We have lost the privilege of this activity; we can try again tomorrow.

Stations. I love doing small groups and stations, but if students were not following procedures correctly and ready for class on time, I would take them away for the day. I have only had to do this once with any group of students. One class that was never ready on time and transitioned agonizingly slowly still loved stations. I warned them they had to be ready on time (which was 3 minutes after entry) with notebooks and pencils out. The trick was that as soon as I implemented that rule, I had to follow through on it. I used sub-plan worksheets instead of the lesson plans I had prepared.

Being late vs. on time. If you are always late to activities, that's something to reflect on as a teacher; however, if there is a day when students need to line up again because they were chatting or didn't clean up appropriately and need to go back in the classroom, that extra minute or two will make them late to PE, Music, Recess, or other class. That is a natural consequence because they were not ready. Again, if this is always happening, that's a problem to address in a class meeting or a procedure that needs to be more explicitly taught on the part of the teacher. Sometimes, though, being late is just a natural consequence of not following expectations.

Choice. I provide students with many choices for activities, topics to research, books to read, partners to work with, etc. Restrictions become the consequence for not using choice judiciously. If a student is not behaving appropriately in the hallway with a buddy, they get assigned a partner. If a student is not finishing work at their own pace, they must finish page 1 in 10 minutes.

When students have something taken away, there needs to be a reasonable replacement. If you can't replace or do without the loss, it's something they need. I get concerned sometimes when teachers think about the loss of privilege for things that are in fact not privileges but needs.

Classroom meetings: Your most powerful tool for creating a respectful, inclusive class culture

Understanding student needs that shouldn't be taken away

The problem with taking away recess or lunch with friends is that these seem like "extra" or "just fun" things, but as we may have realized over the past year and half, these are essential parts of the school day. They provide socialization, feedback on friendship, learning about boundaries, exercise, and opportunities for creativity.

If I take away all socialization and isolate a child, that is not healthy for their well-being. They no longer belong to the class. If I punish a student for poor choices by removing all pleasure, I've removed any motivation for them to come to my class tomorrow.

Similarly, I've heard teachers say that students lost the privilege of going to the bathroom during their class; this doesn't sit well with me because this is a right of students to use the restroom especially since you don't understand every medical problem or reason someone might need to go. Maybe they lose the option of traveling with a buddy and need to be watched walking down the hallway by you from your door. Maybe you have to call the office so they are escorted until they can be trusted again. Maybe they need an assigned classroom buddy. All of those pieces are privileges but the need to be able to go to the bathroom remains.

Some teachers will respond, "But I know they don't have to go." If you put more restrictions around going to the bathroom, they will be less likely to go unnecessarily in the first place. That's not to encourage you to have lots of restrictions around the bathroom for everyone; I personally feel that trying to monitor that intensely is a waste of energy. I know that when I have a day filled with projects and stations and partner work, kids just don't need to go to the bathroom as often. They are not thinking about it as much and tend to go as we're traveling and transitioning around the building.

Arguing over whether or not they're allowed to go will likely drain your energy. Instead, say, "Due to ____ incident, I will send you with _____ or I will watch you go to _____ (specific location down the hall) from my door."

As another example, if I take away all writing utensils or all paper, that does impact learning and can shame students. They might feel as though there's no point in them being there.

We must keep in mind that guilt and shame is not our goal as educators; our goal is improved behavior. What action can we take that will improve behavior?

Fostering belonging, significance, and fun

The thing that actually sold me on Responsive Classroom was an opening activity in a training where we as teachers had to think of a time where we felt belonging, significance, and fun. I personally thought of being a camp counselor. I was a part of a team. What I did really mattered to kids and families. Plus, I had so much fun! What do you think of it? Don't you want more of that?

Responsive Classroom is about creating that atmosphere for kids. I can't imagine anything better than a classroom where students feel like they belong, like their learning matters in the world, and that they're having fun. These are needs for students. They need to feel reinforced with positive language. They need rest. They need to feel cared about. They need socialization. This means that I need to consider talking to friends, building relationships, recess, and play as needs. They are not merely "nice to have."

Belonging may feel like it's great if it happens, but if it doesn't, it's on the kid for pushing others away. Is it, though? I've heard teachers say, "That kid and I just didn't click." It's our responsibility as teachers to try to connect to kids. It won't be easy for every student, but we can't accept that a student just doesn't fit in with us or our class.

Significance can feel like a luxury with pacing guides chasing you and lesson plans that need to be jam-packed with standards. If we don't consider the meaningfulness of our curriculum and our lessons, students will have a hard time feeling like what they do in class matters. We need to consider the purpose of our lessons and our class in general.

Fun can make teachers think, "Wait, I'm here to teach. Students are here to learn," I'm not going to argue with you. The thing is since learning is connected to our emotions, we need to consider how to support students' emotional well-being. If a student is happy and having fun, they are going to learn more. Plus, infusing fun into lessons is a great way to avoid burnout as a teacher.

If we can create classrooms that foster belonging, significance, and fun, students want to participate fully and want to behave. And if they want to behave and do the right thing, then you can focus on helping them accomplish that goal by taking a break or repairing relationships vs. trying to find a suitable punishment.

5 ways to prevent burnout by bringing more playfulness to your classroom (even if you teach middle or high school!)

Supporting kids who struggle with socialization

Another tenet of Responsive Classroom is that the social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum. We need to support students in their social development, no matter their age. If their behavior toward other students and how they socialize is the problem, Take a Break is often a better response to this type of issue. If I create an extremely isolating experience for a child, this is taking away a need. They need socialization, so I don't want to remove them from the entirety of an experience, they just need to take a break from it.

If they are being rude to classmates during lunch, they need to take a break from their table. If they hit someone at recess, they need to take a break, often before they can make reparations and apologize. If they are frustrated with a classmate and cursing or leaving a group, they need to take a break. Perhaps they lose the privilege of choosing a partner or they lose the privilege of a type of recess activity such as kickball.

The reason I prefer the language of "Take a Break" in these instances is that it reminds the student they need to get back in control of their body and mind, they need time and space to be themselves again, this is not a permanent loss, and we need to take care of ourselves in order to be with others.

Thinking of this as a "break" is helpful for me, too, because it reminds me that I should not seek to take away the socialization need for too long. Students need to be able to earn that back.

Giving additional privileges that foster grace in the classroom

Let's consider a case study for this. One student who I'll call Mitch had a reputation from previous years of not doing any work, getting sent to other teachers' classrooms who would ignore him or somehow shame him into doing something, ignoring lessons and reading, destroying objects and classroom supplies or other students' supplies out of a quiet resentment, and more.

The reaction I saw from many teachers to him was to enforce harsher punishments, remove him from interaction with students, give up on any completion of work at all and give bad grades, and generally be frustrated and helpless. I did not endorse the negative behaviors displayed, but I did make a choice that was surprising to him and anyone I've explained it to.

I gave him a free choice time during math class.

My math class was structured so that I had a number sense routine and/or mini-lesson with notetaking to start class, then 2 stations. There were 4 stations total so it took a student 2 days to go through all 4 stations. The stations included an online math program, math worksheets, a game with a partner or small group, and differentiated lessons and practice with me.

I noticed early on in the school year that Mitch refused to do any of the stations. He would rather just sit there. While sitting, he often read, played with supplies, or disrupted other students while working. He wouldn't even come to the station with me without prodding which most kids, even some of my most challenging students, loved for the focused attention. I was frustrated by this behavior, and I know many, many teachers who are very frustrated by students reading through lessons or reading instead of completing work.

I took Mitch aside and explained to him how it was important for him to learn math and that I wanted to spend time with him in a small group. I also explained that I could see that he was frustrated that he didn't want to do certain activities and would rather do other things. I gave him the choice of swapping out one station (as long as it wasn't the teacher station) to independently read.

This was definitely flying in the face of every piece of advice I had heard about this kid. Everyone else said he needed more boundaries and harsher responses because he didn't care what teachers thought. They also essentially told me to give up on him doing activities with other kids because other kids didn't like him and he didn't like other kids.

From the day I offered that free reading time as a station, I kid you not, he got almost all of his math work done. He took notes during whole class instruction. He paid attention to me. He often did read during one station but not always. He often played games with other students and seemed to start to enjoy them. Sometimes he did all 4 math stations or just read after he finished some of his worksheet. This worked like magic.

Were there still a few interpersonal concerns throughout the year that I had to sort through? Yes. But this one move made a world of difference. If Mitch didn't complete something that was expected of him or he wasn't taking notes, all I had to explain was that I needed to take away his privilege of swapping out a station for reading.

I couldn't tell you what possessed me to make this move in the first place, and I wouldn't recommend it without knowing another student's situation, but this choice turned around the entire math block for this student. I completely believe it saved my relationship with him and ensured he learned more over the course of the year by far. I started the year maybe getting 20 minutes of his attention over 2 days and in return for giving up 20 minutes of math time, I got 100 minutes of his effort and attention. For me, that was an obvious win.

Some of you may be thinking, "Didn't other kids notice? Didn't they want to just read, too? Didn't they just skip out on work?" Honestly, no. They didn't. I have found that even when providing daily rewards to kids on behavior plans, other students don't usually whine about what other kids get. They know that that student was not behaving well.

Because Mitch was behaving better and working most of the time, other students were thrilled with that turn of events. He wasn't bothering them and he was happy, so they were happy. They didn't want to mess that up.

Also, they genuinely liked the worksheets which were high activity and puzzle-based, they liked being on the computer, and they loved time with me and games with one another. Sometimes they'd goof off and take too long to get logged in, but I could talk to them about that. I also have explained to kids who questioned behavior plans why I didn't need to check in with them as often and why I made different choices for different students and that was ok.

Leaning into grace when things seem to get worse

In the example of Mitch, giving more leeway ended up getting a better outcome for me. I have realized this to be true in many instances. As a classwide example, I give kids 10 minutes of quiet time every day where they can do anything they want as long as it is independent and silent. They can play with play-doh, draw, rest, read, and get ahead on work or study. For one particularly challenging class, I even let them play games on the computer during quiet time. Typically, I avoid computers at this time and like their brain to be engaged in different ways.

You may be thinking, "So with your worst behaved, most academically challenging class you let them play nonsense games? That's backwards!"

The point is that I could take this privilege away easily if something went wrong. They LOVED this quiet time, so their entire behavior throughout the day improved because they knew we started quiet time when writing class was finished and we were all cleaned up. I also could delay their start to quiet time if they needed to do something with me first or talk to me about a behavior choice. It created flexibility for me and it motivated them. This was not a reward. Quiet time was a given. There was merely a loss of that privilege as needed.

The reason why I prefer this mindset is that I don't have to keep track of anything. I don't have to keep track of points. I don't have to spell out "EXTRA RECESS" on the board and then drop everything when we earn it. I don't have to navigate an app or defend positive or negative points to parents. If they hadn't handed in their paper and cleaned up, they couldn't start quiet time. This is an example of a logical consequence. Logically, you can't do this until you've done that. It creates a small sense of urgency to follow expectations which can be helpful.

Remembering that fun isn't earned; it's built in

Fun, rest, and academic choice are embedded into the culture of my classroom. If a student is not meeting the expectations of kindness, responsibility, and respect within the culture of the classroom, I need to consider what consequence is going to best guide the student towards the desired behavior? Which consequence will best create a connection between behavior and consequence?

Upon reflection, one of the blessings of teaching through 2020-21 school year mostly virtually and then in person with exhaustive and ever-changing protocols was that I realized I could actually still teach a lot in less time. I had to build in extra time for transitions. We had to eat snacks outside which took longer. We had screen breaks built in while online. I had one whole day less to teach per week. I couldn't muster the energy to even really use the full time I did have with kids.

As I'm looking through my lesson plans from last year, I'm realizing I managed to still teach major units, complete projects, teach new skills on a computer, and foster community through extra long morning meetings. I was able to invest time into breaks and I didn't feel guilty about it because I knew I didn't have as much time anyway.

My curriculum had been cut to reflect that loss, and I truly still taught a lot. We took breaks, and I got through stuff anyway. We spent part of language arts sharing about all sorts of stuff, and we still managed to learn. It was okay. Giving grace was okay. It didn't backfire on me. It was what we all needed.

When no one's showing YOU grace ... make space instead

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When student behavior is challenging, a blend of grace + consequences can help.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Some teachers lamented that they couldn't give kids laps around the track anymore or have them sit out to finish missing work. This was never a classroom management tool I personally ascribed to, but I was tempted! Some days I just couldn't seem to think of the right response to a student's misbehavior.

# data[].attributes.body
What brings you joy in your class?

What brings joy to your students?

Where do you find sources of creativity and how do you typically incorporate them into your classroom?

# data[].attributes.headline
What neuroscience teaches us about co-thriving with students

# data[].attributes.subject
What neuroscience teaches us about co-thriving with students

# data[].attributes.body
Want some practical strategies backed by brain research that can help you and your students co-thrive together?

I’m talking with Dr. Rebecca Branstetter, Ph.D. She’s a school psychologist, speaker, and author on a mission to help children thrive by supporting educators, mental health providers, and families. She is the founder of The Thriving Students Collective and Thrive Hive TV™  Network, online platforms for boosting the mental health and learning needs of children. She is also my co-creator for our professional development course called How to Reverse Educator Burnout.

Read (or listen) as we discuss:

What can people who aren’t current classroom teachers add to conversations about educator burnout?

What are the brain research-based markers of thriving in life and in work?

What are some specific practices backed by neuroscience that teachers can use to make their classrooms a place where they co-thrive with kids?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What neuroscience teaches us about co-thriving with students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Want some practical strategies backed by brain research that can help you and your students co-thrive together? I'm talking with Dr. Rebecca Branstetter, Ph.D. She's a school psychologist, speaker, and author on a mission to help children thrive by supporting educators, mental health providers, and families.

# data[].attributes.headline
Thinking Classrooms: interview with Peter Liljedahl

# data[].attributes.subject
Thinking Classrooms: interview with Peter Liljedahl

# data[].attributes.body
This post was supposed to be just for math teachers. I was going to share an instructional approach that, as dramatic as this sounds, has taken the math world by storm. The methodology is called Thinking Classrooms, and now that I have gotten a closer look at it, I can see that it could work in just about any content area. Built on 14 key practices, it’s a way of teaching that gets students up on their feet, collaborating and thinking through challenging problems on a daily basis.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to my interview with Peter Liljedahl (transcript):
Sponsored by Listenwise and Wipebook

This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What's the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org?

This post was supposed to be just for math teachers. I was going to share an instructional approach that, as dramatic as this sounds, has taken the math world by storm. The methodology is called Thinking Classrooms, and now that I have gotten a closer look at it, I can see that it could work in just about any content area. Built on 14 key practices, it's a way of teaching that gets students up on their feet, collaborating and thinking through challenging problems on a daily basis.

When I first saw a video of this strategy in action, I was immediately captivated. Take a look:

The more I learn about the Thinking Classrooms method, the better it gets. Thousands of math teachers are already using this approach, and it's spreading to other subject areas as well.

Joining me to talk about this on the podcast is Peter Liljedahl, professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, the creator of the Thinking Classrooms method, and the author of the book, Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning ( Amazon | Bookshop.org). In our interview, which you can listen to above, Liljedahl talked with me in depth about the Thinking Classroom. Some key points are summarized below.

How Thinking Classrooms Got Started

Liljedahl began to formulate his approach after spending hours observing in dozens of different math classrooms. What he saw was not surprising: classroom after classroom of students who were not engaged and not actively learning.

"By and large students spend most of their class time not thinking, at least not in ways we know they need to think in order to be successful in mathematics." Liljedahl explains. "If they're not thinking, they're not learning. And everywhere I go classrooms look more alike than they look different: Teaching and learning in math classrooms adheres to a set of normative structures that date back to the dawn of public education over 170 years ago. We're going to have to break through some of these normative structures because they are actually creating environments that are not conducive to thinking."

What followed was a 15-year process figuring out how to break down these institutionally normative structures that were, as Liljedahl puts it, "holding non-thinking in place." Breaking those norms down means putting in place other practices that have now become foundational to the Thinking Classrooms approach.

The Practices

A Thinking Classroom is built on 14 practices, many of which were developed by looking at what was already happening in typical classroom, doing the exact opposite, and seeing what happened. Some of the key practices are summarized below.

Thinking Tasks

Unlike in a more traditional classroom, where the lesson might start with direct instruction from the teacher, a typical day in a Thinking Classroom starts with the teacher assigning thinking tasks for students to work on in groups, and direct instruction is only given on an as-needed basis.

"In a traditional classroom," he explains, "we show the students how to do it, then we do one together, then they practice it on their own, the classic I do, we do, you do, which promotes - whether you want it or not - a form of behavior called mimicking. So these students are just going to mimic their way through. In a Thinking Classroom, in order to get students to think rather than mimic, we have to remove the I do."

When they are first introducing this approach, teachers are advised to make the thinking tasks non-curricular, fun challenges that will help develop a culture of thinking. Once students are used to the format, the tasks become curriculum-based, often the same kinds of problems you'd find in the resources you'd normally use, but Liljedahl points out that they are carefully sequenced, "very carefully constructed," he says, "whereby the tasks are getting incrementally more challenging and are being given to students as their abilities are incrementally developing."

Vertical, Non-permanent Surfaces

Probably the most distinctive feature of a Thinking Classroom is the use of vertical, non-permanent surfaces, where students do the tasks, standing up, in groups of three.

Why vertical? "When it goes vertical, everyone has the same orientation to the work," Liljedahl explains. "When it's vertical, they can see each other's work, which promotes knowledge mobility and gives greater access to more ideas. When it's vertical, I can see everything. I don't have to wait for that quiz next Friday to see if the students understood it. I can see right now, and then I can intervene right now. I can't do that if they're horizontal."

But there's one more benefit of vertical surfaces that Liljedahl learned from interviewing students, one reason he felt eclipsed all the others. "It turns out that when students are sitting, they feel anonymous. And the further they sit from the teacher, the more anonymous they feel. And when students feel anonymous, they disengage. What standing up did was took away their anonymity. It made students not feel invisible, and then they didn't disengage."

The other important feature of these surfaces is that they are non-permanent. Unlike paper, which can't be reused, an erasable surface like a whiteboard or chalkboard turns out to be more conducive to thinking tasks. Liljedahl and his colleagues found this out through experimentation.

"If we compared a group working on a whiteboard versus a group working on flip chart paper," he says, "the group working on the whiteboards, they'll start within 20 seconds. They'll start making notations on the board. They'll try anything and everything because they feel like they can just erase it if it's wrong. The students who are tasked with working on flip chart paper, they will not make a single notation for upwards of three minutes, because 'This is not erasable. What I put here has to be perfect.' So there's a lot of agonizing, and that hesitation leads to a lower form of thinking."

Visibly Random Groups

Students collaborate on tasks in randomly assigned groups of three, and that randomization has to be visible. Liljedahl explains why on the Building Thinking Classrooms website:

"Whether we grouped students strategically or we let students form their own groups, we found that 80% of students entered these groups with the mindset that, within this group, their job is not to think. However, when we frequently formed visibly random groups, within six weeks, 100% of students entered their groups with the mindset that they were not only going to think, but that they were going to contribute. In addition, the use of frequent and visibly random groupings was shown to break down social barriers within the room, increase knowledge mobility, reduce stress, and increase enthusiasm for mathematics."

Another important feature is that each group only gets one writing instrument; this forces members to collaborate, rather than work in parallel.

Consolidation Practices

Once students have worked through the assigned tasks at the boards, they transition into what Liljedahl calls consolidation, activities that reinforce each individual student's learning.

"It turns out that there's a difference between what we call collective knowing and doing and individual knowing and doing. Working collectively at the whiteboards and working individually are actually very different modalities; there needs to be some sort of a transfer."

The consolidation practices that facilitate that transfer are:

guided gallery walks, where the teacher points out key elements of student work on the vertical surfaces

note making, where students construct their own meaningful notes: "They take their learning from the day and find a way to represent that in such a way that they can in part have a record, but more importantly go through that process of reification, where they are taking these ideas that started very informal and unstructured, became more formal and structured through the consolidation and now become even more formal and structured through their note making activity."

check your understanding questions, a form of self-assessment students do on their own to determine how well they have grasped the material

How to Get Started

The book (linked above) is a great place for math teachers to start, but if you're not a math teacher, that shouldn't stop you. "These practices are being enacted in every curriculum now," Liljedahl says. "Language arts, social studies, science. There are slight variances to it, but fundamentally what changes is what constitutes a thinking task, which is Chapter 1 of the book, and what constitutes a sequence of thinking tasks, which is Chapter 9. Everything else more or less stays the same."

Interested teachers should also join any one of the online communities of teachers who are already running Thinking Classrooms of their own. The largest is the Building Thinking Classrooms Facebook group, but Liljedahl says there are many others.

"Try it," he says. "The book gives you plenty of resources and ways to enact it in a way that's almost guaranteed to have some early success so that you can see for yourself what this looks like. I always say that my book has stories and data in it, but those are my stories and my data. The real data, the real stories that are going to impact your practice, that are going to sustain your practice, are the story and the data that happen in your own classroom, right. Give it a try. See what happens."

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Thinking Classroom: An Interview with Peter Liljedahl

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In too many classrooms, students aren't really thinking. It's time to try something different.

# data[].attributes.headline
What does a ‘thinking classroom’ look like and sound like? 

# data[].attributes.subject
What does a ‘thinking classroom’ look like and sound like? 

# data[].attributes.body
Learn why this model of teaching and learning that focused on math conversations at vertical non-permanent surfaces, flexible and random groupings, small-group instruction, and problem-solving tasks and experiences is proving to have a positive impact on math learning.

Want more?
Peter Liljedahl talks with publisher, Erin Null, about teachers' frequently asked questions.
Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: Part 1
August 20, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmV5EHDNbf0&t=314s

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What does a ‘thinking classroom’ look like and sound like? Learn why this model of teaching and learning that focused on math conversations at vertical non-permanent surfaces, flexible and random groupings, small-group instruction, and problem-solving tasks and experiences is proving to have a positive impact on math learning.

Learn more at https://www.dcp.edu.gov.on.ca/en/learning/high-impact-instructional-practices-in-mathematics-resource-and-supports

# data[].attributes.headline
The free ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool is a total game-changer for teachers.

# data[].attributes.subject
The free ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool is a total game-changer for teachers.

# data[].attributes.body
There are so many ways you can teach more effectively and efficiently by automating some of the low-level aspects of your work. ChatGPT can help free you up to focus on the most important (and rewarding) aspects of your job: connecting with students, helping them think critically, synthesizing and analyzing information together, and so on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The free ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool is a total game-changer for teachers.

There are so many ways you can teach more effectively and efficiently by automating some of the low-level aspects of your work. ChatGPT can help free you up to focus on the most important (and rewarding) aspects of your job: connecting with students, helping them think critically, synthesizing and analyzing information together, and so on.

You can use ChatGPT to cut your workload drastically. It won't create the perfect text for you on the first request, and will not take a task completely off your plate. But it CAN accelerate your workload: you can accomplish a task in 10-15 minutes when it used to take you an hour.

Here are some ChatGPT prompts that teachers in our online community have used successfully:

"Write exemplar responses for open-ended questions" - Gwen D.

"Write an email to parents about disruptive behavior in the classroom" - Kathy G.

"Write SMART goals" and "Write a 3-day lesson plan for a new prep" - Gayle A.

"Write IEP for 11-year-old boy, 6th grade, ADHD, trouble with expressive writing, volume of writing" - Clarissa R.

"Generic templates for letters of recommendation" and "Make a list of class rules" -Jennifer S.

"Write a letter of recommendation for a student who has this list of attributes..." -Hannah H.

"Create fill-in-the-blank verb practice for Spanish conjugations" - Lisa S.

"What are some positive impacts and negative consequences of the Industrial Revolution in nineteenth-century Great Britain?" - Wendy D. (used to generate a document that her class used for a document citation activity)

In this 12-page PDF reference guide, you'll find step-by-step explanations and specific, practical ideas to help you understand the following:

What is ChatGPT?

What can ChatGPT be used for?

How do I get started with ChatGPT?

Tips for getting the best results with ChatGPT

How teachers are using ChatGPT to save time in lesson planning

How teachers are using ChatGPT to save time with instructional delivery

How teachers are using ChatGPT to save time in grading and assessment

Other ways ChatCGPT is saving teachers time

4 easy ways to get started today

A final reminder

Additional resources

Our team at TruthforTeachers has spent many hours compiling the most practical time-saving uses for teachers with ChatGPT. Each recommendation is one that has been tested by us and/or by practicing classroom teachers, so we know...it WORKS!
Enter your email below to have a copy of the PDF sent to your inbox automatically:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Truth For Teachers - Free teacher resource on using ChatGPT

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are so many ways you can teach more effectively and efficiently by automating some of the low-level aspects of your work. ChatGPT can help free you up to focus on the most important (and rewarding) aspects of your job: connecting with students, helping them think critically, synthesizing and analyzing information together, and so on.

# data[].attributes.body
Reach all your students' families

Communicate with families in their home languages to build strong partnerships all year long.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
TalkingPoints - Improving student outcomes through meaningful school-family partnerships.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
TalkingPoints - Improving student outcomes through meaningful school-family partnerships.

# data[].attributes.headline
4 Ways to Reduce Smartphone Distractions

# data[].attributes.subject
4 Ways to Reduce Smartphone Distractions

# data[].attributes.body
If students are allowed to have their phones at your school, you can set parameters to help them focus on their work.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 Ways to Reduce Smartphone Distractions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If students are allowed to have their phones at your school, you can set parameters to help them focus on their work.

# data[].attributes.headline
4 Strategies for Building Momentum in the Spring

# data[].attributes.subject
4 Strategies for Building Momentum in the Spring

# data[].attributes.body
Middle and high school students often feel burned out in the second semester. Prioritizing movement and manageable daily objectives can help.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Middle and high school students often feel burned out in the second semester. Prioritizing movement and manageable daily objectives can help.

One dark, gray morning in early February, tired students stumble into the hallways of their middle school, blinking at the sudden onslaught of fluorescent light. Kira and Bryan walk toward their first-period class, and Bryan sighs. "I didn't do my homework. Maybe I can get it done before class starts." "Me neither," Kira admits. "It's too cold to get up early and finish my work. Spring break isn't until forever. Even my teachers seem exhausted."

Alice Mollon / Ikon Images

Much of the momentum that teachers carefully build during the fall semester seems lost in the spring as everyone in the school building enters survival mode. The stretch between January and April tends to see flagging stamina and a downward trend of performance data. These four strategies can help teachers maintain the momentum of earlier school months and help students not just survive, but thrive.

Prioritize movement

Not surprisingly, inertia interferes with growth. From a purely physical standpoint, sitting still for over 30 minutes is an unhealthy habit. Beyond that, the connection between body and mind health is strong, particularly for active children. When students sit in desks for over 30 minutes, their ability to remain engaged quickly declines, leading to behavioral issues and diluted learning experiences.

In the cold winter months, when exhaustion tends to increase as stamina decreases, it is even more important to keep energy uptake flowing. One strategy is to set a 30-minute timer at the start of instruction. When it goes off, give students 90 seconds to get up and stretch. If the class goes much longer than 60 minutes, reset the timer to go off one more time.
Every day, Kira walks into her social studies class and glances at the objective posted on the board. Today, it is the same as it was yesterday: "Students will analyze a variety of data to determine the root causes that underlie a scarcity of resources." Shaking her head, Kira wonders, "What does that even mean?"
Focus on small, daily objectives

A more accessible objective might read something like, "Students will break down information that explains why people run out of some resources more quickly than others." When learning objectives are packed with jargon or material to be covered over several days, kids struggle to see where learning is headed because the cognitive load of parsing out that bigger picture is overwhelming.

Consider an objective that is large enough to span several days and must therefore be chunked into component parts, such as "Students will design a model to describe the function of a cell." If the teacher wishes to break down the objective into something more manageable for students on a daily basis, these are two more specific examples that fall under the umbrella of the larger target:

1. Students will describe the function of each part of the cell.

2. Students will develop two to three possible ideas for how to depict the cell in a model.

Research shows that if teachers focus learning targets on one measurable outcome each day using a higher-order performance verb per Bloom's Taxonomy, it is much easier for students to see the rationale behind each lesson. Teachers also benefit by remaining focused on specific outcomes rather than becoming distracted by the large number of standards that are possible to assess on any given day.

In addition, teachers can provide relevant support to any students who have not achieved the objective to ensure that everyone meets expectations before moving on to new concepts. That way, students like Kira can finally see the purpose of the objective on the board, understand exactly what it means, and know that achieving this goal links directly to successful performance outcomes.

Avoid mental inertia

Even as students can get overwhelmed by overly broad objectives, they can experience mental inertia when the class does not move forward at a pace that matches their learning speed. Students do not benefit from reteaching or reviewing when they already know the content, so good first instruction coupled with a surgical analysis of classroom data helps teachers determine whether classes are meeting specific learning targets.

Suppose a seventh-grade world studies class is writing persuasive essays about what a democracy should look like with this learning objective: Students will be able to support the central argument with two examples from the text. The teacher can categorize achievement of this target into three sections: exceeds, met, and not yet.

Teachers can provide feedback for each category. For example, in the not yet category, the note might be something like "Some students in this category only included one example. Others didn't find examples that related to their arguments." With this type of analytical tool designed for a snapshot of student progress toward one objective, there is no need to undergo a long process of providing feedback to students.
Bryan stares at his teacher as she looks over his life science homework. This class has been really tough, and he always feels as though he's a little behind. "This isn't what I asked for," his teacher says, handing the report back to him. "You just wrote down the definitions. Can you elaborate on what these cell parts do?" "Sure," Bryan says, walking back to his seat as a familiar sense of dread creeps in. He dutifully copied down the vocabulary terms on his teacher's slide presentation, but he doesn't really understand what they mean. Mitochondria are little squiggly lines that have something to do with energy. Beyond that, he doesn't yet understand how to explain their functionality. Frustrated, he puts his head down.
Talk about and celebrate success

Teachers may be too quick to tell students what is wrong with their work, leading to feedback that is couched in criticism without any examination of what is good. As a result, students grow less certain about their capacity to achieve. To help kids gain confidence, it helps to provide explicit praise for what is working.

Suppose Bryan's teacher had instead handed back his homework by saying, "I appreciate how well you were paying attention during the slides presentation. You captured a lot of the definitions I shared. Can we talk about how to elaborate on what the cell parts do?"

Whether celebrating success in conversation or in writing, making space for targeted feedback about the positive aspects of student work is key to maintaining momentum throughout the school year. On each assignment, teachers can include specific comments about what worked and what needs a little more attention:

What is working?: Your main idea was very clear, and it was nice how you pulled in a quick sentence about your family as a quick way to explain your thoughts.

What needs improvement?: Even though your personal example is great, you still need to add a quotation from the text to support your idea. You're almost there!

If celebrations and areas for growth are given equal emphasis, students are less likely to become demoralized and give up. Teachers who incorporate explicit conversations about success into their daily instruction, keep the focus on smaller daily objectives, and maintain productive momentum through both physical and mental movement forward encourage students, so that they are far less likely to disengage and experience the gradual downward slide that is all too common in the spring semester.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 Strategies for Building Momentum in the Spring

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Middle and high school students often feel burned out in the second semester. Prioritizing movement and manageable daily objectives can help.

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Discussion Strategies to Deepen Student Engagement

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Discussion Strategies to Deepen Student Engagement

# data[].attributes.body
For teachers seeking to facilitate rather than lead discussions, these strategies empower students to share their ideas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For teachers seeking to facilitate rather than lead discussions, these strategies empower students to share their ideas.

Sometimes, as teachers, we struggle to help our students connect what they know to what they are learning. When we face this challenge, it can be helpful to examine our practice under a different set of lenses to uncover ways to reinvigorate learning. One of the easiest ways to do this, especially if you're new to the profession, is to take a closer look at how you manage discussions.

When facilitating a discussion, do you direct your students toward specific outcomes, or is there room for them to take ownership of the conversations and make them their own? There are differences, however subtle, between leading and facilitating discussions. The following five strategies, which are particularly suited for middle and high school students, empower student agency and offer a fresh approach to discourse.

CoFounding Environments of Shared Inquiry

When you lead a discussion, you begin with the end in mind-that is, you determine exactly what you want your students to know and guide them with focused questions.

Rather than provide you with a list of strategies that you can use to increase student engagement, our intention is to demonstrate how combininggold standard discussion strategies, such as Turn and Talk or Think-Pair-Share, can energize your teaching practice and produce powerful results.

The following discussion sequences, or dialogic archetypes, can be applied to subjects across the curriculum. They can be disassembled, rearranged, and reconfigured to create new instructional arrangements that appeal to your students' strengths and needs and to your own teaching style.

1. Quick Write, Turn & Talk, Modified Jigsaw, Quick Draw

Here's a sequence that works well when discussing short texts such as case studies: Distribute a number of short texts (three or four should suffice) and blank note cards among your students, so that each student has one text. Ask students to read the texts and respond on the lined side of their note card; you might invite open responses or offer a prompt.

Once students have responded, pair them by text, and ask them to share what they wrote. You might also create discussion groups in which students have read different texts and invite them to explore similarities and differences in themes, characters, conflicts, or other relevant topics, moving from pair to small group work.

Finally, ask students to draw something they learned from their discussion group on the blank side of their note card to share with you, their group mates, or the class as a whole.

2. Four Corners, Think-Pair-Square, Sticky Chat, Gallery Walk

To integrate kinesthetic engagement into classroom discussion, post images related to what you are teaching in the corners of the room, and direct students to stand next to the image that they find most appealing.

Pair students by image, and ask them to conduct some independent research about their chosen picture. If your students do not have ready access to computers, you can provide them with books to explore, or simply ask them to record their thoughts on the images. Create discussion groups of four by combining pairs assigned to the same image. Finally, ask students to write what they learned on sticky notes, and post them on the images. The class might then engage in a gallery walk to learn from one another's findings.

3. Group Roles, Team Pack Discussion, Classroom Mingle, Classroom Poll

For a discussion sequence that connects students with multiple classmates, create groups of three, and provide each group with a different discussion prompt on a note card. Assign each member of the group a role: speaker, scribe, and timekeeper. Ask students to respond to the prompt on their note card before passing it to the next group.

Then, rotate speakers one group to the right and scribes two groups to the right. After the timekeepers have discussed all of the prompts, poll the class for their favorite.

4. Pick a Side, Snowball Discussion, Debate, Graffiti Wall

To lower the stakes and boost participation during classroom debates, ask students to pick a side on a given issue and to write their thoughts on a piece of paper. Direct half of the students to fold their papers lengthwise, the other half widthwise. Collect the papers, assign a side of the issue to each type of fold, and redistribute the papers randomly.

Facilitate debates of two, then four, then eight students, with each side evenly represented. Ask students to record their thoughts on the paper again, and then tape them on the wall to showcase students' engagement.

5. Stoplight Sticky Notes, Affinity Mapping, Gallery Run, Web Discussion

Make learning visible with an archetype that centers the use of maps: Provide students with a prompt connected to a short video or text. Ask them to write their thoughts on color-coded sticky notes: green might mean "interesting," red "challenging." Create small groups, and direct participants to identify similarities and differences between their notes. After small group discussion, arrange the class in a circle, and have them create a "web" by passing a ball of string when they connect with a fellow student's reflection.

Moving Beyond These Discussion Sequences

These instructional sequences can be followed by whole group discussions or some other kind of low-stakes assessment to measure student understanding. However you decide to progress, the point is that strategies that usually stand on their own, or that are simply framed as standing on their own, can be combined to create unforeseen opportunities for engagement. While it is important to have a plan, good teaching is about leaning into the unexpected. It's about taking risks and creating space for your students to actively participate in the meaning-making process.

Even if the archetypes presented here do not appeal to your particular style of teaching, we encourage you to experiment with the strategies that do. It doesn't matter if you've been teaching for three months or 30 years. Education is unmapped terrain, and there will always be something new to discover.

The strategies in this article were developed with Cayla Cosner, an elementary and special education specialist.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Discussion Strategies to Deepen Student Engagement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For teachers seeking to facilitate rather than lead discussions, these strategies empower students to share their ideas. Sometimes, as teachers, we struggle to help our students connect what they know to what they are learning. When we face this challenge, it can be helpful to examine our practice under a different set of lenses to uncover ways to reinvigorate learning.

# data[].attributes.body
A SIMPLE, FAST and SAFE Tool for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Help

The most TRUSTED community of care

In partnership with San Juan Unified School District

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
All information entered on the Care Solace website is completely confidential and securely stored. They do not share specific user information to any third parties or even the district itself.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

Email us at Call us 24x7 at (888) 515-0595 weserve@caresolace.org
We speak English, Spanish (Hablamos Español), Mandarin, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Tagalog and Korean
or Video Chat

Please note, Care Solace is not an emergency response service nor mental health services provider. In the event of a life threatening emergency, please call 9-1-1 or the National Suicide Hotline (800) 273-8255.

Please allow access to your camera to get connected with a Care Concierge

Sorry, Care Concierge members are not available at this time.

You can try again in a few minutes or in the mean time, you can email us at weserve@caresolace.org and expect a response within 15 minutes.

This call is recorded and may be reviewed for quality and training purposes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
San Juan Unified School District : Care Match

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
All information entered on the Care Solace website is completely confidential and securely stored. They do not share specific user information to any third parties or even the district itself.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Two factors have given lectures a bad name: overuse and poor execution. Let's deal with both.

# data[].attributes.headline
Culturally Responsive Ways to Teach the History of Thanksgiving

# data[].attributes.subject
Culturally Responsive Ways to Teach the History of Thanksgiving

# data[].attributes.body
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING

These resources can help middle and high school students learn about the first Thanksgiving and Native Americans today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Culturally Responsive Teaching

These resources can help middle and high school students learn about the first Thanksgiving and Native Americans today.

grandbrothers / Shutterstock

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, educators are grappling with how to teach their students about the first Thanksgiving in ways that honor the spirit of the holiday and are historically accurate and responsible.

The story that educators commonly tell of the first Thanksgiving is the same as what most Americans heard growing up. Pilgrims arrived in 1620 and had a tough winter. Native Americans, specifically the Wampanoag, helped teach them to plant hardy crops. After the successful harvest, they celebrated their friendship with a feast that came to be known as the first Thanksgiving. We tell this story because it's easy to tell, although it doesn't make for a richly engaging or solid history lesson.

When I first became a teacher, I knew my understanding of Native American history was limited, so I began the long but rewarding process of educating myself by reading articles written by Native voices sharing their perspectives on this national holiday and articles about Native American history. This initial research inspired me to keep asking questions and searching for culturally responsible ways of teaching middle and high school students about U.S. history. I hope you find these suggestions helpful as we enter into November, Native American Heritage Month.

Design lessons that include Native American knowledge

The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) invites us to rethink Thanksgiving celebrations and take care to not perpetuate stereotypes or misrepresent Native American traditions-complex traditions developed over thousands of years that are unique to each individual tribe.

Create lessons that include Native knowledge and celebrate the richness of Native cultures through Native American art, literature, and foods while celebrating Thanksgiving. The Smithsonian's website offers a curated list of several culturally sensitive lesson plans, activities, and resources for educators.

These resources include a study guide for teachers exploring the factual context of the harvest ceremony and a teaching poster developed by NMAI that examines the deeper meaning of the Thanksgiving holiday for Native Americans through the themes of environment, community, encounters, and innovations.

discuss perspectives of Native Americans about Thanksgiving

In speaking about history, we may mistakenly send students the message that Native Americans exist only in the past. Moroni Benally, a citizen of the Diné Nation and public policy expert who has done much work with the Navajo Nation and Indigenous communities worldwide, shares his perspectives on how we can accurately and respectfully teach children about Native American people, Pilgrims, and the first Thanksgiving. Benally reminds us that by retelling and not correcting what he refers to as the "myths of Thanksgiving," we are teaching children that Native American history and perspective don't matter.

Although most Native Americans don't live on reservations, some reservations have cultural centers that offer educational programs and materials for educators. Some programs include docent-led educational tours for students, hands-on activities, and exhibitions of Native American art and traditional crafts. A Google search for tribal centers and Native American museums in your area is a good place to start. Indigenous World, a nonprofit dedicated to connecting people to the unique arts, culture, ideas, and identities of Indigenous people today, also lists major Indigenous cultural organizations providing educational resources.

Research the history of the land you inhabit

Native Land Digital, an Indigenous-led Canadian not-for-profit organization, offers a digital map and Territory Acknowledgement guide. This digital map is a tool meant to create and foster conversations about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and settler-Indigenous relations.

Access the map by entering an address or exploring the display of Indigenous territories (official and unofficial) worldwide. Click a location and various nation names come up, and you can learn more about the complex history of the land and each nation, language, or treaty associated with it.

Debunk the details

According to historians, commonly believed simple details about the famous Thanksgiving meal are not quite correct. A more accurate first Thanksgiving story, as Benally points out in his article, might entail the following. Celebrating their harvest, the Pilgrims shot guns and cannons. The Wampanoag responded by sending 90 warriors in response to the gunfire. The Wampanoag likely were not invited but simply crashed the feast. Culinary historians believe the meal included seafood.

Liz Kleinrock, an educator and recipient of the 2018 Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching, invites us to consider sharing how our understanding of history and perspectives have changed over time. History is not fixed-rather, it is constantly in a process of being refined.

After all, the subject of history (more aptly called social studies) is a study of people and relationships rather than a chronicle of events. And, thankfully, people change. According to Kleinrock, a crucial part of teaching history is modeling for students how our thinking can shift. For example, we can say, "I used to believe ____, but now I believe ____." "I used to think ____, but now I ____."

Through embracing this mindset, teaching about Thanksgiving can be an authentic, powerful learning moment for our students-and ourselves.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Culturally Responsive Ways to Teach the History of Thanksgiving

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Culturally Responsive Teaching These resources can help middle and high school students learn about the first Thanksgiving and Native Americans today. grandbrothers / Shutterstock With Thanksgiving fast approaching, educators are grappling with how to teach their students about the first Thanksgiving in ways that honor the spirit of the holiday and are historically accurate and responsible.

# data[].attributes.headline
3 Steps to Developing an Asset-Based Approach to Teaching

# data[].attributes.subject
3 Steps to Developing an Asset-Based Approach to Teaching

# data[].attributes.body
DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION

Through this approach, which focuses on students’ strengths, teachers can plan instruction that promotes a growth mindset.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Differentiated Instruction

Through this approach, which focuses on students' strengths, teachers can plan instruction that promotes a growth mindset.

Alan Ingram / Alamy Stock Photo

As educators welcomed students to the 2020-21 school year, they did so with great care and attention to their social and emotional needs. Now, as school routines become habits and students dive deeper into their learning, this message of hope and support must continue to be conveyed during instruction.

If students only hear of the gaps in their learning or that they have fallen behind, they will begin to act according to the low benchmark that has been set for their achievement. An asset-based approach to teaching is one that is grounded in what students can do rather than what they cannot do or areas of weakness. It is an embodiment of growth mindset in instruction.

3 Steps to Using an Asset-Based Approach to Teaching

1. Begin with a diagnostic learning activity that provides information about what students know and can do. A simple way to design a diagnostic learning activity that focuses on what students can do is to align the task to the skills or concepts from the previous grade level. Most standards are scaffolded from one grade level or course to the next. For example, in mathematics, this is known as coherence. In science, it can be seen through progressions of the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI). By looking at standards or intentionally identifying foundational skills or concepts in a curriculum document, teachers can quickly access this information.

For example, the following learning targets are based on English language arts standards:

Fifth grade: I can use the supporting details to determine the central idea.

Sixth grade: I can explain how supporting details are used to develop the central idea.

As a simple diagnostic, students read and annotate an article using text tags to identify key details and then use the tagged details to write the central idea. A sixth-grade teacher would review student work focused on the details that the students selected and how they were used to write the central idea, or the fifth-grade expectation.

With this information, the teacher can plan instruction to provide strategies for moving students from identifying the central idea to explaining how it is developed. Additional pathways are created for students who have this skill and need more practice or are ready to apply it in different ways.

2. Provide different learning pathways so that all students have the opportunity to meet high expectations. Time has always been precious in the classroom, and it feels even more so as learning this year takes place in remote or blended environments. A learning plan that can be used in these various settings may be strategically constructed so that all students are able to work toward high expectations from their starting point.

The learning plan begins with the diagnostic activity. The student can then choose or the teacher may select different pathways through the plan, with students completing a core set of learning activities aligned to the plan's learning target to ensure that they are all working toward high expectations.

Pathway A embeds instruction and review so that students build background knowledge and skills. For example, students create criteria for identifying important details. They use the criteria to identify details to tag that reveal the central idea.

Pathway B includes additional activities for student practice and application. For example, students use SEE (statement, evidence, explanation) as a cognitive routine for explaining the connection between the central idea statement and the evidence from text.

Pathway C provides activities for deepening understanding or applying learning in new ways. For example, students use SEE to evaluate a text that presents a different point of view.

Creating pathways will help eliminate endless review, repetitive tasks, and/or disengagement that can come from the one-size-fits-all approach to instruction. It communicates to the students that the teacher believes each of them is a unique but ready and able learner.

(Click here for a full example of a learning plan for a sixth grader with an asset-based approach to instruction.)

3. Provide feedback to students identifying what they can do and strategies for using their strengths to address areas of need. Embedded in each learning activity is a formative-assessment moment. These are tangible or observable evidence of student learning. In an asset-based approach to learning, they are used to provide students with feedback that includes three important pieces of information.

Strength: The evidence you selected clearly identifies the important information about the impact of the transcontinental railroad on different groups of people.

Need: The central idea is a summary statement of what is most important about the text. How can you say what is most important without rewriting all of the details?

Next step: Write the central idea for two or three paragraphs in your own words before writing the central idea for the entire text.

It is important to note that not all students need to receive the same feedback at the same time. The formative-assessment moment exists as an opportunity for students to receive the feedback they need when they need it. However, all students deserve specific and tailored feedback at some time during their learning.

When teachers begin to look at what students understand, know, and can do, it changes the way the teacher and their students approach learning. The teacher begins to leverage what students know as a means for moving learning forward. For students, small successes lead to larger ones and help develop belief in their own capability as well as the willingness to engage when learning becomes difficult. When students are made aware of how they can learn, they take another step toward being independent, self-regulated learners.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
3 Steps to Developing an Asset-Based Approach to Teaching

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Differentiated Instruction Through this approach, which focuses on students' strengths, teachers can plan instruction that promotes a growth mindset. Alan Ingram / Alamy Stock Photo As educators welcomed students to the 2020-21 school year, they did so with great care and attention to their social and emotional needs.

# data[].attributes.headline
4 Reasons to Try Diagnostic Learning Experiences

# data[].attributes.subject
4 Reasons to Try Diagnostic Learning Experiences

# data[].attributes.body
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

Diagnostic learning experiences show teachers what elementary students already know, setting the stage for more learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 Reasons to Try Diagnostic Learning Experiences

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Diagnostic learning experiences show teachers what elementary students already know, setting the stage for more learning.

# data[].attributes.headline
6 Research-Backed Reasons to Record Important Lessons

# data[].attributes.subject
6 Research-Backed Reasons to Record Important Lessons

# data[].attributes.body
Replacing or supplementing your lessons with instructional videos has a large impact on student learning, the research shows.

If you’ve read our feature on the research behind video-based learning, here’s a simple rule of thumb: Keep videos short if you want to keep students watching.⁣

The researchers suggest several tips for optimizing your videos:⁣

• Chunk lessons into smaller parts, using the 6-minute benchmark as a maximum duration.⁣

• Show your face, even if only for a moment. It provides a more “intimate and personal feel,” and helps to break up what can quickly become a monotonous presentation.⁣

• Opt for Khan-style tutorials—a more informal, step-by-step sketch of a problem and possible solutions—over prepared slides.⁣

• Speak normally and with enthusiasm. “There is no need to artificially slow down,” the researchers say. Students may pick up on your energy and pay more attention.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Research-Backed Reasons to Record Important Lessons

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Replacing or supplementing your lessons with instructional videos has a large impact on student learning, the research shows.

# data[].attributes.headline
Using Games to Help Improve Students’ Phonics Skills

# data[].attributes.subject
Using Games to Help Improve Students’ Phonics Skills

# data[].attributes.body
Young readers benefit from learning through play, and teachers can introduce familiar games to help support students’ literacy growth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Use a Variety of Fun Games With Small Groups

At a time when phonics is being welcomed back into many classrooms as a proven strategy for developing young students' literacy skills, game playing is a useful tool. Keep in mind, though, that games enhance teaching; they don't replace it. They provide the rote practice that most students need to solidify their recognition of phonics patterns and that some need to an even greater degree.

As a result, most of these games work best in small groups, so that there is plenty of playtime and expert oversight. There could even be several different games going at once in a reading group, to keep the numbers even smaller and the focus even tighter.

Although there are many commercial sources of games, and even free ones to download, often simple-to-make familiar games-card games, format games, and board games-work best. These require little explanation and can be aligned directly to the day's lesson. All you need are index cards and a few formats, including a game board.

For game cards, cut 3½-by-5-inch index cards in half. On one side, write short-vowel words, blends, silent- e words, r-controlled words, or whatever phonics element your students need to practice. Save these decks and make more challenging ones as the students progress. You can create your own templates or the use samples I've created for the format and board games described below.

Incorporate Familiar Card Games

These are best for up to five players, depending on age. The player with the most cards at the end wins. Play time will vary with the size and skill of the group and the number of cards you use.

Go Fish: Make 13 four-card sets or 26 two-card sets. You might not use them all for the youngest students or the smallest groups. Players can "fish" for four words with common phonics elements (e.g., the same short vowel, vowel digraph, silent- e, or r-controlled vowel patterns). They could also fish for contrasting pairs (e.g., matching closed and silent- e syllables, as in "I have cap. Do you have cape?").

Memory: Make 24 pairs of matching words or words with matching pictures. Shuffle as many pairs as you think your students can manage comfortably, and lay them out as a grid. One by one, each player turns two cards faceup. If they match, the player keeps them. If not, they return to their spots facedown. In either case, it's the next player's turn.

Uh-Oh! (with special cards from Uno): Make a deck of 50 cards with words on them; all of which follow the same phonics pattern. Add in 15 special action cards and label them "Uh-Oh!" Five should say "Reverse" (the direction of play reverses), five of them should say "Skip" (play passes to the next player), and five should say "Draw 2" (the player draws two cards; then play passes). Each player, in turn, picks and reads cards until an action card appears.

Offer Format Games

These are usually quick games. Tic-Tac-Toe can take as little as one minute; Bingo can take less than five, though often need to learn how to search for words efficiently. Rockets and Submarines can take five minutes with two players, but play time increases with more.

Tic-Tac-Toe: A game for two players. The goal is to be the first to make a line of three (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal). Write target words in each square of the grid. Taking turns, students read and mark with their initials the words on the squares they choose. If you add lines for writing in the squares, this can also be a whole-class dictation exercise, sweetened by playing the game afterward in pairs.

Fill the boxes on as many boards as there are players with words that have your targeted phonics pattern. The words should be in different places on each board. A rotating caller picks from a stack of cards with those words written on them. Students cross out the words that are called, with the goal of being first to fill a column, row, or diagonal. When the phonics pattern is short vowels, silent- e patterns, vowel- r patterns, or a set of five-vowel digraphs, you can sort them into labeled columns. This reinforces pattern recognition and reduces searching time.

Rockets and Submarines (aka Chutes and Ladders): Students will need tokens and one die to progress from "Go" to "Stop." Fill the spaces with practice words to read aloud when a token lands there. Players shoot up with the rockets and dive down with the subs when they land on the tail squares of each. The first to reach "Stop" (or the one in the lead when time is up) wins.

Create Your Own Board Games

Board games are my personal favorite because they can be tailored by theme as well as phonics concept, and students can participate in the design. The goal is to get from start to end first. Students roll a die to move along the board and then read the word on the space where they land.

I encourage them to add special features as well as bridges back and forth. I added this one: "Read the next three words and move ahead one." A student added: "Do three jumping jacks and move ahead two." Combine game board templates in different ways to create unique-looking games. Mount them on stiff paper or in a file folder. Because the timing of board games is often unpredictable, you can announce in advance when you need to stop and declare the winner then, or mark everyone's place for when you take up the game again later.

Board games can even include aspects of comprehension if they are based on a book or social studies topic. Did you just read about the sled dog Balto, who helped carry the diphtheria vaccine across Alaska in 1925? Instead of "start" and "end," use Anchorage and Nome. Encourage students to add drawings or names of important incidents in the story for traps and shortcuts and to make their own tokens based on the characters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Using Games to Help Improve Students' Phonics Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At a time when phonics is being welcomed back into many classrooms as a proven strategy for developing young students' literacy skills, game playing is a useful tool. Keep in mind, though, that games enhance teaching; they don't replace it.

# data[].attributes.headline
3 Gratitude Practices That Don’t Involve Journaling

# data[].attributes.subject
3 Gratitude Practices That Don’t Involve Journaling

# data[].attributes.body
Providing unwritten ways to show gratitude allows students who prefer visual art or discussion with new pathways of expression.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

Providing unwritten ways to show gratitude allows students who prefer visual art or discussion with new pathways of expression.

Helps us cope with stress

Regulates our emotions

Makes us happier

Improves our health (mental and physical)

Nurtures relationships

Activates learning

To truly realize all the benefits and the power of gratitude, we need to move from simple reciprocity and just feeling grateful (a fleeting emotion) to being grateful people. According to the research, actively and intentionally practicing gratitude does the following:

Welcoming inclusion activity

Engaging strategies

Optimistic closure

So how do we cultivate a grateful disposition in ourselves, and how do we develop this in our learners?

Gratitude Practices in Our Learning Communities

While the signature practices are not always specific to gratitude, I like to incorporate gratitude into one of the practices, and I like to provide variety.

3 Gratitude Practices to Use With Learners

1. Gratitude wall. This cultivates appreciating the good in others. I want to be a gratitude mentor in our learning community, and one way I do this is by focusing on my praise-to-correction ratio. As a psychology major, I was taught that we should recognize positive behavior six times more than we recognize negative behavior. That's a lot of praise! And while experts don't always agree on the exact ratio, the point is that we want to overwhelmingly express appreciation for the good.

Obviously, if there is a safety issue or an impact on other learners, we address it, but do we really need to call out every minor issue? No, we don't, and doing so usually does more to damage relationships than to change behavior.

As we model appreciating the good in others, we can create a gratitude wall and encourage everyone to add photos, sketches, and notes sharing who they're grateful for and why they are grateful for that person. A possible welcoming inclusion activity would be to give each learner a sticky note to write or draw about someone they are grateful for and add it to the wall.

2. Positive affirmations. This cultivates appreciating the good in ourselves. We often think of gratitude as other-focused, and that is definitely part of the power of gratitude. But it's a myth that gratitude means we have to be completely self-effacing. We can be grateful for ourselves, and positive affirmations are a wonderful way to nurture self-awareness, confidence, and a strengths-based mindset. We may struggle to see the good in ourselves, so here are a couple of tools to help us identify our strengths:

What do you notice in your life that you can be grateful for?

Think deeply about why you have been given this thing you value.

How do you feel about the thing you have been given?

What can you do to express appreciation?

After discussing character strengths as a class, we can give learners time to discuss their strengths with a peer and ask them to capture their top five character strengths. We can then revisit these strengths regularly through positive affirmations.

3. Notice-think-feel-do. This cultivates gratitude as a habit. Regularly capturing and sharing the things we are thankful for is an excellent way to develop gratitude as a habit and nurture relationships. This can happen in a variety of formats, but first consider how essential it is that, whatever practice we choose (for ourselves and for our learners), it's done with intention. Notice-think-feel-do are the four essential components of the gratitude experience identified by psychologist Andrea Hussong. To get started, have learners pick something that they are grateful for, and have them respond to the prompts below.

We can use these prompts to teach the importance of authenticity and specificity while also tapping into the true benefits of gratitude. We can also use this as an opportunity to build our emotions vocabulary by really striving for granularity as we describe how we feel.

When it comes to the do, we can give individuals choice for how they express their appreciation. This will vary from person to person, and age/stage is also a factor. For example, younger learners may prefer notes and drawings, whereas adolescents may prefer social media posts, emails, texts, etc.

Even More Ways to Practice

In gratitude, as in all aspects of our lives, we see that a one-size-fits-all approach is not effective. In my latest book, Evolving With Gratitude, the contributors and I share many more gratitude practices. There are endless options: We can pick the practices that are right for us and our learning community and adapt as needed. There are people all over the world practicing gratitude personally and professionally, but there is no one way to do it.

The important thing is that we make gratitude a priority for the sake of individual and collective flourishing. Your commitment to experiencing and expressing gratitude will have untold ripple effects, making your life and the lives of those we serve better.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
3 Gratitude Practices That Don't Involve Journaling

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Providing unwritten ways to show gratitude allows students who prefer visual art or discussion with new pathways of expression. Helps us cope with stress Regulates our emotions Makes us happier Improves our health (mental and physical) Nurtures relationships Activates learning To truly realize all the benefits and the power of gratitude, we need to move from simple reciprocity and just feeling grateful (a fleeting emotion) to being grateful people.

# data[].attributes.body
Learning about and pronouncing students’ names correctly goes a long way toward making students feel seen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Educators know that making students feel valued and respected is critical to children and youth learning and achieving to their fullest potential. Honoring - and correctly pronouncing - students' names is an important first step for everyone to have a sense of belonging and being seen. It also goes a long way to strengthening educators' bonds with individual students.

The diversity in California and in our schools means students bring their rich languages, cultures and traditions to the school community. This includes their names, of course. "A person's name is part of their cultural identity," Rita Kohli, assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside, said in a 2021 NEA article. Failure to recognize this can cut deep in the classroom. In 2012, Kohli co-authored a paper titled "Teachers, Learn Our Names! Microaggressions and the K-12 Classroom." She and colleague Daniel Solórzano interviewed 41 students of color in K-12 schools and found that the failure to pronounce a name correctly can negatively impact the worldview and social-emotional well-being of students.

"When the child enters school and teachers - consciously or not - mispronounce, disregard or change the name, they are in a sense disregarding the family and culture of the students as well," Kohli and Solórzano wrote. "The consequences of these subtle racial experiences are real and can have a lasting impact on the wellbeing and self-perceptions of youth."
Strategies to consider
What are the best ways educators can learn students' names and convey the story and meaning behind a name or culture to the rest of the class?

Teachers can make concerted efforts to learn pronunciation of names - and own it when they experience difficulties. Students appreciate the effort to get it right. In a 2018 EdWeek article, students talked about feeling embarrassed or invisible when teachers didn't try to pronounce their names correctly. Some even felt pressure to change their pronunciation so teachers could say their names easier. CTA polled members several years ago on how they taught themselves to pronounce their students' names Tellingly, 81 percent of respondents say they experienced their own names being mispronounced.

The "My Name, My Identity" campaign, launched in 2016 by the Santa Clara County Office of Education in partnership with the National Association for Bilingual Education, encourages children and youth to feel a sense of pride about their name and patiently correct people who mispronounce it.

The campaign is also for all students and educators to understand the importance of honoring their peers' identities by learning to pronounce their names correctly - and learning the stories behind the names. Engaging in these activities will help cultivate an inclusive learning environment.

The campaign offers a comprehensive toolkit and multiple resources for classroom educators. It asks educators to take the pledge to respect student names.

Before school starts, educators can also call parents or check in with a student's previous teacher on the correction pronunciation of a name.

Getting It Right, a publication from the Regional Education Laboratory Northwest, offers information on naming conventions in 11 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese.

Learning about each other and valuing each other's backgrounds and cultures - including our names - is key to an inclusive, thriving classroom and school.

Call Them by Their Names

CTA asked members how they learned to pronounce students names. Popular responses:

1. "Spell it phonetically."

2. "Ask your students! They appreciate it."

3. "At the beginning of the year, I have them sit in pairs and it helps me remember their names by association."

4. "Keep trying!"

5. "Sit them in alphabetical order the first month."

6. "The 'About Me' profiles I create include: Legal Name, Preferred Name with Phonetic Spelling. I use name tags too."

7. "For the first month, I have students say their names before speaking."

8. "Repeating their names over and over again in front of the class shows that teachers have things to learn too!"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Educators know that making students feel valued and respected is critical to children and youth learning and achieving to their fullest potential. Honoring - and correctly pronouncing - students' names is an important first step for everyone to have a sense of belonging and being seen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
PLEASE CREATE A NEW ACCOUNT OR LOG IN TO ACCESS THIS CONTENT

Enjoy your first video for free. Subscribe for unlimited access.
Have questions about subscribing?
Click Here to learn more about individual subscriptions.
Click Here to learn more about School and Institution access.

PLEASE CREATE A NEW ACCOUNT OR LOG IN TO ACCESS THIS CONTENT

Enjoy your first video for free. Subscribe for unlimited access.
Have questions about subscribing?
Click Here to learn more about individual subscriptions.
Click Here to learn more about School and Institution access.

Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. How does this strategy allow for immediate re-teaching?

2. What criteria does Ms. Alcala use to pick her favorite no?

3. How does Ms. Alcala use assessment data to inform her teaching?

School Details

Martin Luther King Middle School
1781 Rose Street
Berkeley CA 94703

Data Provided By:

Teachers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Leah Alcala gives her students a warm-up problem at the beginning of every class, which they solve on index cards. She quickly sorts through them, and from the wrong answers chooses her "favorite no." She and her kids then analyze what's right about the solution before delving in to what the writer doesn't understand that led them to answer incorrectly.

# data[].attributes.headline
Why are we still doing that? The Pedagogy of Panic. Positive Alternatives to Problematic Teaching Practices

# data[].attributes.subject
Why are we still doing that? The Pedagogy of Panic. Positive Alternatives to Problematic Teaching Practices

# data[].attributes.body
Why are we still doing that? The Pedagogy of Panic

Why are we still doing that?: Positive Alternatives

to Problematic Teaching Practices, our most recent ASCD book, focuses on problematic classroom practices that persist despite credible evidence that these practices may do more harm than good. In this article, we’d like to address those harmful practices to which we may instinctively revert due to pandemic-related learning gaps. We’ll then make a case for focusing on formative assessment, a tried-and-true approach toward accelerating learning in K-12 classrooms without the negative side effects.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Pérsida Himmele, Ph.D.

William Himmele, Ph.D.

Why are we still doing that? The Pedagogy of Panic

Why are we still doing that?: Positive Alternatives

to Problematic Teaching Practices, our most recent ASCD book, focuses on problematic classroom practices that persist despite credible evidence that these practices may do more harm than good. In this article, we'd like to address those harmful practices to which we may instinctively revert due to pandemic-related learning gaps. We'll then make a case for focusing on formative assessment, a tried-and-true approach toward accelerating learning in K-12 classrooms without the negative side effects.

COVID-19's Discriminatory Impact

It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted K-12 students' performance in fundamental ways. It has changed our realities, from taking the lives of precious colleagues to inconveniencing our forms of instructional delivery. But the academic impact of the pandemic has not been evenly felt by students across socioeconomic realities. The pandemic has saved its hardest blow for those students whose performance has historically lagged that of their peers. For example, between fall 2019 and fall 2021, students in Illinois experienced an overall drop of 3 and 10 percentiles in reading and mathematics, respectively. In comparison, for those in moderate to high poverty schools, that decrease jumped to an overall drop of 11 and 14 percentiles in reading and mathematics, respectively (NWEA, 2022).

This same reality is true across the nation, with 2021 student performance for historically marginalized groups lagging further behind that of their peers when comparing 2021 to the norms for 2019 pre-pandemic growth. This is especially true for students in the early grades and for overall progress in mathematics (Lewis & Kuhfeld, 2021). Male students of color and students of color attending high poverty schools were least likely to make their typical learning gains (Kuhfled, Ruzek, et. al., 2021). As far as progress toward

educational equity, "the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated longstanding education inequities for BIPOC communities in the United States" (p. 8).

The Pedagogy of Panic

Certainly, in light of these inequities, there is a clear need to support students by filling in essential learning gaps and accelerating growth wherever possible. However, there are ways to accelerate student growth without resorting to, what we call, the pedagogy of panic. The pedagogy of panic includes those hurried instructional practices that we adopt as a result of being faced with the need to accelerate learning. Unfortunately, these panic-driven measures have often resulted in an unhealthy focus on quick measurable results, such as standardized test-based practices, that may actually do more harm than good.

Recently the term "accelerating learning" has caused some educators to groan. Whenever teachers groan, the first reaction of those in leadership shouldn't be an attempt to stifle the groan, but

Whenever teachers groan, the first reaction of those in leadership shouldn't be an attempt to stifle the groan, but instead to seek to understand why they are groaning.

instead to seek to understand why they are groaning. What do teachers notice that others (leaders, administrators, professors, policy makers) fail to notice? For too many educators, the groans emerge from a discomfort with what they're being asked to do. Not because it is challenging, but because they have tasted this form of control before and have realized that it debilitates essential decision-making abilities. Worst of all, in return for this debilitating loss of control, it only provides short-term gains for longterm losses. What we need is a reminder

of what works, but equally important is a warning of how pedagogies of panic can hurt student learning.

The Temptation to Panic

What are some of these pedagogies of panic and why is it that they often provide short term gains in exchange for long

term losses? From our book, Why are we still doing that?, we'll highlight some of the counter-productive practices that we're currently seeing emerge as a result of the need for accelerating student learning.

Panic Reaction #1: Rigid Pacing Guides

Though pacing guides are usually meant to provide helpful roadmaps, when they are overly prescribed, they can end up forcing teachers to ignore the needs of their students in favor of a schedule that needs to be maintained. Recall earlier that the greatest lags have been found in the early grades and in mathematics. What good is it to ignore where a student's current status is in favor of moving on to what "should" be taught? For example, when it comes to developing basic number sense as opposed to developing knowledge of multiplication or division, is it likely to help a student if teachers were to ignore the fact that a student struggles with addition or counting up? While they may certainly get students to memorize abstract multiplication facts, if they expect the learning to stick, they'll need to backtrack to help students develop

more fundamental understandings of number sense. The same is true in literacy. If a student doesn't have the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds that can be blended and segmented (phonemic awareness), it does little good to teach a student the C and the G rules (that C and G both usually make their soft sounds when followed by i, e, or y). Unfortunately, forcing teachers to stick to a rigid pacing guide can cause them to ignore these fundamental needs.

Rigid pacing guides make several dangerous assumptions. They assume that all students will progress and experience success with content at the same rates and at the same time. They assume that all students are functioning at the same levels. They assume that the calendar is doable, that the need for

These rigid pacing guides also assume that there will be little "getting lost in the learning" and few opportunities to pursue teachable moments that arise throughout the learning cycles.

scaffolding is all the same, that every year will be the same. Today, more than ever, this could not be further from the truth. These rigid pacing guides also assume that there will be little "getting lost in the learning" and few opportunities to pursue teachable moments that arise throughout the learning cycles. They do not take into account the needs of English language learners, students who are gifted or twice exceptional, or students with special needs. However, in too many schools, what starts off as a skeletal guide can quickly become a mandate that hurts our most vulnerable students more than any other students.

When the teacher voice inside of us says, "this just feels wrong," we ought to be encouraged to stop and take notice. And therein lies the greatest indictment against rigid pacing guides: they do not encourage formative assessment and any resulting adjustments that need to be made to our instruction. When the pacing guide determines what is taught, it can result in teachers not noticing the very students who are being taught, particularly our most vulnerable students who have been most negatively impacted by the academic effects of the pandemic.

Panic Reaction #2: Ignoring the complexities of literacy instruction

In line with what researchers at NWEA found (Lewis & Kuhfeld, 2021; Kuhfled, Ruzek, et. al., 2021), our personal experiences point to a noticeable lag in primary grade literacy skills for many children in our local areas. Students currently in first, second, and third grades seem to represent a wide array of reading skills and needs that make pre-pandemic primary classrooms seem homogenous in their skill development. The response by some school districts has been to require a strong emphasis on the building up of decoding skills using highly scripted curricula. That all sounds fine until you take into account the variety of needs in a typical classroom.

Additionally, in our home state, legislation is being proposed that could potentially set us back to the days of the type of micromanagement not seen since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Reading First. For those new to the profession, neither ended well. Though the amount of time spent teaching reading increased, only decoding of first graders increased, with no reported increase in third graders' reading comprehension, even though the whole point of reading is comprehension (NCEE, 2008). One could argue that increasing the amount of time spent learning a topic (reading) with little to no evidence of long-term benefits is actually a step backwards.

We know that building decoding skills is essential for developing readers.

We're not arguing this fact. Again, we feel that we need to repeat that we are not arguing against building decoding skills. But the science of reading includes a focus on various important dimensions that include cognitive, metacognitive, and affective processes, not simply decoding. For example, there is no reading comprehension without language comprehension. Similarly, if struggling students have been so turned off by reading that they no longer want to read, you may end up with strong first grade decoders who do little reading by the time they end their third-grade year. It will be students living in poverty who have had fewer experiences with the read aloud, limited access to books, and fewer opportunities to practice reading on their own, who will need the greatest exposure to a well-rounded literacy curriculum, but under a pedagogy of panic, they'll be the least likely to get it.

Panic Reaction #3: Teaching to Test Samplers

One of the biggest problems associated with teaching to the test is that, at face value, it seems to work. Teaching to the test can, unfortunately, produce higher test scores. But while teaching to the test may provide a temporary bump in scores, overall learning seems largely unaffected (Koretz, 2017). For example, during the NCLB years, in several states, district scores seemingly ballooned only to be later debunked by comparing state standardized test scores with more difficult to manipulate NAEP scores.

Because states provide schools with test samplers to help educators know what to expect on their standardized tests, schools have easy access to a type of ready-made test-based curricula. When schools place a heavy emphasis on the test samplers, the content of the overall domain can be ignored or swapped out for easier to cram "test-eligiblecontent." In turn, schools are rewarded with higher test scores that aren't necessarily reflected on other tests that are measuring similar content. Unusual test score increases might actually be a measure of how much time was taken away from meaningful learning (Koretz, 2017, Kohn, 2015).

Whether it takes the form of alternative tests, used to measure the same students' progress, or lessons presented years later that depended on foundational principles that were skipped, the core of the problem with teaching to the test is this: students only gain a shallow understanding of what is asked for in the test samplers. The test samplers are an incomplete slice of what we ought to be aiming for. They are woefully inadequate in reaching the larger goal of deeper understandings in the content that we are striving to

teach. As hard as it is, we have to force ourselves to resist the temptation to teach to the samplers, and instead, to meaningfully teach the domain that the sampler is supposed to be representing. Instead of being sidetracked by those things that are easily measured, let's focus on developing deeper understandings of the content we teach.

How do we actually accelerate student learning?

There is strong and consistent support for the ability of formative assessment to accelerate student growth. Some of of learning, just imagine what six to nine months of extra learning per year could do for the students who have been most impacted by the pandemic or for those who struggle the most. Wiliam explains that numerous costly attempts at supporting student learning, including curricular changes, charter schools, high school redesign, provide no overall evidence of effectiveness. Meanwhile, five reviews synthesizing more than 4,000 studies provide clear evidence supporting the use of formative assessment. In fact, it's not just effective, "When implemented well, formative

There is strong and consistent support for the ability of formative assessment to accelerate student growth.

the most influential research in this field are meta-analyses that review hundreds of studies that adhere to a certain list of criteria. Time and time again, research has supported the effective use of formative assessments as a way of both increasing instructional effectiveness and accelerating student growth (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Hattie, 2009).

Wiliam (2007) explains that the use of formative assessment can add an extra six to nine months of learning growth per year. Think of the students currently within your classrooms. While a typical school year consists of ten months assessment can effectively double the speed of student learning." (Wiliam, 2007/2008, p. 36-37).

Despite the fact that these understandings have been around for well over a decade, the term, formative assessment, is still not commonly used in everyday educational conversations. Instead, the meaning is often linked with paper and pencil tests and commercial interim assessments that are marketed as "formative," but that are far from the type of formative assessment that has been proven to dramatically increase learning. Effective assessment is too often

associated with scheduled tests or semiformal, district-mandated measures of student progress. While well-written tests can be helpful to learning, these tests typically report student learning rather than affect student learning, meaning they don't typically impact students' progress today, at this very moment.

With as many books as have been written on the topic of formative assessments, classroom structures are often still dominated by traditional schedules of teaching and assessing, where content is presented, and an assessment is planned as a calendar item. But unlike summative assessments, classroom formative assessments are rarely ever written in the calendar, instead, they happen every day, several times in every lesson. They should be happening so often, that writing them down would be impractical.

Formative assessment provides teachers with constant ongoing feedback on student learning. It is a teacher-powered, stop and check, and then stop and check again, type of intuitiveness that comes from taking the attention off of "getting through curriculum," and placing that attention on student learning. This backand-forth cycle continually asks these questions: What do they need? How do I teach it? At the risk of being accused of making a sales pitch, our book, Total

Participation Techniques: Making

every student an active learner, has 51 techniques for providing teachers with evidence of student learning (Himmele & Himmele, 2017). It is one of many tools that can help teachers implement formative assessment strategies in their classrooms.

Now, more than ever, we need to set aside our pedagogies of panic and review what has been proven to work. If we are looking to accelerate growth, we already know that one of the best ways to do that is through effective formative assessment. Formative assessment places the focus on teaching effectiveness by continuously gathering evidence of what is being learned. It defines good teaching. There is no better way, in our opinion, to spend professional development dollars than to focus on helping teachers become excellent at formative assessment.

References

Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. The Phi Delta

Kappan, 80(2), 139-148.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York:

Routledge.

Himmele, P. & Himmele, W. (2017). Total

Participation Techniques: Making every student an active learner. Alexandria,

VA: ASCD.

Kohn, A. (2015). Schooling beyond measure and other unorthodox essays about education. Heinemann.

Koretz, D. (2017). The testing charade:

Pretending to make schools better. The

University of Chicago Press.

Kuhfeld, M., Ruzek, E., Lewis, K., Soland,

J., Johnson, A., Tarasawa, B., &

Dworkin, L. (2021). Understanding the initial educational impacts of COVID-19 on communities of color. NWEA.

Lewis, K.., & Kuhfeld, M. (2021). Learning during COVID-19: An update on student achievement and growth at the start of the 2021-22 school year. NWEA.

NCEE. (2008). Reading First impact study.

Washington, DC: National Center for

Education Evaluation and Regional

Assistance. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/

pdf/20094038.pdf

NWEA (2022). Exploring the educational impacts of COVID-19, student achievement trends by state.

https://www.nwea.org/researchdata-galleries/exploring-theeducational-impacts-of-covid-19/

Wiliam, D. (2007). Content then process:

Teacher learning communities in the service of formative assessment. In

D. Reeves (Ed.), Ahead of the Curve:

The power of assessment to transform teaching and learning. Bloomington,

IN: Solution Tree.

Wiliam, D. (December 2007/January 2008). Changing classroom practice.

Educational Leadership, 65(4), 36-42.

Dr. Pérsida Himmele is a Professor in the education department at Millersville University. She has been an elementary and middle school teacher in bilingual and multilingual classrooms and a district administrator serving ELL students in a high-incidence district.

Dr. William Himmele is an Associate Professor at Millersville University in southeastern Pennsylvania. He has served as an ESL teacher and a Speech Pathologist, a higher education administrator, an international consultant and a speaker on issues related to increasing student engagement.

They are the authors of several books, articles, and resources, including the ASCD bestselling book, Total Participation Techniques: Making every student an active learner, as well as the accompanying video.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Spring 2022 Journal of the Illinois ASCD.

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Low-Stakes Activities to Help Teens Open Up

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Low-Stakes Activities to Help Teens Open Up

# data[].attributes.body
From sharing common interests to making connections through books and music, these engaging exercises provide stepping stones for teachers to build relationships in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From sharing common interests to making connections through books and music, these engaging exercises provide stepping stones for teachers to build relationships in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Low-Stakes Activities to Help Teens Open Up

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From sharing common interests to making connections through books and music, these engaging exercises provide stepping stones for teachers to build relationships in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.headline
How to Get Students to Focus on Learning—Not Grades

# data[].attributes.subject
How to Get Students to Focus on Learning—Not Grades

# data[].attributes.body
With a few shifts in the classroom, teachers can encourage students to pay more attention to the skills they are building rather than to a number or letter score.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Get Students to Focus on Learning-Not Grades

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With a few shifts in the classroom, teachers can encourage students to pay more attention to the skills they are building than to a number or letter score.

# data[].attributes.headline
What if you were able to have a 3-day weekend EVERY week?

# data[].attributes.subject
What if you were able to have a 3-day weekend EVERY week?

# data[].attributes.body
Obviously, you still need to show up to school 5 days a week and give your best each day. But you can shift your perception of how the week is structured to maximize time for rest and recovery. Read or listen as I share:

How all days/hours are not experienced equally (some are more valuable for specific purposes, some feel longer and others shorter)

Why weekends feel too short, and how beginning them sooner is a better solution than stretching them out longer

How to approach your time each day of the week to get your most productive work done before the “long weekend” and truly relax on your time off

This article + podcast episode is a playful approach to mindset. Experiment with how you use your time so that you can have more time for everything that matters most!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We're tearing ourselves apart. About pencils.

I kid you not. Pencils. Lines are drawn between those who readily hand out pencils and those who prefer that students bring their own. As I've read impassioned tweets and watched TikToks from both camps, I've grown increasingly concerned. Not about pencils. About us.

Pencils clearly aren't the problem. They are a symptom of the real problem, of our fatigue, our discouragement, and the severe professional exhaustion that is driving too many dedicated teachers from their classrooms and leaving many others depleted of the joy they once found in their profession.

Some say the answer is engagement, that if a teacher is engaging enough, students will behave. But there's no single solution. It's too complex, too human for any one strategy, resource, or ideology to solve. Do we have reason to believe high engagement correlates to fewer classroom management problems? Yes. Is it a guarantee? No.

But there is hope. We can reclaim some joy. These boredom busters are low-prep activities that transform worksheets into engaging, meaningful, fun learning experiences.

Paper Airplanes

Distribute a worksheet, have students put their name at the top, and answer the first problem. Then they each fold the worksheet into a paper airplane. At your signal, they launch their airplanes. Students pick a plane and answer the next problem. Repeat until the worksheet is done. Then students reclaim their original paper, consider all the answers, and correct them as needed.

Musical Desks

Cut apart a worksheet, leaving one question on each desk with a piece of paper. Turn on some music. Students pick up their pencils and boogie through the room. When you stop the music, they sit at the nearest desk and answer that problem. When you restart the music, they leave the paper, pick up their pencils again, and move. Repeat, but now when students sit at a desk, they prove the answer right, solve it another way, correct it, etc.

Variations

Differentiate using different colors of paper. You can copy different worksheets or assignments, each on a different color of paper. Distribute the appropriate assignment to each student, and then students continue the paper airplane or musical desk activity by exchanging with the same color paper they started with. This allows all students to participate in the same activity together while working with an assignment just right for them.

Write essays or solve multistep problems. Each student starts the essay or problem and exchanges with another student before it's all the way done. The next person continues the essay or problem the way their classmate started it. Repeat so that each student contributes to a few essays or problems.

Students can ask the questions! Each student writes a question, and then they do paper airplanes or musical desks to receive someone else's question and answer it.

Frustration Busters

What if a student refuses to get started? You can still reclaim some control. A frustration buster can help us understand our own feelings and help students get past inertia and back to the learning.

First, have the student read or explain the directions to you to ensure they understand what to do. Then offer them a low-stakes choice: "Do you want to start on the first one or the last one?" "Do you want to work at your desk or at the table?" This helps lower the sense of threat and invites engagement.

Next, work a problem with them. Students' perceptions of their capabilities are not always accurate. Working a problem together confirms for us-and them-that they really can do it. Still stuck? Scribe for them. They talk, and you write.

By now, there are probably 17,412 hands raised in your room, even though you have only 29 students. Consider setting the stuck student up with a partner. Give them five minutes to complete another problem or two, then return to check in on them. Repeat steps as needed and gradually extend the independent work time.

Will it always work? No. But maybe it will help both you and the student stay calm, and, most important, keep the focus on the learning.
Powell, author of Boredom Busters, has served as a special education teacher, Title 1 teacher, instructional coach, and classroom teacher. She is currently a director at the Association for Middle Level Education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reclaim Some Joy in Your Classroom! | NEA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We're tearing ourselves apart. About pencils. I kid you not. Pencils. Lines are drawn between those who readily hand out pencils and those who prefer that students bring their own. As I've read impassioned tweets and watched TikToks from both camps, I've grown increasingly concerned. Not about pencils. About us.

# data[].attributes.body
In many ways, your learning management system (LMS) is the digital home for your classroom.

Students find assignments there.

You give them announcements there.

They communicate with you and with each other there.

Because you likely spend lots of time there, it's a great place to be more efficient and effective, saving you time and sanity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In many ways, your learning management system (LMS) is the digital home for your classroom. Students find assignments there. You give them announcements

# data[].attributes.headline
Tapping Into Compassion When Students Push Your Buttons

# data[].attributes.subject
Tapping Into Compassion When Students Push Your Buttons

# data[].attributes.body
Our brains are wired for knee-jerk responses—so how can you keep compassion and empathy front of mind?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In her former elementary and middle school classrooms, Elena Aguilar, California education coach and author, kicked off the school year by asking students to respond in writing to a quick batch of 10 questions with no agenda other than to get to know them. "I wanted to hear about their experiences in school, their perceptions of themselves as learners, what they enjoyed and struggled with, and about outside of school factors that impacted their learning," Aguilar says. Some examples include "What is the most interesting activity you ever did in school?" and "Who do you want me to tell when you do really well in school?"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tapping Into Compassion When Students Push Your Buttons

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In her former elementary and middle school classrooms, Elena Aguilar, California education coach and author, kicked off the school year by asking students to respond in writing to a quick batch of 10 questions with no agenda other than to get to know them.

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Strong Foundations With Classroom Routines

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Strong Foundations With Classroom Routines

# data[].attributes.body
Investing time early in the year to establish procedures and expectations lets teachers and students enjoy a classroom that runs more smoothly (almost!) every day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Building Strong Foundations With Classroom Routines

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Investing time early in the year to establish procedures and expectations lets teachers and students enjoy a classroom that runs more smoothly (almost!) every day.

# data[].attributes.headline
Encouraging Middle and High School Students to Build Patience in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Encouraging Middle and High School Students to Build Patience in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.body
Waiting for a teacher’s support can be hard for some students, but with the right strategies, they can learn to use this time productively.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Waiting for a teacher's support can be hard for some students, but with the right strategies, they can learn to use this time productively.

Whether it's from spending the past two years in and out of physical classrooms or some side effect of social media giving teenagers the need for instant gratification, my middle school students, last year more than ever, were struggling to exercise patience in the classroom.

I was consistently met with the sound of my name ringing out across the classroom as I tried to weave my way around to each student and support them-not to mention the students who wouldn't call out from their seats but instead would come right up to me with their needs.

Although it can feel frustrating to have so many students requiring your attention all at once, this situation does create an opportunity to help students build their ability to demonstrate patience.

My students usually entered their frenzy of asking questions when I'd given them a task to complete independently. To support them in building their patience, and to provide myself the opportunity to gauge their learning before assisting them, I developed three strategies to make waiting easier for them.

3 Ways to Encourage Students to Develop Patience

1. Give them time. When I set my students up for an extended period of independent work, I post a timer on the board so they can better pace themselves. This also allows me to give them a specific portion of the time during which they can ask questions. I typically dedicate at least the first 1 to 2 minutes as silent work time so that the students have a chance to read the directions and make a first attempt at the assignment.

Once those first 1 to 2 minutes are over, I let students know that they can silently raise their hand if they need help. I write down each student's name and begin making my way to them one at a time. I let the students know that I will get to every student who asked for help within the time given for the activity. I remind students to move on to another problem if they are stuck until I can get to them. Students are generally more willing to wait for help when they are confident that help will come.

Additionally, by setting the standard that students cannot ask questions during the first few minutes, I ensure that every student actually gets started on the work independently, as opposed to waiting for individual support before even reading the directions.

Another way I use time to support students in building patience is to tell them when I will get to them. If I am helping one student and another comes over with a question, I will tell them to head back to their seat, and I will be there at a particular time (usually about 5 to 10 minutes from when I ask them to sit down). This helps even my most eager-to-ask students, as they know that they are guaranteed my attention in only a few minutes.

2. Give them criteria. Some students will immediately want help before they have started working through a problem. To avoid this, I outline for students what must be done before they can ask for help.

This provides an opportunity to ensure that all students are at least attempting some component of the problem independently, and this strategy can easily be combined with the one above. Generally, the criteria might be that a student has to at least annotate the problem and attempt to write either an equation or a model before they can ask for help.

Many students realize that they are actually more capable than they had thought, once they start working and no longer need to ask a question. Not only does this help students build patience in waiting for teacher support, but also it encourages them to be more independent when it comes to approaching challenging content.

This is an especially important skill for middle and high school students, who may be facing high-stakes exams in the future and will need to know how to get themselves started on problems, even when those problems seem overwhelming.

3. Give them an option. Sometimes, even once you've given students time and criteria, they will still need to wait to have their needs addressed as you support other students in the room. To help these students build their ability to remain patient in the classroom, have options in place for them while they wait. This can be a classroom expectation you set earlier in the year or something you roll out with your class when it's needed.

Tell students what their options are for when they're either waiting for help or if they finish their work early. Some potential options might be independent reading, a math review worksheet, or journal prompts for students to respond to.

To help students most easily take advantage of these options, have anything they need readily available somewhere in the room so they can independently access it and continue working or reading at their seat.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Encouraging Middle and High School Students to Build Patience in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Waiting for a teacher's support can be hard for some students, but with the right strategies, they can learn to use this time productively. Whether it's from spending the past two years in and out of physical classrooms or some side effect of social media giving teenagers the need for instant gratification, my middle school students, last year more than ever, were struggling to exercise patience in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.body
Adding movement to reading lessons reinforces key concepts and helps fidgety students concentrate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Five minutes into our reading lesson, as my students and I quickly returned to our seats after doing our slightly modified push-ups, I took a moment to observe the joy I saw on their faces.

You might be wondering, "Push-ups during a reading lesson?"

Yes! We did push-ups on a regular basis during reading. We also did squats, lunges, dips, jumping jacks, and more. When I started teaching reading, I had a very active group of struggling students. Because of their struggles, many of my students mentally checked out when it came time for reading. I knew I needed to get the blood flowing to their brains, get them excited, and use their bodies to learn. That was when I added full-body movement.

Push-Ups and Phonemic Awareness

The push-ups were part of our phonemic awareness activities. We know that phonemic awareness is a critical element in learning to read. It helps strengthen important neural pathways in the brain that provide a foundation for decoding as well as orthographic mapping of words.

That day, one of the students had chosen push-ups as the way he wanted to segment the phonemes in the word ship. That meant that our first push-up had three stops on the way up. We pushed up a third of the way and said "/sh/." We pushed a little farther and said "/i/." Then, as we completed the push-up, we all said "/p/." For the second push-up, we blended the word using one strong push-up and said "Ship!"

Because of its importance, phonemic awareness was the start of every reading lesson. Plastic eggs are perfect for this push-up activity. Before class, I put items or pictures in about five plastic eggs. Five students (I keep a running checklist so that everyone gets a chance) picked an egg out of a hat. Then, one by one, we went through this routine. One student opened her egg and told us what was inside.

Imagine a student pulling out a toy boat.

I ask, "How many sounds (phonemes) are in the word boat?"

She responds by saying, "There are three sounds in boat."

"What are they?"

"/b/ /o/ /t/"

Then I ask, "How do you want to show the sounds?" That's where the movement or kinesthetic part comes in. Some students just want to tap the sounds out on their arms or nose, but others want to do push-ups, dips, lunges, squats, and more. I keep a list of ideas on the board. We put a star by the ones that are used that day-otherwise, my arms get sore from doing so many push-ups!

The student says, "Squats!" The entire class gets out of their seats and squats low to the ground. In that position, we say "/b/." Then we move about halfway up and say "/o/." Finally, we stand all the way up and say "/t/."

After that, we blend it. So, we squat low and jump up while saying "Boat!"

Next, depending on the skill level of the student, I have them identify, delete, or substitute the initial, final, or medial sound in the word. We do one more set of the movements with the response. In this situation, I might ask, "Change the /t/ in boat to /n/ and tell me the new word."

The student (and class) might use the modified squat again to figure it out. Moving up with each sound: "/b/ /o/ /n/." Then, the entire class would squat low and jump up, saying "Bone!"

Rhyming and Moving

If my students were not cognitively ready for phonemic awareness, we worked on other phonological awareness skills, like rhyming or playing with syllables. We used the same types of movements for syllable segmentation, identification, substitution, or deletion as we did for phonemes.

For rhyming, I had students shift their weight from their left foot to their right foot for the rhyme. Moving from left to right helps reinforce the orientation of reading from left to right. The students say the onset (beginning) of their rhyme with their weight on their left foot and the rime (or the end of the rhyme) with their weight on their right foot. We test out words to see if the sound is the same when the weight is on the right foot. "Do cat and fat rhyme?" Left foot /k/, right foot /at/-Left foot /f/, right foot /at/-"Is the sound on the right foot the same?" This kinesthetic piece really helps the students internalize rhyme.

Avoiding Chaos

Once, when my principal walked into my room and saw us doing push-ups, she smiled because she knew how hard it was for some of my students to focus. Later, she asked, "How do you get the students to do the push-ups and then come right back to their seats?"

The answer is twofold. First, I provided specific instructions. They had to choose a space close to their desk and make sure they were not touching anyone else. They knew they had to stay in their space while they did the activity, and then they knew to quickly and quietly return when they were done.

Second, I did not require that the students participate in the push-ups or other activities. I simply gave them the opportunity. They knew that if they chose not to follow the rules, they were choosing to sit out on that word. I always gave them the option to try again after sitting out for one word. In reality, they loved doing it so much that they rarely sat out more than once. You may have some students with autism or other sensory issues who do not want to participate. That's fine. Don't force them to do the movements.

Oh yes, and when you do these movements with your students, remember to start a physical activity on your smartwatch so that you'll get credit. These activities have the added benefit of allowing you to combine work with a workout!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Five minutes into our reading lesson, as my students and I quickly returned to our seats after doing our slightly modified push-ups, I took a moment to observe the joy I saw on their faces. You might be wondering, "Push-ups during a reading lesson?" Yes! We did push-ups on a regular basis during reading.

# data[].attributes.headline
Using Your Library in the Time of Pandemic

# data[].attributes.subject
Using Your Library in the Time of Pandemic

# data[].attributes.body
Our Sacramento County Public Library has so many amazing resources and ways to access them!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
DePlacito, Eskridge, and Myrstol - Using Your Library in the Time of Quarantine.pptx

# data[].attributes.headline
A Critical Thinking Strategy for Student Note-Taking

# data[].attributes.subject
A Critical Thinking Strategy for Student Note-Taking

# data[].attributes.body
This graphic organizer guides students to categorize information while they’re taking notes, leading to deeper engagement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This graphic organizer guides students to categorize information while they're taking notes, leading to deeper engagement.

Wavebreakmedia Ltd UC5 / Alamy

Close your eyes and imagine a classroom of students deeply engaged in critical thinking. My bet is that you are not imagining a lecture or anything that resembles a traditional sit-and-get learning environment.

This is unsurprising. As I travel across the country with thinkLaw, supporting teachers with strategies to integrate critical thinking into their daily instruction, I find that teachers are always eager for practical opportunities to get students collaborating, thinking deeply, and engaging in critical thinking.

It is less popular to admit an important reality about instruction: Teachers must plan for and ensure student learning of key vocabulary, procedures, algorithms, and other content-specific and context-specific topics. Even if the idea of the permanent sage on the stage has rightfully been largely discarded, the temporary sage on the stage still has an important place in the classroom. The quadratic formula is still the quadratic formula. The structure of a five-paragraph essay is still the structure of a five-paragraph essay.

Whether you are guiding students through content yourself or having students read, research, or watch a video, the WICK charting process gives students an easy-to-implement method to deepen their engagement during this portion of your lesson. Instead of being stuck in sit-and-get mode, they will shift into sit-and-get-and-scrutinize-and-discuss mode as they process the lesson.

Step 1: Creating your WICK

Have your students divide their notes into a graphic organizer with four quadrants labeled as follows: Weird, Interesting, Confusing, and Knew This Already/Kinda Like. Here is a completed sample WICK on the (not-so-exhilarating) topic of corn prevalence in the United States. The instructions for what goes into each box are straightforward.

Weird: List any facts or details that stand out as weird, strange, or out of the ordinary. This is where students place shocking statistics, surprising scientific phenomena, or "can't believe that works" shortcuts that simplify problems. Students should include anything they might want to fact-check here.

For example, students learning about the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly may find it weird that the eggs caterpillars hatched from end up being food for the same caterpillar. It would be like chickens eating their own eggshell.

Interesting: Students should list any facts or details that intrigue them here. This includes information that speaks to their passions, interests, and curiosity. Information in this area of the WICK chart should include topics students want to explore for further research.

For instance, a student studying Shakespeare might find it interesting how dedicated this playwright was to iambic pentameter. Ten syllables in nearly every sentence? That's real commitment!

Confusing: Any facts or details that do not quite add up go in this area of the WICK chart. Include anything that seems contradictory, arguments that are not well reasoned, and ideas that feel flat-out wrong.

Students in racially homogenous schools learning about the Brown v. Board of Education case may find it confusing that their school is so deeply segregated decades after this decision ruled segregation unconstitutional.

Knew This Already/Kinda Like: Students can list any facts here that they knew already or that remind them of a fact, detail, or piece of information they previously learned. Any information that is "kinda like" other things they have learned in the past and can make a connection to goes here.

Discussing The Scarlet Letter in English? Here is where students might note that the protagonist's treatment reminds them of the Salem witch trials or the McCarthy-era hearings on communism. These kinds of connections are a personal way for students to engage in critical thinking.

Step 2: Discussing your WICK

After students have completed their individual WICKs, have them engage in discussion. Talking is simply thinking out loud, so the discussion part of the WICK process allows students to simultaneously integrate critical thinking and transform passive content.

When students discuss their WICKs, a one- or two-minute conversation is often enough to share some deep reflections. Depending on the context, students may not have every quadrant completed. One student's "interesting" could easily be another student's "kinda like," which generates even more opportunities for students to push each other's thinking.

You can also use WICKs to break up the typical "I do, we do, you do" pattern of instruction. If your direct instruction is set to last 10 minutes, consider pausing at the halfway mark to have students share their WICK responses so far. This way, the WICK serves as a helpful classroom management tool during the part of lessons that often leads to off-task behaviors.

In sum, the WICK process helps students critically analyze information as they learn it. Students will actually enjoy taking notes, and gain a deeper mastery of the content in the process.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Critical Thinking Strategy for Student Note-Taking

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This graphic organizer guides students to categorize information while they're taking notes, leading to deeper engagement. Wavebreakmedia Ltd UC5 / Alamy Close your eyes and imagine a classroom of students deeply engaged in critical thinking. My bet is that you are not imagining a lecture or anything that resembles a traditional sit-and-get learning environment.

# data[].attributes.body
Transforming Tasks - a reminder of small shifts we can make to deepen the learning and opportunities for students.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Benefits of Oral History Projects for Multilingual Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
The Benefits of Oral History Projects for Multilingual Learners

# data[].attributes.body
When multilingual students interview family members, they improve their communication skills and learn more about their roots.
Nationwide, about one out of every 10 public school students is learning to speak English. The U.S. Department of Education reports that there are an estimated 4.9 million children in public schools learning the English language, an increase of more than 1 million since 2000.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
English Language Learners

When multilingual students interview family members, they improve their communication skills and learn more about their roots.

Nationwide, about one out of every 10 public school students is learning to speak English. The U.S. Department of Education reports that there are an estimated 4.9 million children in public schools learning the English language, an increase of more than 1 million since 2000.

At Voice of Witness, a nonprofit that works to amplify the voices of people impacted by and fighting against injustice, oral history has supported language learning in a variety of classrooms as it incorporates literacy, critical thinking, culturally relevant content, and a participatory vision of history.

Through interview activities, English language learner (ELL) students can connect their own cultural knowledge and identity with their academic journey and find more opportunities for visibility and voice, while building their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.

Culturally Relevant Content

Bringing first-person narratives into the classroom, especially from immigrant voices, can help multilingual students envision their own stories within the curriculum. Through the Voice of Witness book series, oral history archives such as Densho and StoryCorps, or graphic memoirs such as The Best We Could Do, these opportunities for reading and listening to people who may share cultures with ELL students can validate their experiences as part of historical narratives.

Chunks of first-person narratives can also be more accessible for students developing their literacy skills and tune their listening to find the who, what, when, where, and why of a story. Students can utilize sentence stems to discuss their readings out loud or reflect on their reading with prompts such as the following:

I think/believe...

This reminds me of...

I'm confused about...

I can picture/imagine...

This is similar to...

I connect to...

Integrating Family and Community

Oral history projects are natural opportunities to include families of multilingual students or other members of the community. Interviews with relatives can be conducted in their chosen language while students write about the experience in English, stretching their abilities to reflect and summarize. Interviews can also be conducted in English with student partners or native speakers, pushing their communication skills.

An oral history cookbook is one way to highlight the stories within a family and community while grounding the experience in a way that is accessible for both interviewer and narrator. Interviews center around a recipe that's meaningful to the narrator, and students learn why they chose it and what cooking it means to them.

Multilingual students start by studying the components of a recipe or reading a graphic novel about cooking such as Measuring Up. Students should be encouraged to think about people in their own lives they could interview for the project, but there should also be a list of people (other teachers, counselors, administrative staff, coaches) at school who are willing to be interviewed.

For teachers, students, and their families, this is a chance to connect on a deeper level and provide space for families to be experts in an aspect of their students' learning and share their knowledge.

Other accessible themes for oral history projects could include a migration map that chronicles how the narrators, or the students, ended up in this country, state, city, or even specific neighborhood. Students could also work together to choose a topic they would like to explore in their community.

Confidence in Communication

While the final product of an oral history project is important, the most crucial part of any oral history experience is the moment a student sits down with someone and conducts an interview. The work that leads up to that moment includes writing open-ended questions, practicing follow-up questions, and communicating the purpose of the interview to their narrator. By that point, the student has already learned key communication skills and is now putting them all into action.

The goal of teaching oral history skills is to help students feel confident about two key essential questions, "Will this person understand me, and will I understand them?"

When the focus is on communication, some of the pressure and stress of trying to say things "right" in grammar and vocabulary can be replaced by a more holistic view of learning the English language, which can help shy speakers become more confident in their ability to share and ask questions. Teachers can do this by sharing first-person narratives from nonnative English speakers and providing low-stakes opportunities to practice oral history.

Short interview activities in pairs can help students build up their active listening and follow-up question skills, using initial prompts such as these:

Tell me a story about your name.

What is something that has made you happy lately?

Share a picture or photo that is meaningful to you.

The more students experience oral history, the more they believe that their stories are worth sharing, too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Benefits of Oral History Projects for Multilingual Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
English Language Learners When multilingual students interview family members, they improve their communication skills and learn more about their roots. Nationwide, about one out of every 10 public school students is learning to speak English. The U.S.

# data[].attributes.body
By making small goal setting part of the everyday routine, teachers help students build the skills they need to achieve larger and longer-term objectives.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By making small goal setting part of the everyday routine, teachers help students build the skills they need to achieve larger and longer-term objectives.

# data[].attributes.headline
Silence as a Co-regulation Strategy in the Pre-K Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Silence as a Co-regulation Strategy in the Pre-K Classroom

# data[].attributes.body
During tense situations, young children can learn to regulate their emotions when teachers calmly sit with them—using zero words at first.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As a preschool social worker, I'm often in my center's peace corner, sitting cross-legged on a shag carpet that our students like to make snow angels on, hands folded in my lap, waiting silently as one child or another thrashes and yells before slowly settling. Because the sounds of a young student in distress are anything but calm, my colleagues might come to the door offering support, or they look through the glass out of curiosity. I'm just sitting silently, waiting patiently for the right moment to intervene. But silence is the intervention during those charged moments, and over the years I've spent in the field of early childhood, using silence intentionally has become one of my most effective go-to strategies.

Using silence as a co-regulation strategy with preschoolers allows early childhood educators to connect with their young learners in a profound way, effectively supporting them as they move toward a sense of safety. Our silence speaks to what's underneath the behavior and creates space for uncomfortable feelings to be seen and tended to. This demonstrates to our students, including the students watching all of this unfold, that we care enough to sit with them in their discomfort until they're ready to successfully transition back to learning.

Using Words Can Often Escalate Difficult Moments

Pre-K settings are meant to be language-rich environments so that children can strengthen their expressive and receptive speech-language development. As a result, they are encouraged to use their words to express their wants and needs.

During difficult moments in the classroom, when students become dysregulated and may act out, well-meaning educators tend to encourage young learners to use their words, in the hopes that verbalizing how they feel and why they feel that way will defuse the situation. Educators, under an enormous amount of pressure to de-escalate behaviors quickly, rely on language to offer strategies or ask how they can help. They unintentionally co-escalate rather than co-regulate with the student, which prolongs upset in the classroom.

A parallel process of dysregulation often occurs between young students and educators during these challenging moments. As young children become increasingly dysregulated, they no longer have access to the part of the brain that controls language and reasoning because our sympathetic nervous system, which controls our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn response, takes it offline.

As educators become increasingly dysregulated when faced with a struggling student, the same sequence of events takes place in their adult brain. However, teachers don't communicate their dysregulation through behavior, but through language and how we use it when challenged-our volume, tone, pressure, and pace. When this happens, children who are already overstimulated by the classroom environment aren't able to tolerate verbal attempts to offer support because voice and language overwhelm an already taxed brain and body.

How to Co-regulate With Students

Early childhood educators can use many strategies to silently co-regulate with their students. With some students, I can simply put my hand out for them to take and walk them over to the classroom quiet area, a routine established with trust and time. This is also a natural opportunity to demonstrate the use of a quiet co-regulation strategy for newer students who may be watching, teaching them what the quiet area is for and what they can expect from me should I need to support them.

Once I guide students to the quiet area, we sit down together silently, and after a few minutes of sitting calmly near them, I continue to de-escalate through distraction. Small liquid timers or calming jars are excellent tools because they are visually soothing and young children love them.

For one student, I played with it myself, turning it upside down and right again before silently offering it to him. After a few minutes of playing with it on his own, he began to regulate enough where he was able to search for other coping tools and fidgets, showing them to me before beginning to talk about how hard it was to become a big brother.

For another student who frequently engaged in aggressive behavior, it was important to learn how to adapt to what his brain and body could handle in charged moments. He couldn't tolerate me sitting next to him but preferred for me to sit within visual proximity. He responded well to a fidget or liquid timer as a distraction tool, but he wouldn't take it from my hand.

Instead, I learned to put it on the floor and gently slide it over to him for him to take when he was ready, a strategy identified after a particularly charged moment in which any movement I made seemed to further escalate him. Eventually, he always came out from underneath a table or from behind a soft chair to take it before crawling over to sit next to me.

Other students benefit from quiet body-based strategies. Providing proprioceptive input, or deep pressure, to children through heavy work or joint compressions is an effective strategy. One of my colleagues often sits quietly with children who are struggling and provides deep pressure input by massaging their hands. I often offer students the option of sitting on my lap so I can envelop them in a bear hug and gently do some finger rolls and pulls or gentle squeezes on their arms.

We always observe our students' bodies relaxing while providing deep pressure input. Their shoulders lower, they breathe deeply, and their limbs loosen, all physical cues that their fight or flight system is turning off and they are beginning to regulate.

Understand and Prioritize Consent

While quiet body-based interventions are an effective co-regulation strategy for young children, it's important for educators to be mindful of safety and consent. Parents sign a consent form that explains the use of sensory and body-based coping strategies upon enrolling their child, and our young students are taught that they always have the right to say no if they don't want to be touched. Our educators can also say no if they aren't comfortable co-regulating in this way.

There are many times when the use of body-based strategies requiring touch isn't appropriate, such as at centers where physical contact may not be allowed or educators are alone with a student who is struggling. Small rocking chairs; body socks and foam rollers; and weighted lap pads, blankets, and stuffed animals are great alternative quiet body-based co-regulation tools that educators can have available in the classroom that don't require physical contact but still offer the same benefits.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Silence as a Co-regulation Strategy in the Pre-K Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As a preschool social worker, I'm often in my center's peace corner, sitting cross-legged on a shag carpet that our students like to make snow angels on, hands folded in my lap, waiting silently as one child or another thrashes and yells before slowly settling.

# data[].attributes.headline
How to Shift to Self-Grading in English Classes

# data[].attributes.subject
How to Shift to Self-Grading in English Classes

# data[].attributes.body
By articulating clearer expectations about what’s being evaluated, teachers can help students become more fluent in improving and assessing their own work.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Grading English papers isn't a straightforward task-and neither is writing them. Students are often asked to showcase too many skills within an assignment-or not given specific, actionable guidance and feedback-which can make the entire process bewildering. "I thought I'd clarified that grades on papers came from students demonstrating their skills in a number of areas," says middle school teacher Stephanie Farley in a piece for . "As it turned out, the students couldn't figure out how facility in those areas translated into points or a letter grade."

Having concluded that she was assessing too many skills at one time, and hadn't clearly articulated the skills she wanted students to learn, Farley invested a lot of time in refining a grading strategy that would change the way her students are graded: they would grade themselves.

" Student-centered assessment is the most transformative change I've made in my English teaching practice within the past five years," Farley says. It began with her asking students to try grading just one paper themselves, and soon enough "there was no stopping the kids [and] I had successfully transitioned my class to student-centered assessment."

Here are three steps Farley used to help kids evaluate their own work, with consistent oversight from herself:

Create Kid-Friendly Standards

Good writing encompasses mastering many skills all at once, and for kids who are starting out, breaking it down into smaller, concrete goals as they work towards fluency can make progress seem more feasible.

Farley concluded that rewriting all of her learning targets in "kid language" and only focusing on one skill at a time helps her students better understand what they're aiming for. Teaching what a "big idea" or a "supporting detail" looks like in a written piece of work, for example, helps students get familiar with the language used for assessments.

She also recommends replacing more formally worded statements like "Develops a big idea that is well supported by details within the story" with simpler sentences such as "I can write a story or essay with a purpose - or big idea - in mind," and "I can use details in my story that support - or give examples of - the big idea."

Beside providing a rubric for all written assignments, Farley encourages students to evaluate each other's work based on learning targets. "It's hard to be objective about your own work, but practicing on others' work trains your brain to take a step back and look for the learning targets," she adds.

Teach the Basics of Self-Evaluation

Assessing one's own learning requires a solid grasp on what skills are being evaluated, and Farley gives her students plenty of written feedback-using language clearly tied to the learning objectives-and time to make revisions before asking students to evaluate their own writing. "In this way, they already knew which areas of the work needed improvement and what was strong, so if they edited successfully, they'd have a fair understanding of where the work stood in terms of the rubric," she writes.

To make the evaluation more specific, Farley asks her students to pinpoint an example of how they fulfill a learning target, like highlighting where a "big idea" is in their story-which corresponds to the goal of "writing a story with a big idea in mind." This visual connection not only helps students see how well big ideas are expressed in their writing, but also means that the teacher doesn't need to do as much work to explain problems in the future.

Hold Individual Conferences

Once students have completed a self-evaluation and it's time for grading, Farley sits down and talks through what they've come up with to help fill in any gaps in their own assessment. "I was quick to point out when students didn't give themselves enough credit or underrated their achievement," Farley writes. "If needed, I'd also mention where their work didn't quite align with their evaluation of it."

During these one-on-ones, Farley's students would explain their revisions using examples that correspond to the different criteria in the rubric, and eventually arrive at a conclusion of what grade they merit. She adds that it's rare for her to disagree with her students' evaluations, but when it does happen, she "explained how the work could improve and invited the student to revise again." Finally, the agreed-upon grade is recorded in the gradebook.

Farley notices that self-grading has led students to internalize some of the language of good writing; they now know how to articulate in very specific terms where they're succeeding and where they have room to grow. "In this class, I learned how to write using descriptive language like metaphors and sense imagery. But most of all, I felt like I got better at and more confident about writing," according to one of Farley's students. Witnessing her students feel "safe and confident in the classroom" is one of the greatest rewards to Farley as an educator, she writes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Shift to Self-Grading in English Classes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Grading English papers isn't a straightforward task-and neither is writing them. Students are often asked to showcase too many skills within an assignment-or not given specific, actionable guidance and feedback-which can make the entire process bewildering.

# data[].attributes.headline
8 Principles for Supporting Students with ADHD

# data[].attributes.subject
8 Principles for Supporting Students with ADHD

# data[].attributes.body
A SOLID PLACE TO START: RUSSELL BARKLEY

Setting out to find good resources, I kept landing on the name Russell Barkley, an ADHD researcher who has been called a pioneer, a leading expert, and the gold standard in ADHD research. In all the places where his work appears—speaking on YouTube, as a guest on multiple podcasts, and as the author of many articles and books on ADHD—what is most striking are the number of comments from adults with ADHD who are relieved to finally find some validation, to hear clear explanations for why their brains work the way they do.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sponsored by Listenwise and Read&Write by Texthelp

This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What's the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org?

I still remember the feeling I used to get when looking at the paperwork for my students who had ADHD, the forms listing the accommodations I would need to make for them-usually extended time on tests and maybe preferential seating.

The feeling could be best described as uncertain. I understood what these small changes looked like in practice-seat this student near the front of the room and give him more time to work on tests. But I knew almost nothing about the mechanics behind why the changes were supposed to make a difference. I signed the papers, returned them to the office, and made a mental note that if any of these students ever showed signs of struggle, it was probably because of the ADHD.

And they did struggle. The preferential seating and extra time wasn't often enough to help them turn in completed work on time, keep track of their things, and stay focused on class activities. Knowing as little as I did about ADHD, I figured that was the best we were going to get.

As uncomfortable as it makes me to say this, I will also admit that part of me wondered why these students couldn't just power through, find the motivation, try harder. Disorganization got the better of me sometimes too, and when that happened, I would just tidy things up, declutter, reset my priorities, and get back on track. It wasn't that hard. I also wondered whether parents were to blame, if a lack of structure, too much TV or video games, or some other oversight at home might be the true cause of students' difficulties.

Suffice it to say I really, REALLY didn't understand ADHD.

It turns out my lack of knowledge wasn't unique. A number of studies have shown that many teachers don't know enough to effectively meet the needs of students with ADHD (Alkahtani, 2013, Poznanski et al., 2018). While a growing number of teachers can recognize behaviors that might suggest ADHD in a child, knowledge drops off significantly when it comes to treatments and interventions that can help-the less training and knowledge a teacher has about ADHD, the less confident they feel about working with students who have it (Flanigan & Climie, 2018). This may explain the heartbreaking statistic that teachers tend to form fewer close relationships with students who have ADHD (Ewe, 2019).

Regardless of the subject area or age you teach, you're likely to have at least a few students with ADHD in your classroom every school year, so a good working knowledge of it should be part of any teacher's professional training. In the nine years I have been sharing resources on this website, I have only ever done one piece on ADHD, a 2017 interview with Seth Perler, who shared a great set of systems that help students who struggle with executive function. But that's it, so it's time to dig a little deeper.

A Solid Place to Start: Russell Barkley

Setting out to find good resources, I kept landing on the name Russell Barkley, an ADHD researcher who has been called a pioneer, a leading expert, and the gold standard in ADHD research. In all the places where his work appears-speaking on YouTube, as a guest on multiple podcasts, and as the author of many articles and books on ADHD-what is most striking are the number of comments from adults with ADHD who are relieved to finally find some validation, to hear clear explanations for why their brains work the way they do.

Although Barkley has been criticized for sounding negative and bleak when he speaks about the condition, using language that many would characterize as deficit thinking, his work has helped many people understand the workings of ADHD, how it affects those who have it, and how to best manage it. With that in mind, he seems like a good place to start; for suggestions on where to keep learning, I'll provide a list of resources at the end of this post.

Most of Barkley's work is directed at parents of children with ADHD and adults who also carry the diagnosis, but he has also written the highest-rated book for teachers on the subject, Managing ADHD in School: The Best Evidence-Based Methods for Teachers ( Bookshop.org | Amazon).

This slim book is not meant to be comprehensive or in-depth. Barkley states outright that he's not going to spend time on narrative prose and extensive research citations; his goal is to simply explain ADHD so that busy teachers can understand it, and tell them what they can do to help students who have it. His message is "Trust me, I know this stuff. Do this, not that." And while this obviously leaves him open to criticism, the book certainly delivers on its promises, and it's a great starting point for any teacher who wants a crash course on ADHD.

As Barkley is fully retired now, he declined to be interviewed here, so this is basically my own personal book report: I learned so many things from the book that would have helped immensely in my own work with students with ADHD, so I'm going to summarize what I think are the most important takeaways here. I strongly suggest you get a copy for yourself.

Although I'm doing my best to share this information accurately, there's a chance I'll get something wrong; if you see something that needs correcting, please let us know in the comments.

What do teachers need to understand about ADHD?

Before we get into classroom practices, I'm going to summarize a few key facts about ADHD that every teacher should know. Most of these happen to be things I personally didn't know-in fact, some are the exact opposite of beliefs I held-so I can only assume other teachers might also need this overview.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition that impacts a person's executive function. This shows up as a difficulty with persisting toward goals and resisting distractions, holding information in working memory, and planning and problem solving. It also increases impulsivity, making immediate consequences more valuable than long-term ones, and interferes with inhibition, which results in quicker displays of emotion and other conduct that is generally discouraged in social settings. Unfortunately, all of these are often categorized as misbehavior or "poor choices" in the classroom, and if teachers don't understand how ADHD works, they can spend years responding in ways that will do little to address the underlying causes.

The cause of ADHD is largely genetic. In the book, Barkley asserts that "no compelling evidence indicates that social factors, such as parenting or educational environment, have been found to cause ADHD." Research has also ruled out diet, TV or media consumption, or videogame play as contributing factors (p. 15-16). With this information in mind, we can stop looking for outside factors to blame and get down to the business of helping these students do better in school. Knowing this should also put an end to attempts to "motivate" students with ADHD by giving them pep talks, angry reprimands, or guilt trips.

Roughly ten percent of your students are likely to have ADHD. Numbers for this are hard to pin down exactly: The National Institute of Mental Health puts the total number of children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD at about 11%, the CDC at 9.4%, and Barkley at 5 to 8%. Regardless of the source, the numbers continue to rise every year, and boys have a higher rate of diagnosis than girls. More important than an exact number is this: Every year, you should expect to have at least a few students in your classroom who have ADHD.

Rates of diagnosis do not necessarily reflect the actual number of students with ADHD. Barkley says diagnoses tend to occur more in communities with more resources, and overdiagnosis is more frequent "in upper income neighborhoods where a premium is placed on academic excellence or acceleration" (p. 8). By contrast, students may be underdiagnosed in communities with fewer resources for diagnosis and treatment. Apart from just being good general knowledge to have, this may inform the research and action you take depending on the community where you teach: Perhaps more of your students actually need to be referred for diagnosis and treatment; by contrast, you may be working with students who are receiving treatment for a misdiagnosis.

ADHD is linked to a host of serious problems. People with ADHD have a greater risk of relationship problems (including social problems in school and both personal and professional adult relationships), employment issues, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addiction, auto accidents, and suicide. These statistics shocked me, and they underscore how important it is for educators, who work with these students for hours every day, to learn as much as we can about how to better support them in school.

Medication can help. Although public opinion on medication is mixed, much of the research shows that ADHD medication, when combined with interventions and supports like the ones listed below, has a high rate of success for improving academic performance. It has also been shown to lower other risk factors, like suicide (Liang et al., 2018), addiction (Sherman, 2022), and auto accidents (Chang et al., 2017).

Research continues to evolve. What was known about ADHD twenty or even ten years ago has been enriched by a growing body of research on diagnosis, causes, interventions, and medication. So when you come across information that doesn't quite fit with your current understanding of ADHD, keep an open mind.

8 Principles for Helping Students with ADHD Succeed in the Classroom

Barkley packs tons of strategies and advice into his book; here I've attempted to condense them into eight general principles. Just like with so many strategies designed to help specific populations, these are also likely to help many of your students be more successful, regardless of whether they have identified difficulties with executive function.

1. Be proactive (rather than reactive).

Throughout the book, Barkley urges teachers to plan ahead with systems and strategies that can solve common ADHD-related challenges. Instead of waiting for problems to arise and then dealing with them, which is more likely to be done under duress, it's far more effective to anticipate challenges and set up a plan for preventing them.

For example, students with ADHD often struggle with transitions, so one strategy is to always pause a few minutes before a transition to verbally remind students of the procedures and rules around the upcoming transition.

2. Make the internal external.

Because ADHD affects working memory, a person with ADHD has a harder time keeping things like instructions for a task in their mind. "Even if they try to hold such information in mind ... any distractions will disrupt and degrade this special type of memory. The mental chalkboard of working memory is wiped clean by the distraction. ...having gone 'off-task,' the child is far less likely to reengage the original and now uncompleted goal or task" (p. 3-4).

Working memory can be boosted when we make the internal external: taking information that might typically be a mental process (like remembering the steps for turning in an assignment) and making it visible. Here are some examples:

Color-coded folders help students keep materials organized and find what they need more easily.

Visual timers that students can easily see keep them aware of how much time is left for a task.

Written rules and instructions posted close to where a task is going to be completed (Barkley calls this the "point of performance") offer support right when students need it.

Daily behavior report cards can work well to remind students of expectations and get immediate feedback on how well they are meeting them.

Notetaking helps students record what they are learning to make it more concrete.

3. Break large tasks into smaller ones.

Because ADHD makes it harder for students to manage long, complex tasks, it helps if teachers can guide students in breaking these tasks into smaller steps.

4. Maximize the effectiveness of incentives.

Author's note: If you listen to the podcast version of this post, you'll notice that this item is somewhat different from that version. The original primarily used the term "consequences" and came across very punishment-heavy; this did not accurately represent Barkley's recommendations. The written version is the more updated one and is the best representation of this principle.

Internal motivation is harder to sustain for students with ADHD due to reduced working memory and increased impulsivity, so external incentives are a powerful tool for sustaining motivation. He recommends these guidelines:

Positive reinforcements must significantly outweigh negative ones. In fact, Barkley recommends that any program of reinforcements have only powerful, positive incentives for 1 to 2 weeks before ever introducing negative ones.

Incentives need to be delivered with more immediacy and frequency than for students without ADHD.

Incentives may need to be "richer" than what you might typically use for other students. If a consequence (positive or negative) doesn't seem to be motivating a student with ADHD, it's probably because it doesn't mean much to the student and should be replaced with something the student values more.

With the above in mind, incentives also need to be varied or rotated more often for students with ADHD, as they lose their potency more quickly over time.

In the book, Barkley regularly uses the word "punishment" to describe negative consequences for undesirable behavior. Although he doesn't advocate for anything harsh, the term is still troubling to me after the book so clearly establishes that the behavior of someone with ADHD is caused by the way their brain is wired, not bad choices. So I would advise teachers reading his book to extract the valuable information he shares about consequences, while keeping in mind that we are not trying to cause shame or pain to students for their behavior; the goal is to create a system of incentives and reinforcements that prompt students to refocus and make adjustments.

5. Prepare for restlessness.

To work with-rather than against-these students' greater need for movement, keep a supply of stress balls, fidget toys, balance balls, or wobble chairs for them to use. You can also provide standing desks and other seating options so that student can to choose what works best for them, and plan frequent physical exercise breaks to give all students a chance to stretch and burn off some energy between activities that require more stillness.

6. Alternate low-appeal with high-appeal activities.

"Too many boring topics or activities back to back can lead a child with ADHD to lose focus," Barkley says (p. 37). This loss of focus can lead to the student becoming distracted and possibly disruptive to the class, so mix the more engaging, high-interest activities in between those that require more effort to maintain focus.

7. Use technology as a support.

Technology has been shown to be especially effective for students who have ADHD. Barkley cites research showing that students with ADHD "pay more attention to computer software learning programs and learn more from the practice with them than they do when working on worksheets" (p. 36).

He also recommends teaching these students keyboarding skills as early as possible. "Students with ADHD have a high occurrence of fine motor coordination problems...give them alternative means of expressing themselves in print" (p. 38).

8. Monitor and modify interventions regularly.

"One common scenario," Barkley writes, "is that a student responds initially to a well-tailored program, but then over time, the response deteriorates" (p. 28). This doesn't mean the interventions didn't work; it might mean they need to be modified or the implementation needs to be checked for fidelity.

A Lingering Question: Public Accountability?

As much as I want to wholeheartedly recommend the book, one repeated suggestion concerned me. In a few places, Barkley advocates for "public accountability" for student behavior (p. 28, p. 61), but at other times offers more discreet methods of accountability for older students (p. 62).

Public behavior charts and systems have gotten a lot of pushback in the teaching world over the past 5 to 10 years, and I agree with the criticism: The shame these can cause is not worth any benefit they may offer. I worry that some readers will come away from this book thinking that public shaming is an effective strategy for supporting students with ADHD, even though Barkley doesn't necessarily advocate for this. My best guess is that the recommendation should be interpreted to mean that the accountability system should be visible to the student, but not necessarily on display for the whole class to see.

With this in mind, a good rule of thumb for any time you see a recommendation in an education book, or on a website like mine, that feels off in some way or seems to go against your better judgment, listen to your gut.

I'll end this piece as I began it, with an admission of bare minimum knowledge on the subject of ADHD. As much as I have tried to accurately represent the recommendations and knowledge Barkley shares, there's a very good chance I got some stuff wrong, and this book is just a starting point, but it would have been incredibly helpful to me as a teacher, so I hope it helps you as well. If you have personal experience with ADHD, professional expertise, or links to other good resources, I urge you to share these in the comments below so we can build on what's here.

Learn More

This piece only scratches the surface of what the medical and educational communities are learning about ADHD. It is meant to serve as a jumping-off point so that teachers can be equipped with strategies that will be the most helpful to students with ADHD. To continue learning, try the resources listed below:

CHADD.org, or Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, is an organization dedicated to improving the lives of people affected by ADHD. Their website houses loads of fantastic resources, plus an online teacher training course if you want to go in depth.

How to ADHD is a website and YouTube channel run by Jessica McCabe, full of high-energy, educational videos about ADHD. (Thank you for the recommendation, Charlotte!)

Want more from Russell Barkley? Listen to this recent interview from the Ologies podcast, where he provides an in-depth overview of ADHD and how it impacts those who have it.

The work of Edward Hallowell is worth considering for a more asset-based view of ADHD. Learn about his advocacy for replacing the term ADHD with the more neutral term VAST and this summary of his public "debate" with Russell Barkley. And for short bursts of learning, follow him on TikTok.

While you're on TikTok, also check out Sasha Hamdani, a psychiatrist and ADHD specialist whose following has grown exponentially in the last year for her helpful and humorous videos. You can also find her on Instagram.

One other resource, ADDitude magazine, was previously on this list, but a reader brought to our attention that it has received criticism in some ADHD forums and was given mixed reviews by the Media Bias/Fact Check website. Although readers can probably still find lots of value on the site, it would be wise to go in knowing what the criticisms are.

References

Barkley, R. (2016). Managing ADHD in School: The Best Evidence-Based Methods for Teachers . Pesi Publishing & Media.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, September 23). . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data and statistics about ADHD https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html

National Institute of Mental Health. (n.d.). . Retrieved April 14, 2022, from NIMH" Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd

Sherman, C. (2022, March 31). . ADDitude. The Truth About ADHD and Addiction https://www.additudemag.com/the-truth-about-adhd-and-addiction/

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
8 Principles for Supporting Students with ADHD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There is so much to learn about ADHD. These broad guidelines from a leading expert are a good place to start.

# data[].attributes.body
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore Discovery A cognitive neuroscientist unlocks the mysteries of the teenage brain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A cognitive neuroscientist unlocks the mysteries of the teenage brain

Until recently, it was thought that human brain development was all over by early childhood but research in the last decade has shown that the adolescent brain is still changing into early adulthood. Jim al-Khalili talks to pioneering cognitive neuroscientist professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore who is responsible for much of the research which shows that our brains continue to develop through the teenage years. She discusses why teenagers take risks and are so susceptible to influence from their peers, as well as her childhood growing up with the constant threat of attacks from animal rights groups.

(Photo: Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, courtesy of UCL)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
BBC World Service - Discovery, The Teenage Brain: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A cognitive neuroscientist unlocks the mysteries of the teenage brain Until recently, it was thought that human brain development was all over by early childhood but research in the last decade has shown that the adolescent brain is still changing into early adulthood.

# data[].attributes.headline
Viewing Late Work Through an Equity Lens

# data[].attributes.subject
Viewing Late Work Through an Equity Lens

# data[].attributes.body
A teacher stopped penalizing late work and started asking students questions about why assignments were late. Here’s what he learned.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dealing with late or missing work is one of the most challenging parts of being a teacher. In my classroom, I've struggled with crafting a late-work policy that would hold my students accountable. I wanted consistency and convenience that would combat my frustrations with my students' behaviors, but this was the wrong approach.

Instead, I needed to put into place equity approaches that empowered students and focused on their own development. How could I help students learn that due dates were not simply artificial measures of compliance, but in reality were crucial to progress, accountability, and learning? If we're focused on getting students to engage with their learning in a manner that reinforces organization, commitment, and continuity, we need to understand task completion as a skill that must be modeled first and not penalized. Here is how I've adopted an equity approach in my classroom.

Equity Approaches to Late Work

Adopting trauma-informed practices can help create a more equity-based approach to late work. This means understanding how traumatic experiences can impact an individual's cognitive development. Low-stake stressors can have severe impacts on how survivors of trauma regulate their own responses.

Deadlines are a stressor. My students have seven classes in a day, and as they oscillate through the weight of each of these courses, the workload can compound and overwhelm their coping mechanisms. Learning how to develop a trauma-informed approach builds empathy and also encourages teachers to focus on the how and why of outcomes instead of the what.

Rather than making compliance a requirement for success, I emphasize to students how meeting and managing deadlines is a future-ready skill in and of itself. The classroom is where we learn to master that skill, not to fear the ramifications of failure.

Aside from stressors like due dates and testing, systemic inequalities create repeating stressors and hardships, which compound the negative impact on the mental health of many of our most vulnerable populations. We know that racism and poverty are trauma inducing and that both have negative ramifications for our at-risk populations. Both factors diminish the executive functioning and coping mechanisms for those students. While we constantly ask our students not to subscribe to narratives that undermine their capabilities, we can dismantle the systems that encourage the continued success of the privileged over others. Teaching students about their own agency has to come first.

Gathering the Data

This year, I started paying closer attention to how I was tracking my students' late and missing work. No surprise at all, students with below-average reading scores and high attendance issues were most likely to have late and missing work complicating their grades. The past two years have been incredibly difficult for all of us. I wanted to be fair, but I also wanted to teach the students accountability and growth.

I decided to show them what I was seeing on my end.

When organizing my classroom, I often stage my activities and assignments weekly, scaffolding content as we move further through the days as the complexity grows. As students complete tasks, they check in with me and/or submit a copy on our online page. It's at this step where I mark on a spreadsheet when the student completed this step. The spreadsheet reflects degrees of variation: on time, delayed, late, and missing.

I aggregated the data, made some graphs, and gave it to my students to examine. Students like looking at data and graphs, especially when the information is about them. Integrating these forms of literacy is crucial to developing future-oriented minds. I asked them to categorize it and tell me: What are we learning from this information? What is the data telling us about ourselves, about our class, about the way we are doing things? My class looks at late and missing work not as a problem, but as an opportunity to inquire about our behaviors, hypothesize alternatives, and test models for improvement.

I also asked them to develop inferences about the data. Students identified that if a task was started and due that day, activities were more likely to be "on time," with a few "missing." This made a lot of sense to everyone, especially if we correlated it with attendance. Rarely were they late. However, for larger group activities, especially those that took up multiple days, students observed significant increases in the rate of "late" and "missing work." Overwhelmingly, they believed it was because groups always had that one student who didn't do anything.

For myself, I didn't see this as a shortcoming of collaborative learning but as a hiccup in my instructional strategies. In this reflection, I noticed where pacing was an issue for some and where it was an issue for the whole class. Because I broke my larger assignments into phased tasks, I required too much with too little of reward for the students. I remembered that rigor does not mean mechanical complexity but should offer students an opportunity to challenge their assumptions and to manifest creativity. This process made me reconsider whether my structure was convenient solely for me or designed for their learning.

After doing this exercise three times this year, I have found it to be a powerful way to help students learn more about their executive functioning (EF), or the set of cognitive skills that they employ as they learn. Strong EF skills are crucial for helping students both regulate their behavior and develop critical literacy and social skills.

Through an equity-based approach, I came to understand due dates as an opportunity to teach students how to manage their EF skills as a commitment to social interactions. Not only has this approach helped my students understand the complexities of their own behaviors, but also I've used it to deeply reflect on my own teaching practices. Late and missing work doesn't have to be regulated to delinquency or deficiency, but rather can be an invitation to intervention and ingenuity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Viewing Late Work Through an Equity Lens

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dealing with late or missing work is one of the most challenging parts of being a teacher. In my classroom, I've struggled with crafting a late-work policy that would hold my students accountable. I wanted consistency and convenience that would combat my frustrations with my students' behaviors, but this was the wrong approach.

# data[].attributes.body
New teachers—and experienced ones too—can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
New teachers-and experienced ones too-can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

In the 1950s, psychologists Jacob Kounin and Paul Gump discovered a curious side effect of discipline: If a student was being disruptive and the teacher responded with strict disciplinary measures, the student might stop-but other students would start exhibiting the same misbehavior. Kounin and Gump called this the " ripple effect," and it demonstrated that efforts to control a classroom can backfire.

"The teacher who is interested in controlling ripple effects can generally do so best by giving clear instructions to the child rather than by exerting pressure on him," Kounin and Gump wrote.

Decades later, classroom management is still a thorny issue for teachers. Nearly half of new teachers report that they feel "not at all prepared" or "only somewhat prepared" to handle disruptive students, in part because the average teacher training program devotes just eight hours to the topic, according to a 2014 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality. This lack of training comes with a cost, as teachers report losing 144 minutes of instructional time on average to behavioral disruptions every week, which comes out to roughly three weeks over the course of a year.

Recent research confirms what Kounin and Gump discovered decades ago. A 2016 study found that while negative attention-reprimands like "Stop chitchatting!"-may temporarily stop misbehavior, students eventually became more likely to engage in disruptive behavior. Students in the study felt disengaged, had difficulty concentrating, and weren't able to effectively regulate their thoughts and emotions-a vicious cycle that "actually amplifies students' inappropriate behavior," the study authors explain.

8 Proactive Classroom Management Strategies

Instead of handling disruptions after they've happened, it can be more effective to set up conditions in which they are less likely to occur. Here are eight classroom strategies that teachers have shared with Edutopia, all backed by research.

1. Greet students at the door: At Van Ness Elementary School in Washington, DC, Falon Turner starts the day by giving each of her students a high-five, handshake, or hug. "During that time, I'm just trying to connect with them.... It's kind of like a pulse check to see where they are," she says.

In a study published last year, greeting students at the door helped teachers set a positive tone for the rest of the day, boosting academic engagement by 20 percentage points while reducing disruptive behavior by 9 percentage points-adding roughly an hour of engagement over the course of the school day.

2. Establish, maintain, and restore relationships: Building relationships with students through strategies like greeting them at the door is a good start. It's also necessary to maintain them over the course of the school year, and to repair them when conflicts arise. "The stronger the relationship and the better we understand our students, the more knowledge and goodwill we have to draw on when the going gets tough," writes Marieke van Woerkom, a restorative practices coach at the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility in New York.

Strategies for establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships -such as regular check-ins, and focusing on solutions instead of problems-can reduce disruptions by up to 75 percent.

3. Use reminders and cues: "Novelty-such as the sound of a wind chime or rain stick-captures young students' attention" writes Todd Finley, a former English teacher and current professor of English education, who suggests using these techniques to quiet a noisy class.

For older students, give plenty of warning if you need them to follow instructions. Reminders and cues are helpful ways to encourage students to follow instructions without being overtly controlling or forceful. For example, if you can anticipate a disruption-such as students getting out of their seats if they finish an assignment early-give a short reminder of what they should do instead.

Reminders are commonly verbal, but can also be visual (flicking the lights to signal that it's time to be quiet), auditory (ringing a small bell to let students know they should pay attention to the teacher), or physical (using a hand signal to let students know to get back in their seats).

4. Optimize classroom seating: When students choose their own seats, they're three times more likely to be disruptive than when seats are assigned. After all, they'll probably pick seats next to their friends and spend more time chatting.
Courtesy of Emily Polak
But that doesn't mean choice is always bad. Giving students a sense of ownership in the room, paired with clear expectations for behavior, can have surprisingly positive effects. A welcoming space can reduce anxiety and boost academic performance. Emily Polak, a ninth-grade teacher in Madison, Alabama, gave her room a cozier feel by adding a couch, a loveseat, rugs, a coffee table, and posters. Her students decide where to sit-but if they can't get their work done, they get moved back to a desk. "Discipline issues have significantly decreased. My students seem to feel more relaxed and more motivated in a setting that honors their choices," Polak says.

5. Give behavior-specific praise: It may seem counterintuitive, but acknowledging positive behavior and ignoring low-level disruptions can be more effective than punishing or disciplining students. Instead of focusing on specific students, offer praise for the behavior you want to reinforce. For example, tell students, "Excellent work getting to your seats quickly."

It's also helpful to avoid using the word don't, suggests Alyssa Nucaro, a sixth-grade English teacher in Memphis. Students are more likely to listen to instructions that include clear reasons.

6. Set clear expectations: Instead of just displaying rules for behavior, have a discussion with your students about why those rules matter. Bobby Shaddox, a seventh-grade social studies teacher in Portland, Maine, works with his students to create a list of norms-words such as inclusive, focused, and considerate -to build a sense of community. "It helps us own the behavior in the classroom," Shaddox says. "Instead of a top-down list of rules that a teacher gives a class, these are words that we generated together. These are words that we believe in."

7. Actively supervise: "Presence is crucial to maintaining classroom management and to effective delivery of instruction, and it's a skill we can develop with effort," explains Sol Henik, a high school teacher in Pleasant Hill, California. Although it's tempting to sit at your desk and grade papers, that's also an invitation to your students to get distracted. Be active: Move around the room, check in on student progress, and ask questions. It's not about policing your students, but about interacting with them.

A 2017 study found that a teacher's nonverbal cues-such as smiling and making eye contact-can "reduce physical and/or psychological distance" with their students, boosting students' positive feelings toward the teacher and the course material while improving behavior.

8. Be consistent in applying rules: Early in Kelly Wickham Hurst's career as an administrator in a public high school, she was asked to discipline a black student for violating the school dress code by wearing sagging jeans. As they walked down the hallway, he pointed out other boys-all white-who were also wearing sagging pants. "Are you gonna get him, too, or is it just me?" he asked. School and classroom expectations, rules, and routines should be followed and applied fairly to all students. Don't single out certain students-it's the behavior you should be focused on, not the student. Correct errors when you see them and provide additional instruction or reteaching when misbehavior occurs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New teachers-and experienced ones too-can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins. In the 1950s, psychologists Jacob Kounin and Paul Gump discovered a curious side effect of discipline: If a student was being disruptive and the teacher responded with strict disciplinary measures, the student might stop-but other students would start exhibiting the same misbehavior.

# data[].attributes.body
When kids explain their mathematical thinking to their peers, they learn there’s more to math than just the right answer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When kids explain their mathematical thinking to their peers, they learn there's more to math than just the right answer.

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Image-Based Activities for World Language Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Image-Based Activities for World Language Learners

# data[].attributes.body
Discussing images of people, places, and foods from the target culture helps world language students develop a variety of skills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Image-Based Activities for World Language Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching is an endless source of exciting and enriching discoveries. As a world language teacher, I've discovered, for example, the importance of providing activities that help develop world language learners' viewing skills. Viewing enables learners to become reflective and creative thinkers as they see, analyze, and evaluate visual texts and other multimedia from the target culture.

# data[].attributes.headline
3 practices to give you more one-on-one time with students

# data[].attributes.subject
3 practices to give you more one-on-one time with students

# data[].attributes.body
If you feel like you never have enough time to truly differentiate or personalize learning, try the approach by the Modern Classrooms Project approach.

I’m interviewing co-founder Kareem Farah about three strategies that you can experiment with integrating into your classroom to allow kids to work at their own pace, and free you up to work with students individually and in small groups.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Finally - a sustainable model for self-paced learning and mastery-based grading!

If you feel like you never have enough time to truly differentiate or personalize learning, try the approach by the Modern Classrooms Project approach.

I'm interviewing co-founder Kareem Farah about three strategies that you can experiment with integrating into your classroom to allow kids to work at their own pace, and free you up to work with students individually and in small groups.

Kareem is a former high school math teacher in Washington, D.C, who started using what's become the Modern Classroom model (blended, self-paced, mastery-based) because he was really struggling to meet his students' needs, and was feeling burnt out as a result. Kareem feels certain that if he had not started teaching in this way, he would have quit after a year or two.

Instead, he continued teaching, happily and successfully, for several more years, and was even named DC Public Schools' most innovative educator. Kareem now leads MCP full-time in order to support more educators in teaching through the Modern Classrooms Project.

The Modern Classrooms Project is a nonprofit that empowers educators to build classrooms that respond to every student's needs. They lead a movement of educators in fostering human connection, authentic learning, and social-emotional growth.

The Modern Classrooms Project has empowered over 35,000 educators worldwide through their free online course, and the Modern Classrooms group on Facebook of 9,000 innovative educators. They've partnered with more than 100 schools and districts nationwide, and have certified over 300 Distinguished Modern Classroom Educators.

Kareem and I are going to talk about three components of the MCP approach that make teachers more effective (and by extension, make teachers' lives easier). Kareem has seen this approach work across grade levels and subject areas, and it really empowers educators to spend more one-on-one time with students.

My conversation with Kareem will help you figure out logistics and practical considerations, whether your school's fully on board with student-centered, innovative teaching methodologies or you're just getting started.

Listen to my conversation with Kareem of the Modern Classrooms Project using the podcast player, or read the transcript below
ANGELA: In your work with the Modern Classrooms Project, Kareem, you're coming from the assumption that teachers know that the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning doesn't work. And the way you initially described it to me was this way: "The kids who already know the content get bored, students who have learning gaps get lost, and students who are absent miss out altogether." So your goal is to give teachers actionable strategies and resources for trying a different approach. And I think this is so needed because differentiating and meeting every student's needs is just incredibly time-consuming and it can be very overwhelming for teachers to manage. Has that been true in your experience?
KAREEM: Yeah, absolutely. I have said for years and anyone who's ever sort of come in contact with our work has probably heard that I think that differentiation is the most overused and under-executed term in education. And I think that's the case because most teachers are faced with a categorically unconquerable task in front of them, which is that they have 20, 30, sometimes 40 plus kids in front of them. They all have a diverse set of academic and social, emotional needs. And their goal is to meet their needs as effectively as possible.

And the reality is, it's impossible to meet every student's needs perfectly. That is a silly thing to think is possible given the constraints of teaching and learning.So I think it's the most challenging and most important element of an educator's life. And I don't think that the one-size-fits-all or traditional approaches to instruction are actually built to support educators, and actually doing that effectively at scale was the biggest challenge I faced every single day.

And it was why at a certain point, about halfway through my teaching career, I was strongly considering leaving the profession because I felt like I was going into the job with this vision of my capacity to really build relationships with kids and support them, both academically and socially and emotionally. I was finding myself spending much more time trying to control the room than I was actually moving kids across a continuum of learning.
Yeah. I think that's a really familiar problem in that it does kind of feel impossible at times to be able to differentiate for all kids. And so, I know that in your approach with the Modern Classrooms Project, you've identified three core components that you think help make this a little bit more manageable and also get us closer to that goal of meeting every student's needs. The three core components are blended instruction, self-paced structures, and mastery-based grading. We're going to go through each of these three components in depth so that folks listening have some actionable steps that they can use right away in their classrooms. Let's begin with the blended instruction piece in which teachers record their own instructional videos to replace in-class lectures. I know a lot of teachers experimented with this for a while during remote learning, so they're familiar with the idea, but I think with the push to get back to normal, whatever that means in schools, these really valuable instructional videos may be underutilized. And it may be that teachers have stopped making them now and not really using that as a tool in their classrooms. What approach do you recommend here with blended instruction?
I think at its core, the single most precious resource in a classroom is the teacher's time. It's just a reality. You need to maximize the capacity for educators to be able to engage with students in small group and individualized instruction. That's when any effective strategy, in my opinion, at scale, really comes to life as it relates to differentiation.

When you think about sort of the one-size-fits-all model, an educator spends a lot of time at the front of the room, talking at kids. And yeah, they might post some questions and kids kind of raise their hands and there's a few checks for understanding, but it's a lot of time that's being spent pretty far away from kids in the grand scheme of things.

And I think the power of instructional videos is it actually pulls the teacher away from that, pulls the teacher away from putting on a performance, which is not only not a great use of time, but also incredibly exhausting and really not effective, by the way, for kids that are either experiencing trauma, not in class at all, because they're absent or multiple grade levels behind or ahead so whatever you're saying is not actually resonating with them or particularly engaging.

When you build those instructional videos, it actually removes the need to have to put on a performance, which I think is really powerful, because you replace all that time with time spent with kids, time spent getting to know kids, but time spent also remediating and reteaching and supporting students as they're struggling to master content, the powerful kind of elements of the learning experience that are important, hitting roadblocks and you're kind of supporting them as they get through those roadblocks.

That's the power of infusing instructional videos into classrooms and simply put, in our model, teachers just don't lecture - they replace all their lectures with instructional videos.

And I always stress when I share this part of the model that that doesn't mean you don't bring kids together. You bring kids together as a whole group for a variety of reasons. It could be a spiraled mini-lesson that you want to bring the kids together to chat about because you see common mistakes happening throughout the unit, or you might bring kids together because it's a core collaborative experience such as a lab or a Socratic seminar. We love when teachers bring kids together, but you want to bring kids together for a purpose, not to deliver information to them and for them to then take those notes down.

The other reason why this is a critical part of the model is phase two - that self-pacing piece. The reason kids can't work at their own pace in school today is because they are reliant on that live delivery of information. If every single day the teacher has to give that information live in a lecture format, well, kids just can't be at different spots. It's a key bottleneck to that experience, which I would argue again, it's not a great use of teacher time and student time, but it's also an equity question.

Ultimately, we want to provide an avenue for kids to have unlimited access to content - anytime, anywhere - so that if they're not in the headspace to digest information at the time that you're delivering it, they can at another time. That's phase one, which is the building of instructional videos.

The last thing I'll say is we encourage educators to build their own instructional videos. We tried using externally created instructional videos. But when we did that, we realized that we forgot that the most important factor in learning is the teacher themselves outside of the student. You can't replace an educator, you can't replace an educator with a disembodied voice that doesn't exist in the room. And we realized that had real damages when we tried to have kids watch someone else teach content to them.
Right. And I think I've also heard some parents complain. They feel like the education's being outsourced. Like you're not even teaching, you're just showing this other video.
Totally, which is true by the way. And part of the reason why that is true is when I used external videos at scale, I actually started to lose my understanding of the way other folks were teaching the lessons. I remember trying to replace myself with instructional videos externally created, and a kid asked me at one point in the lesson, "Hey, can you explain how to do this? I'm struggling." And I started to explain. And the kid was like, "Well, that's not how the computer told me to do it."

And in that moment, I felt that while I'm a pretty invested, caring teacher and I plan pretty detailed, it certainly was my mistake that I wasn't aware of how the instructional video or that online resource was teaching it, but it also just showed me that when you start to replace your own kind of role in the classroom, you start to really become pretty distant from the learning experience, and that's not the goal.
Two questions about this. The first is how long are these video lectures? And second of all, what does it look like when students are watching them? Because I'm envisioning a teacher listening to this and thinking, "If my administrator walks in the room and my students are watching a video of me teaching, they're not going to like that." How should this time be structured to make sure that it's really, really valuable for the kids?
I always say the biggest compliment I was ever given in my classroom was when the Edutopia film crew came into my classroom and the film director tapped me on the shoulder before filming started and said, "Are you sure this is a blended learning classroom?" And I looked back and I was like, "I'm pretty confident it is." And she was like, "But only 20% of the kids are on computers." And I just looked back and I said, "Thanks."
And the reality is, I'm not saying kids can't be on computers during classrooms. There are a variety of things that they could be on computers for, but with instructional videos, the research says they need to be nine minutes or ideally, under six. And certainly for younger students, even shorter chunks than that.
When you think about the scope of the overarching learning experience, that's a very small chunk of it. And when you think about layering and self-paced learning, which is the next phase, there are kids doing a variety of things in the classroom, it's truly controlled chaos.

So maybe only 20% of kids at any given time might be watching an instructional video. And if they are, they're taking guided notes, they're answering questions that are popping up through any of the programs out there that allow you to bake checks for understanding into the actual videos themselves. So even though the video watching experience is engaging, it's a pretty small percentage of the time.

And that's critical because you want kids to spend the majority of class working through actual content, struggling with content, wrestling with content, engaging with their peers, and with the educator to master that content. That's a key component of it.
Okay. Just to be clear for everyone listening, we are not recommending that you just put on a 30-minute video of you lecturing and sit in the back of the classroom.
Absolutely not.
This is really figuring out what the most important content here that I need to deliver to students and delivering it really efficiently and effectively and then getting back to using that class time for collaboration, for remediation, and so on.
Absolutely.
The second component of the Modern Classrooms Project is the self-paced structures. And the idea is that teachers build systems and procedures that allow kids to learn at their own individual paces, while meeting all of the same essential learning objectives and deadlines. They have those learning objectives and deadlines in common, but they're doing it at their own pace. Can you tell us about some approaches to self-pace structures that really work well for kids and that you found are simpler for teachers to manage?
I always tell folks that blended learning is kind of the flashy component of the model - instructional videos, technology, and all that kind of stuff. But I actually think the really powerful learnings are happening once you get to self-paced structure and mastery-based grading, because that's when you're really transforming the classroom in a powerful way, and it's also what you'll find students isolate every single time as the most impactful.

And their favorite thing about the model, if you go into any of our thousands of modern classrooms out there at the moment, you'll hear students say, "Oh my God, I love learning in this way because it's self-paced."

And the structures that are critical: the first is just making sure that we're clear that this is self-pacing with guardrails. Part of the reason any teacher can do this literally anywhere, in any district, in any school, theoretically, is because this is self-pacing with unitive study, even shorter chunks than that. I was just at a school out in Dallas and they all self-paced one week at a time, which is fabulous. It's clear guardrails.

The kids know what objective needs to be completed in a certain span of time. They have to execute. And then there's a variety of sort of checkpoints where teachers really intervene and then they kind of move on to the next chunk of self-pacing together. So self-pacing and chunks are the first things that are really, really critical.

The second thing (covered in a lot of the research and we did a literature review at John's Hopkins as well), that kind of supports the core components of our model, but it's really important that when you walk into any self-paced learning environment, that the kids know exactly where they are in the larger scope of the learning experience and the teacher knows where every kid's at.

I've always said, a controlled chaos environment is a teacher's dream and a completely chaotic environment is a teacher's nightmare. And in many ways, the systems and structures you put in place for you to know where the kids are at and for the kids to know where they're at is the big key differentiator between those two styles of a classroom.

When I walk into a modern classroom that's effective, you're either going to see game boards or checklists. And those are what we call personal trackers - systems and structures - where kids are able to identify where they are in the larger scope of the unit, and move day by day through each activity, and mark where they're going.

And then physical and public trackers are ways where you can walk into the classroom and see where you're at in the larger scope of the learning experience. And they can be anonymous or not, but either way, they're really powerful ways to ensure that everyone's super clear about where they are in the moment and where they need to go.

And that includes, by the way, identifying for all the students every single day what lesson is on pace right now, what lessons you're actually kind of behind in the pacing calendar, and what lessons are ahead of pace, pushing forward and getting through content fast-paced. So everyone's just really, really comfortable and clear as to where they are and where they're going.

Then the final piece, which is so integral, is our lesson classification model. The reality is, there are some skills in a unit that are integral and non-negotiable. There are some skills that we'd like every kid to master, but we know some kids aren't going to get to them. And then there're some skills that are extension lessons.
I love that so much, because I feel like there's so much, often just clutter in the curriculum and you feel like everything's important, everything's urgent, the kids have to master everything right now. But really dialing down and figuring out, "What are the key essential skills? What are the most important things that I need to make sure all my students are able to do?" If you can identify that before you begin implementing the unit, I think it saves so much time. Have you found that too, that it just makes it so much easier for teachers to make sure they're maximizing instructional time?
So when teachers go through our program, whether the free course or a virtual mentorship program, they're actually going to plan a full unit in advance and they're going to isolate: what are the must-do lessons, what are the should-do lessons, and what are the aspired to-do lessons? This creates a really healthy framework to send kids on different pathways, depending on how successfully they're mastering content at the pace that you've kind of outlined.

100%. I often hear folks, one of the many buzzwords in education is obviously personalized learning. And I always tell folks a lot of times personalized learning as it's created is actually quite impersonal. I think that structure gives an avenue to true personalized learning, where teachers are making live decisions around what pathways kids need to go on based on what skills are most important to master.

And it just also honors the reality that you have a very diverse group of students in front of you, and you want to hold them to as high expectations as possible. But it's also not realistic to say that every single kid is going to learn every single skill in one fixed timeframe. That just doesn't really make all that much sense.

I think when teachers are told that's the reality that they need to live up to, they kind of roll their eyes. They kind of walk out of the classroom and the professional development session or like, really? I have a pretty diverse set of learners in front of me. It's not realistic for that to play out the way that you've described it.
The example school that you just mentioned in Dallas, you said that they're planning the self-paced structures are for a week at a time. Does that mean the kids basically get the assignments on Monday and then have everything complete by Friday, or what are some different ways that might look in a classroom?
So creating that structure creates comfort for teachers before they walk into the room to say, "Hey, I know what is non-negotiable for my students and what I need to just guarantee they all understand." And then we build up from there, and I think that's a really powerful way to prioritize time.

Yeah, totally. They get every Monday something called their "quest". That's what they call it at the school, which is super cool because it's a gaming school, which is even more fascinating. So there are quests and they have to complete their quest by Friday.

Now, if they don't complete their quest by Friday and there are mastery checks in there and all that kind of stuff, well, they can always complete their quest on their own time. You're not saying that that content's done, which is another thing that really bothered me about sort of one-size-fits-all traditional instruction. It's like, "Hey, you missed it yesterday. You didn't get it. It's over." That sends such a weird message to kids about how learning works.

So, if you don't get everything on your quest done, you have to spend class time next week on the next quest. But if you want to come in at lunch, before school, after school, or work at home, you can watch the instructional videos anytime, anywhere, and you can still master those skills and complete those quests.

So, it creates those clear guardrails and those clear structures, but learning's never-ending. Kids can always go back to a quest they never finished, but you want to really create a space too where kids don't start to diverge what they're doing so far, that it makes it difficult for them to collaborate.
Yeah. I like that week-long timeframe of a quest. Have you found that teachers like to leave their time very unstructured and just go with the flow and see what the kids need? Or do you find that when the kids are working on their quests, the teacher has a more specific schedule? Like, "Okay, I'm going to pull this small group" or "I'm going to go work one-on-one with these kids on this schedule." What does the teacher's class time typically look like?
If some kids are on quest 1 and then other kids are on quest 10, which means they're 10 weeks apart in the kind of curriculum, well then it makes it quite difficult for them to connect and collaborate. It also makes it difficult for you to bring the kids together and say, "Hey, we're going to have a discussion about this." That's why we kind of create those guardrails. I think it's healthy for kids.

I think there's an important amount of unstructured time you need to do the model effectively because I think one of the coolest things about the model is you're responding to live indicators of mastery and then intervening. It's more about how you structure your time spent in the classroom, but not over-structuring it to the point where you're not grading live and then giving feedback live.

I actually modeled this for one of our partners in Connecticut the other day where I just kind of brought the adults in the room and I said, "Pretend you're in my modern classroom." And I think one of the core elements of it is we have, whether it's the teacher station, we often call it the teacher nest, is where you're largely doing all your small group and individualized instructions.

You actually have all these kinds of mastery checks coming in, where kids are demonstrating their mastery of the skills, and live right there, you're pulling those out. You're looking at them to see if the kids have mastered the skills and then you start clumping them together.

"Alright, these three kids didn't master lesson three. Come on down to my teacher nest - we're going to do a small group instruction." And everyone on the outside is really just learning at their own pace. They're working with each other, working with their peers and tackling content.

So it's structured in that the teacher should be spending the vast majority of class time, literally grading live and giving feedback live. And when they're not doing that, kind of roaming the room and checking in one-on-one with students. That part is structured.

But what you don't want to do, which is I think a potential downfall of some of the station rotation models of say, "Well, at 15 minutes in, I'm going to pull these 4 kids. And then 20 minutes in, I'm going to pull these 5 kids." Not every kid actually needs to be pulled down in those scenarios.

When you over plan those elements, sometimes you're forcing kids to be in small group and individualized instruction that actually don't need it, whereas you could spend that time with other students that really need it quite badly.
I like what you're saying there about spending a bit of class time looking at student work as it's coming in and beginning the assessment process, because that's obviously another major pain point for teachers - giving timely feedback, giving detailed feedback, and giving grades in a timely manner, particularly with mastery-based grading. Let's dive some more into that, as it's the third and final component of the Modern Classrooms Project. We talked about the blended instruction where you are not lecturing live. All of your lectures are in short 6-9 minute videos. We talked about the self-paced structures in which students have these quest-like self-paced structures, so they have those guardrails to try to keep them on pace and make sure there's lot of checkpoints along the way. And the mastery-based grading I know is a third and really a very crucial part of your structure as well. I know many teachers like the idea in theory, but have found that it's really difficult to manage and stay on top of. So, what are your recommendations here for this component?
No time to finish reading? Download the MP3 and listen on the go!

First thing I'll tell everyone is we see mastery-based grading, competency-based grading, standards-based grading, and proficiency-based grading all as synonyms to us. They all mean the same thing to us. And they've all been stuck in theory for what feels like 100 years.

Folks are just talking about it because intuitively it makes perfect sense. It's what we all want. But then to see it in action never gets there. And I think that's because most of the resources out there are not practical. They don't provide a clear blueprint for how to make it come to life in the classroom. But then people also get really stuck in the sort of standard deconstruction world that they kind of forget what the overarching premise is.

All we're saying here is kids have to understand one thing before they go to the next thing. And that's as simple as we want people to digest it when they're learning the modern classrooms model - you want kids to understand skill A before they go to scope B. And ultimately the reason why this is not that hard to pull off in our model is because you've got self-pacing.

The first thing I tell everyone is you can't go to mastery-based grading, competency-based grading, proficiency-based grading if you don't have self-pacing baked into your classroom environment. The two things just can't work without each other. It just doesn't make any sense.

You can't say, "Hey, I'm going to hold kids to understanding skill A before going to skill B, but by the way, everyone has to go to skill B tomorrow." Those two realities don't make any sense. That's the first thing. Don't dive into part three of the model until you figure out part one and part two.

The second most important thing is just the art of the mastery check, which is this idea that you have a bite-size skill (not that different from an exit ticket) but we call it a mastery check because you're not exiting the room. You're demonstrating mastery on the lesson that you just completed. And that can be at the beginning of class, middle of class, end of the class, it's whenever you're ready to demonstrate mastery.

Those mastery checks really need to be bite-sized. They need to be pretty easy to grade live, which is why you can then deliver feedback really quickly. They need to really distill that skill and be connected to the skill you're trying to measure. And ideally, there's a clear avenue for how a student can be reassessed or be revising that mastery check.

In simple terms, in a math class, a kid takes a mastery check and they don't get it right. Well, there are multiple forms. I always had three forms of the same skill mastery check. If a kid doesn't get the first one right, calm down and say, "Hey, let's chat about this," and then I give him a different mastery check to work on.

And with some of the more humanities classes, they're much more revisable, maybe the mastery check is constructing the thesis that you're going to use at the end of this unit. And they get to revise that thesis statement until it's up to the standard that you want to see.

Then the final piece is really making sure that you've constructed your learning environment to make sure that academic integrity is at the forefront around mastery checks. We love environments where kids are collaborating, but when it comes to mastery check time, that's really the time for kids to say, "Hey, I can show you that I can do this without the support of others."

A lot of our teachers use mastery check zones. It's a part of the room reserved just for taking mastery checks. So when the time is right, the kid says, "Hey, I'm ready for mastery check number three," and they grab it. It might be a colored sheet of paper. They go into that mastery check zone and they take it there. So everyone kind of knows and honors that space is quiet. You don't bring resources in there. It's time for you to demonstrate your ability to do this.

And my favorite thing, I was just talking to a teacher the other day about this in Minnesota. Instead of the bin saying mastery checks, it's called prove it. They just make it clear to the kids that they're just proving that they have this, like they understand and are super clear. It's the coolest part of the model, but it's actually quite simple once you've been able to get blended and self-paced structures off the ground and running.

A lot of times teachers spend so much time grading stuff and it never actually leads to any sort of personalized feedback and kids start to not pay attention to it. But if you say, "Hey, I got a lesson, I got 10 lessons in this unit, but I'm going to focus on this bite-size assessment at the end of each lesson - that's where I'm going to drive most of my grading energy because I know it's bite-size enough or I can grade it quickly and I can translate it to feedback."
I know that one of the goals behind this three-prong model of blended instruction, self-paced structures, and mastery-based grading is making sure that teachers have more one-on-one time with students. That really resonated with me when I was looking through the Modern Classrooms Project resources, because every single teacher that I talk to, wishes they had more time to get to know their kids as individuals. And they'll say things like, "If I just had more time, we could do this" or "If I had fewer students, then maybe I can make this happen." They talk very wistfully about all the things that they would like to be able to provide their students and feel like they can't. I wonder if you have any advice for teachers who like what you've shared here so far and really are very intrigued by this model and want to maximize the way that these three structures can help them individualize instruction and have that time with individual kids.
And it's also isolating the most important skills in the lesson so that you can confidently say, "Hey, if a kid got these questions correct, they're in good shape. And if they didn't, I've got to intervene." So it's usually teacher graded, but it also reduces the amount of grading that needs to be done because you've done a really good job distilling the learning into those bite-sized assessments.

What I tell folks first is just know that we're a nonprofit that doesn't force our instructional model on anyone. The beauty of that is we really tell folks, you can make this model your own. Whenever I present about this model alongside other educators, it's one of the first things they isolate - know you can make the model your own.

What's great about it is you can go in there and learn about the practices and then customize it: make it right for your learning environment because you know your kid's best, you know the circumstances in your learning community best, you're going to make it right and tweak it for your kids.
Wow.
If you're wondering if it's going to accomplish the goal of allowing you to spend more one-on-one in small group time with kids, my favorite data point from our Johns Hopkins study when we asked control teachers: Are you able to work closely with each of your students during class? Only 19% of control teachers felt like they could do that and 86% of modern classroom educators felt like they could do that.

It's obviously an enormous difference. It's statistically significant and a very high P-value. So it really sends the message like, look, it's a real thing, it's possible to do.

The last thing I'd say is ease into it. You don't need to sort of totally redesign your classroom by tomorrow. One of the things that we see quite consistently each year is the vast majority of our teachers really redesign their classrooms over the summer and do a reset at the beginning of the school year.
I know that you have a free course available at learn.modernclassrooms.org. I want to talk a little bit about that for listeners because I'm really impressed with it. It is not a freemium course. There's no paywall, and it contains all of the teacher training content that the Modern Classrooms Project has ever developed. It's all in there and it's designed to help teachers learn and implement an innovative instructional approach that's going to meet every student's need. It sort of gives you more ideas and support around these three components of the model that we talked about today. Can you tell us more about the free course and how it can help support teachers who are listening to this and who are really excited to dive deeper into what you shared?
So ultimately, what we know at the Modern Classrooms Project, and I think every teacher knows and hopefully every admin knows is that teacher time is the most precious time and resource that exists in the classroom. Our model is really built around maximizing how you use that time and using it in small group and one-on-one settings. So just give it a try and know that you can make it your own as soon as you kind of start to access the content.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's part of the core fabric of our organizational vision and mission. We're founded by myself and my co-founder, Rob. We were just two teachers trying to figure out how to meet students' needs effectively.

I tell folks that we were sitting at Qdoba years ago and he looked at me and asked me, "Hey, what do you think you're going to do for the rest of your life?" And I said, "I think I'm going to be a teacher for the rest of my life." And I said the same thing to him and he said the same thing back.

We never really had an intention of founding an organization, but we realized that we were sitting on an instructional model that people really wanted. The first thing we did when we created the organization was say, "Hey, we're going to put everything we know about this instructional model out there for free. And we're going to try to design an asynchronous, self-paced learning space for adults that's completely free. And one thing we're going to do in perpetuity of is to ensure that no matter what, when we create really powerful resources that we think teachers can use, we're going to make it freely accessible."

That's what the free course is. A lot of times we estimate, especially when districts shared out at scale, it takes about 3-5 hours to go through, but ultimately you could spend 100 hours in that free course because there's just so many different gems in there that you can kind of explore and use and tons of templates you can make copies of and all that good stuff.
And that's at learn.modernclassrooms.org, correct?
So, I encourage anyone that's curious about the model, the two best ways to understand it better, first to watch our Edutopia videos - our high school and our elementary one - and then to just go right into that free course.
And then you also have a virtual mentorship program for teachers who want extra support. Can you tell us about that?
That's right.

Yes! Once the free course was created, we started to get both schools and districts and teachers individually saying, "Hey, I love the free course, but can we get a little more support? I want feedback on the things that I'm creating. I want to talk to a real person who does this effectively."

So we thought again about how we could construct a PD environment that we would've liked when we were teachers. We determined the best way for teachers to learn, in our opinion, was to actually pair them with someone who's really good at it, so they can get that personalized feedback and get those coaching calls they need. So we created a mentorship program that essentially takes the brilliant educators who do our model and credentials them into distinguished modern classroom educators and then mentors.

What happens is, if you are a sixth-grade English teacher and you enroll in our virtual mentorship program, you're going to get paired with a fabulous educator who does our model beautifully, who's going to be your mentor. And then we have a series of assignments you complete on a schedule - it's asynchronous and self-paced, and every time you submit an assignment, your mentor's going to review it and give you detailed feedback.

You can jump on coaching calls with them. You get enrolled in a Slack channel. It's just a really personalized, asynchronous, virtual way to get feedback and support as you launch your own modern classroom.
That's awesome. A good start then would be for teachers to go check out the free course at learn.modernclassrooms.org. Get a feel more for the model, for the type of resources there, and then approach administration or someone in the district about maybe partnering with you all for the virtual mentorship program.
Now, I will say there's a ton of educators who enroll individually, but the vast majority of educators who we actually enroll in our virtual mentorship program end up coming through school and district partnerships. It's still a totally opt-in exercise, but what schools and districts will do is basically purchase seats for cohorts of educators to kind of enroll in the program and learn the model alongside each other and our mentors.

That's exactly right. And the most popular time will probably be enrolling between 2,000 and 3,000 teachers into our virtual mentorship program this summer. Our Virtual Summer Institute is the most popular time for folks to learn the model. It's a really exciting time where folks can take a step back and think differently about instruction.
That's really exciting, Kareem. I think this model is something that is flexible enough to work in all different grade levels and subject areas. I can't think of any curriculums I've seen that couldn't work with this in terms of the skills and the content that kids need to learn. I love that it's not prescribed, that there's so much flexibility. There's so much room for the teacher's personality to shine through and do the things they do best as well as really following the kids lead and being responsive to their needs. So I'm really excited about this, and I hope that everyone listening to this will check it out, go to that free online course and get more resources because I think this is a really sustainable path forward. I talk a lot about finding a more sustainable approach to teaching learning, because I think not only are we burning out our teachers with the current model, but we're also burning out kids. We've got to find a way that is going to work for both, to find that overlap between what's best for kids and what's best for teachers. And that's what I hear in the Modern Classrooms Project. And it's exciting to me - you've got me really fired up!
The pathway you described is exactly right, and in a lot of cases, you might just have one teacher who really wants to do it and just goes to their admin and says, "Hey, can you reimburse my seat in this?" And just so folks know, it's $500 a seat in our virtual mentorship program. A lot of times, schools, districts, and principals can cover that cost for educators.
I know you are, and I'm so glad that you've pursued this, and I'm glad that you're sharing this with Truth for Teachers listeners. I'm wondering if you can take us out with a takeaway truth, something that you want people to remember in the week ahead, something that you wish every teacher understood about what we talked about here today.
Good. I'm glad. I can promise you I'm equally fired up!

Absolutely! I think the most important thing I'd say is that every educator should know that they're the expert in the room, and no matter what strategy, idea, tool, or instructional model that's offered to them, they should be able to customize it, to make it their own, and trust their instincts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Modern Classrooms Project: 3 practices for more one-on-one time with students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Finally - a sustainable model for self-paced learning and mastery-based grading! If you feel like you never have enough time to truly differentiate or personalize learning, try the approach by the Modern Classrooms Project approach. I'm interviewing co-founder Kareem Farah about three strategies that you can experiment with integrating into your classroom to allow kids ...

# data[].attributes.body
What really moves the needle for educators and, by extension, their students?

Being an effective teacher is about more than just improving test scores—it’s also about making a difference in students’ lives. When we asked our readers to describe the traits of a life-changing teacher, they said that great teachers make their students feel safe and loved, possess a contagious passion for learning, believe their students can succeed—and always know when to be tough to help students reach their full potential.

But does the research agree? What are the fundamental levers that teachers can pull to refine their practices, improve their craft, and make a significant—or even life-altering—contribution to the lives of their students?

We reviewed nearly two dozen studies in compiling this piece—so let’s get right to it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
To get the highest-quality data, keep the feedback low-stakes and focused on pedagogical practices-not the content, suggests high school physics teacher Christopher Pagan. "The purpose of the survey is to give my students a voice to tell me what changes I can make and what practices I can implement to help them perform better in class," he says. The survey "has nothing to do with content. There are no questions about physics."

Being open to collegial feedback as well-particularly from someone more experienced than you-has a significant effect size of 0.49, making it a more effective strategy than traditional professional development programs, according to a 2018 study.
Other tips:

Use student surveys. Assure your students that feedback will be anonymous, and use a mix of targeted questions as well as open-ended ones like "Are assignments clear?" and "What should keep happening in this class?" to quickly home in on areas to improve.

Invite other teachers into your classroom. Ask teachers you admire, and position it as "an opportunity to seek advice and collaborate on finding solutions," suggests instructional specialist Miriam Plotinsky.

Video yourself. Seeing yourself in action provides an opportunity for reflection: Are you calling on the same students? When are students most attentive?

2. Attend to Relationships (and Classroom Culture)

One more time for the folks in the back: Relationships before learning. "In school, children need a sense of belonging to be productive learners," explained Linda Darling-Hammond in an Edutopia interview. "They need to be connected to their fellow students and their teachers, and affirmed in who they are in a way that is positive and accepting."

Even the simplest efforts can yield meaningful results. In a 2018 study, teachers who spent a few minutes greeting kids at the door dramatically improved student attentiveness and reduced misbehavior-adding as much as "an additional hour of student engagement" over the course of an instructional day. Meanwhile, a 2019 study found that when teachers used techniques centered around establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships throughout the year, academic engagement increased by 33 percent and disruptive behavior decreased by 75 percent.
Other tips:

Check in daily. Spend 15 minutes on morning meetings, a rose-and-thorn activity, or daily temperature checks to build the bonds of community and identify kids who are struggling.

Conduct relationship audits. Consider using a relationship tracking form to inventory student interests and personal details, or take teacher Todd Finley's advice and keep a praise checklist to "chart who you've praised so you can spread the love evenly."

Be responsive. Allowing your lessons to emerge from the interest of your students can revitalize the class. "I do student surveys every nine weeks," a teacher wrote to Edutopia, "and when I implement stuff from their feedback, I let them know I'm doing this because I heard them and they matter to me."

3. Don't Give an Inch on Standards

Relationships matter-but they're not a substitute for rigor. In fact, to get the most out of your students, you'll need to strike the right balance between caring deeply for kids and exposing them to challenging or even frustrating materials.

"The assumption is that one can be either a compassionate teacher or a rigorous teacher, but not both-and there's a belief that kids don't want rigor," writes middle school teacher Kristine Napper. But high expectations are effective when you adopt a "warm demander" approach and work within a student's zone of proximal development, she says. Build strong relationships with your students, and then draw on that trust to hold them accountable for outstanding work.

The impact of maintaining high academic standards is far-reaching. In a 2014 study, for example, high school students whose teachers had high expectations were three times more likely to graduate from college than students whose teachers had low expectations-even when student grades were identical.
Other tips:

Be direct. Students who received encouraging but aspirational messages from their teachers-"I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them"-were twice as likely to revise their work, a 2014 study found.

Embrace "productive failure." In a 2008 study of 11th graders, researchers concluded that challenging problems that resulted in "productive failure" actually drove deeper learning than simpler, highly scaffolded problems that reliably produced correct answers.

Avoid busywork and remedial work. Low expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Research reveals that when passionate students are repeatedly assigned remedial work, it snuffs out the spark of interest and becomes an academic dead end.

4. Make Your Classroom Management 'Invisible'

The best classroom management can feel almost invisible: Proactive strategies that emphasize strong relationships are quietly at work behind the scenes, putting a stop to student misbehavior before it gets started.

That's an insight from a 2021 study in which researchers discovered that expert teachers, in particular, possessed a "comprehensive understanding of classroom management and its complexity." The most experienced educators conceived of classroom discipline holistically-looking for the "root causes" of misbehavior before they considered punishment, prioritizing strong student-teacher relationships, and thinking about discipline as a natural extension of the way lessons were organized and executed, or even how the physical environment was arranged.
Other tips:

Pick your battles. Sometimes you have to confront kids, but when you call out every low-level disruption, you may unwittingly be giving students the spotlight they crave and reinforcing the misbehavior. Instead, draw attention to positive behavior and rely on relationships and lesson engagement to do a lot of the work.

Be adaptive. "Successful classroom management requires the adaptive application of a repertoire of different strategies," says a 2021 study. What works for one student may not work for another, so consider the right tool for the situation.

Involve students in norm-setting. A list of rules won't produce compliance, researchers insist: Consider working together to identify key guidelines, suggests teacher David Tow-such as being respectful of others-and reflect on and amend them throughout the year.

5. Humanize Your Teaching

You can calibrate your bell schedules and arrange your classroom seating immaculately, but it's the messy emotional worlds of students-their daily ration of hope, fear, sadness, passion, and confidence-that ultimately determine academic readiness.

Attending to the emotional well-being of kids, then, is just effective academic instruction. It starts with the "little things," from "treating kids like people" to "pulling up a chair and listening to them carefully," said educators in a recent social media thread. A rapidly growing number of studies suggest that setting aside 5 or 10 minutes for student self-reflection-from brief essays that allow kids to tackle their school-related anxieties to perspective-taking exercises before a test-can move students along the continuum from belonging to self-confidence to academic success.

Finally, don't underestimate the role that identity plays in learning. Students are resilient, but peer pressure and academic self-doubt can send them reeling: In a 2021 article for Scientific American, researchers concluded that students as young as 7 years old are keenly aware of social reputation and "begin to connect asking for help with looking incompetent in front of others." Give students private channels to seek help, the researchers suggest, and try to reduce the stigma associated with mistakes.
Other tips:

Give grace. If a student misses an assignment, it may be for reasons outside of their control. "Retakes let students know that I acknowledge their humanity, that we all have bad days," says high school teacher David Cutler.

Opt for low-stakes tests. Testing season is misery for many students, driving up biological indicators of stress and interrupting sleep cycles. Frequent, low-stakes quizzes are game-changers: They rely on proven learning methods, reduce student anxiety, and dramatically improve retention.

Give kids a break. A 2021 study found that during breaks, the brain replays learned material over and over at high speed, compressing and consolidating it. The research strongly endorses more downtime, concluding that "wakeful rest plays just as important a role in learning as practice does."

6. Check Your Biases

Bias is sneaky; it has a way of creeping into spaces we think are airtight. In a 2021 study, for example, German researchers found that overweight seventh-grade students were more harshly graded in language arts and math, and a 2011 study concluded that teachers were more likely to perceive shy or quiet children as "less intelligent" than exuberant or talkative ones.

Racial bias is especially insidious and widespread. A 2020 study found that teachers were 13 percent more likely to give a second grader's personal essay a passing grade if the main character's brother was named "Connor"-suggesting that the student was White-instead of "Dashawn," a name that indicated a Black writer. A 2019 study identified similar patterns of racial bias in the way discipline was meted out.
Other tips:

Use grading rubrics. When rubrics articulate clear standards and are applied rigorously, bias in grading is greatly reduced, a 2020 study found.

Get a second opinion. Periodically have other teachers review assessments with you. The mere "awareness that people's work will be reviewed for bias" decreases the level of bias at play, says David Quinn, a professor of education at the University of Southern California.

Conduct self-audits. Check your materials for inclusivity. Making small, culturally relevant adjustments to curriculum-incorporating references and images of Black figures, for example-boosted achievement in Black students by almost a full letter grade.

7. Authenticity + Passion = Success!

Don't spend time trying to live up to mythical teachers or fall prey to the popular notion that educators are entertainers.

In short, be yourself. In a 2019 interview with Edutopia, Sal Khan, the influential educator and founder of Khan Academy, suggested that teachers make stronger connections to students when they "let their quirkiness shine" and engage in collaborative, "messy" learning. A 2017 study, meanwhile, concluded that students prefer teachers who have an authentic, conversational style-and suggested that when educators are passionate about the material, it inspires kids to invest more time and effort in learning.

Life-changing teachers aren't just nominally passionate about the subjects they teach, however-like talented professionals in any field, they spend time every day honing their craft, whether it's by reading books and articles, learning from their colleagues, or trying out new ideas.
Other tips:

Continually update your knowledge. From learning walks-where groups of teachers visit each other's classrooms to pick up new ideas-to book clubs and using Twitter to grow your PLN, strive to expand your teaching expertise, say educators we've interviewed across the country.

Connect to your passions. "No matter what subject I'm teaching, I find ways to bring my hobbies into the classroom," writes educator Hubert Ham. "For example, I'm a car enthusiast, so when I teach physics, I contextualize concepts with my knowledge about cars." This does wonders for student engagement and relationships, says Ham.

8. Close the Book on the Day

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that teaching is clearly getting harder-too hard, in many cases. In our 2021 research roundup, we reviewed the research and identified an " unprecedented erosion of the boundaries between teachers' work and home lives," and found that teachers were being asked to adopt new technology without the "resources and equipment necessary for its correct didactic use."

To educate kids, teachers need a clear end to their work day and time to replenish themselves, and it's the school systems-not the teachers-that need to adjust accordingly. What else should be done? In our research roundup, we concluded that "creating strict school policies that separate work from rest, eliminating the adoption of new tech tools without proper supports, distributing surveys regularly to gauge teacher well-being-and above all listening to educators to identify and confront emerging problems might be a good place to start, if the research can be believed."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To get the highest-quality data, keep the feedback low-stakes and focused on pedagogical practices-not the content, suggests high school physics teacher Christopher Pagan. "The purpose of the survey is to give my students a voice to tell me what changes I can make and what practices I can implement to help them perform better in class," he says.

# data[].attributes.headline
6 Elementary Reading Strategies That Really Work

# data[].attributes.subject
6 Elementary Reading Strategies That Really Work

# data[].attributes.body
Strategies like choral reading and ear reading improve students’ reading fluency, expand their vocabulary, and increase their confidence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Choral reading-when the teacher and class read a text aloud together-takes the spotlight off of struggling readers while encouraging them to participate. Research suggests that it improves reading fluency, expands vocabulary, and increases students' confidence.

Partner reading is another low-stakes, research-backed strategy. A pair of students alternate reading a text aloud, then taking the role of the listener. The listener asks probing questions to check that the reader comprehends the text. Having the stronger reader go first benefits struggling readers because they hear the difficult words before reading them aloud themselves. This form of peer monitoring and questioning improves reading fluency, according to a 2007 study.

Assign Cross-Grade Reading Buddies

Pairing students from upper and lower grades to read together has academic and social and emotional benefits that flow both ways. The little kids see greater reading fluency modeled and profit from the one-to-one attention of a mentoring relationship; the upper elementary kids learn by answering questions and develop crucial skills like empathy and patience. Additionally, for older kids who struggle with grade-level reading, the experience allows them to access simpler texts without shame-all the while increasing their confidence by taking on a leadership role.

Student pairs can meet at least once a month for 30 minutes. At first, let the younger students choose the books to increase their engagement; later, have older students share their favorite reads. As the younger kids' skills develop, they can start reading too, instead of just listening.

Make Ear Reading Available to Your Class

Ear reading, listening to an audiobook while reading, is a great approach-at least periodically-for all students, but it has particular benefits for struggling readers and students with dyslexia. In a 2010 study, students with dyslexia who listened to audiobooks showed significant gains in reading accuracy, improved behavior and school performance, and greater motivation and school involvement. You can get human-read audiobooks and textbooks from Learning Ally, a nonprofit focused on supporting K-12 struggling readers. OverDrive, Bookshare, and Audible also provide audiobooks.

Although ear reading is an effective strategy for supporting students with dyslexia, it doesn't replace explicit, step-by-step phonics-based instruction, also known as structured literacy, which remains one of the most effective reading strategies for students with the condition. Structured literacy focuses on teaching phonemic and phonological awareness, among other skills like encoding and comprehension.

Teach Academic English

A 2014 report from the Institute of Education Sciences looks at how teaching academic English-general and domain-specific vocabulary for a subject area or a unit, for example-empowers students, particularly English language learners (ELLs), to understand the content better. Acting out the words in a skit, creating physical gestures for challenging words, and coupling challenging language with images are some useful strategies for teaching vocabulary.

But students need more than vocabulary to become successful readers. Regular formative assessment is important, especially in supporting ELLs, who now make up almost 10 percent of K-12 students in the United States. In kindergarten and first grade, check in regularly to assess students' understanding of the alphabet and ability to sound out words. For second through fifth graders, look for their ability to read accurately, with expression, and on pace. Walking around the room while students read in pairs can be an easy way to assess students; you can ask pairs to discuss what they read to assess their comprehension in real time.

Give Students Choice in the Books They Read

Allowing students to choose what they read and offering choices that reflect their experiences increases their engagement. A kid may have no desire to read The Boxcar Children but be eager to get her hands on Hansel & Gretel & Zombies: A Graphic Novel once she gets home. Giving students choice doesn't mean lowering your expectations. Yes, kids may choose books that don't challenge them, but you can manage that. Bring in options that are rigorous and also meet their interests, or rotate between choice books and whole-class reading.

When it comes to ensuring that your bookshelves are stocked with stories that will interest your students, having a diverse classroom library matters. Asking your students what books they want to read and what categories they are interested in is a good place to start, suggests Meredith Kimi Lewis, a K-5 program specialist for Seattle Public Schools.

Have Students Read the Same Text Multiple Times, in Multiple Modalities

Fluency-oriented reading instruction (FORI)-when students read the same text multiple times over the course of a week as a class, in pairs, and alone, for example-significantly improved word pronunciation and reading comprehension for a diverse group of second graders, according to a 2010 study.

And at New York-based Concourse Village Elementary School, composed of a predominantly Latinx and black student population in the poorest congressional district in the nation, a schoolwide, cross-discipline reading approach that emphasizes repeated exposure to the same text has the school outscoring the citywide average by as many as 40 points for the English state exam. Their five-step reading strategy -one of several approaches in the school-also emphasizes repeated access to the same text in different modalities. Students echo and choral read the same text every day over the span of a week, and each day they focus on honing a different skill: identifying the main point, annotating, identifying key details, analyzing the author's craft, and drawing conclusions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Elementary Reading Strategies That Really Work

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Choral reading-when the teacher and class read a text aloud together-takes the spotlight off of struggling readers while encouraging them to participate. Research suggests that it improves reading fluency, expands vocabulary, and increases students' confidence. Partner reading is another low-stakes, research-backed strategy. A pair of students alternate reading a text aloud, then taking the role of the listener.

# data[].attributes.headline
An Innovative Way to Deal With Plagiarism

# data[].attributes.subject
An Innovative Way to Deal With Plagiarism

# data[].attributes.body
Creating a short blended learning course is a good way to help students learn how to quote and paraphrase sources and use proper citations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
An Innovative Way to Deal With Plagiarism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Creating a short blended learning course is a good way to help students learn how to quote and paraphrase sources and use proper citations.

# data[].attributes.headline
10 ways to improve students’ long-term learning

# data[].attributes.subject
10 ways to improve students’ long-term learning

# data[].attributes.body
Research has a lot to say about improving students' long-term memory. Here are 10 ideas you can use in class.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Long-term memory and recall are important throughout the school year. But at state testing time, they get a LOT of attention.

How can students remember some things for the rest of their lives ... but other content seems to disappear before the leave the classroom door?

Science has a lot to say about it. It's called retrieval.

What is retrieval?

"When we think about learning, we typically focus on getting information into students' heads," writes Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D. at the RetrievalPractice.org website. "The problem is that these methods only lead to short-term learning.

"Retrieval practice is a strategy in which bringing information to mind enhances and boosts learning. Deliberately recalling information forces us to pull our knowledge 'out' and examine what we know."

It's low-prep. It doesn't cost anything. It can be weaved into what you're already doing in class.

Seems too simple. Too good to be true. Right?

Not so. Research again and again and again points to the powerful long-term learning that this simple concept preaches. Some key points from Powerful Teaching by Agarwal and co-author Patrice Bain:

Students can do free recall ("list everything you remember") to do retrieval practice. But short-answer and multiple-choice questions work, too.

There must be a delay after something has been learned first before retrieval takes place. Forgetting is part of learning.

Retrieval is best when it's low-stakes. It's not a graded assessment; it's a learning strategy.

Why isn't everyone using this? Chances are, you probably are, and you might not realize it. But some extra attention to it -- and some creative applications of it -- can be a big boost for students at state testing time.

So ... how can we make the most of this science-backed learning strategy?

I'm glad you asked. Check out these ideas, and add any others that have worked for you in the comments below!
Note: Some links in this post are affiliate links. If you make a purchase using one of these links, I may, at no additional cost to you, receive a small commission.

1. Brain dumps

The idea here is simple: get everything you've learned out of your brain.

Put it on paper. Tell it to a friend. Record it on a video. It's like a dump truck. Tip the bed over and get that stuff out of the truck!

It can be as simple as asking students to write out everything they remember about yesterday's class on a sheet of paper. Or you can do digital brain dumps with Flipgrid, Socrative, and other tools. Check out Sticky learning: Digital brain dumps with Flipgrid and Socrative for more.

Either way, the information is flowing out of the brain, and that's the key.
Here are some templates you can copy and assign to students in Google Classroom or your learning management system (LMS).

2. Two things

This one is fantastic for bell ringer activities and exit tickets. From the book Powerful Teaching:

"At any point during a lesson, stop and have students write down Two Things about a specific prompt. For example:

What are Two Things you learned so far today?

What are Two things you learned yesterday (or last week)?

What are two examples from your own life that relate to today's lesson?"

Here's what I love about this strategy. First, it's easy and doable. Anyone can come up with two things. Second, it encourages retrieval and participation. It's something you can do at any point during class.
Here's a template you can copy and assign to students in Google Classroom or your learning management system (LMS).

3. Retrieve taking (instead of note taking)

When students take notes, they split their attention. They're trying to pay attention to what they're learning. But they're also trying to catalog it in their notes.

That's a lot to do at once. A small shift can help them focus and encourage them to retrieve, boosting their long-term learning.

Powerful Teaching co-author Patrice Bain uses the "retrieve taking" strategy:

Teach. Students don't take notes (yet!).

Pause to let students write down important details.

Review important topics and facilitate discussion.

Continue teaching.

Students stop being transcriptionists, writing down every word the teacher says. Instead, they recall what they've learned from their own memories. Plus, because there's a quick teacher-led review, they won't miss anything important.
You can read an article about retrieve taking on the RetrievalPractice.org website or view and download a FREE PDF guide on using retrieval practice to improve learning here.

4. Student-produced quizzes

After learning, students come up with one question that could be asked on a quiz.

Collect the questions and use them to help students retrieve and review.

Here's what I love about this. For one, it puts students in the quiz creator's seat. It's a different perspective that helps them understand the whole process better. Second, it's not something imposed on them by a teacher. They're the ones making the questions.

Also: you don't have to grade these quizzes. One more time: you DON'T have to grade them! Again, remember, low-stakes leads to long-term memory. It's a learning strategy, not an assessment.

Here's a fun, techy way to make these quizzes: Collect student questions in a Google Form and import them into a Quizizz game. Here's how:

Create a Google Form with the following questions: Question (short answer), Option 1 (short answer), Option 2 (short answer), Option 3 (short answer), Option 4 (short answer), Option 5 (short answer), Correct Answer (multiple choice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), Time (number of seconds) or make a copy of this template.

Share a link to fill out the form with your students. They type their question and possible answers, identify the correct answer, and choose how much time.

When they're done, download the responses spreadsheet as an Excel spreadsheet.

Go to Quizizz (quizizz.com) and create a new quiz. Choose the "Import from spreadsheet" option to pull in your students' questions.

Complete your quiz and share a link with students so they can take it!

5. Guided conversation

This one is simple and is focused on asking students great questions (via Powerful Teaching).

Come up with a series of questions that guides students on a discussion about your content. Example:

What are four details about our topic yesterday that stuck with you most?

Do you think it's right to (insert topic of discussion)?

What are three reasons that support your belief?

Provide these questions on a document (paper, digital, etc.). You could put each question on a slide in Google Slides or PowerPoint and students could answer on their own copies of the slide presentation.

Afterward, students get in small groups to discuss their answers.

It gives students a chance to think quietly, to compose their answers, and then to share them and discuss with others. And you, the teacher, guide the discussion through your prompts.

Here's a VERY SIMPLE template you can copy and assign to students in Google Classroom or your learning management system (LMS). Just make a copy and type the questions you'd ask your students in order into the title section of each slide. Then assign, making a copy for each student.
Get a copy in Google Slides / Get a copy in PowerPoint

6. Now, then, and way back

You can use this simple protocol as a bell ringer or exit ticket. It has three admittedly vague parts:

Now: Something they've learned recently

Then: Something they learned not too long ago

Way Back: Something they learned a while ago

The teacher can choose the topics, or the students can. The topics can all be related to something students are learning right now, or they can be completely separate. Students recall three things in each category.
Here's a template you can copy and assign to students in Google Classroom or your learning management system (LMS).

7. Self testing

This strategy was called "one of the most powerful strategies in this chapter" in a chapter called "Memory + Attention + Engagement = Learning" in the book Neuroteach.

Students are used to teachers asking them to take quizzes and tests. We use them as assessments to gauge their learning.

What if students took control? Simple self-testing helps students retrieve learning out of their long-term memory. It can look like this:

Writing everything you remember on a blank sheet of paper

Practicing with flash cards

Telling someone what you've learned

Attempting review questions

Making students testers of their own learning BEFORE an assigned quiz or test can have great results.

Quizlet flashcards can be a great way to do self-testing ... and a Quizlet Live game is a fun way to get practice! Check out these 6 new ways to play a Quizlet Live game (featuring educational technology coach Patrick McMillan).

9. Retrieval mapping

You've probably seen word webs, concept maps, semantic mapping ... or whatever term you've used.

Here's how they're traditionally used. You open up your textbook or notes. You make some bubbles with words in them. Then, you extend the web out, connecting other bubbles to your main bubbles.
The Learning Scientists point to research that shows the traditional use of these maps isn't very effective.
The problem? The book or the notes are right in front of us. We don't have to recall information from our brains.

That's why they suggest retrieval mapping instead. Students create these maps from memory instead of from a book or notes. This practice doesn't perform better than just writing down everything you remember, but for students who like concept mapping, it could be a nice alternative.
Check out these tools that help to create mind maps:

10. White board exit ticket

With a traditional exit ticket, students answer a few questions -- or free write -- on a sheet of paper and turn it in.

A white board exit ticket is a twist on this idea.

At the end of class, ask students to write the two things they remember best on the white board at the front of your room. (In fact, the "Two Things" prompts above would be great for this activity.)

When they're done, your board will be covered with things students have learned.

It's a microcosm of what students remembered -- and what they didn't. For that reason, it can guide your instruction for the next day. If students didn't write it, you may want to give it some extra attention. If they clearly remembered it, you might not need as much time on it.

I'd adjust instruction only so much based on the results of this activity. It's a good quick retrieval opportunity. However, if students only write the last thing you said (recency effect), it may skew what they actually remember.

Looking for an online whiteboard to do this activity digitally? Check out these 15 online whiteboard options.

For notifications of new Ditch That Textbook content and helpful links:

Are you looking for quality, meaningful professional learning that both equips and inspires teachers?

Matt provides in-person and virtual keynotes, workshops and breakout sessions that equip, inspire and encourage teachers to create change in their classrooms. Teachers leave with loads of resources. They participate. They laugh. They see tech use and teaching in a new light. Click the link below to contact us and learn how you can bring Matt to your school or district!

FREE teaching ideas and templates in your inbox every week!

Subscribe to Ditch That Textbook

©2023 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 ways to improve students' long-term learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Research has a lot to say about improving students' long-term memory. Here are 10 ideas you can use in class.Long-term memory and recall are important

# data[].attributes.headline
Sticky learning: Digital brain dumps with Flipgrid and Socrative

# data[].attributes.subject
Sticky learning: Digital brain dumps with Flipgrid and Socrative

# data[].attributes.body
Help new information stick in students' minds with the "brain dump," an effective, low-prep activity in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sticky learning: Digital brain dumps with Flipgrid and Socrative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Help new information stick in students’ minds with the “brain dump,” an effective, low-prep activity in the classroom. It’s a common request from teachers

# data[].attributes.headline
A Framework for Boosting High School Students’ Math Confidence

# data[].attributes.subject
A Framework for Boosting High School Students’ Math Confidence

# data[].attributes.body
Activities designed to help students believe in themselves may improve their math skills.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Activities designed to help students believe in themselves may improve their math skills.

PhotoAlto / Alamy Stock Photo

As a math teacher, I like starting class with questions. So here are some questions for you: How many of you feel frustrated teaching math in your high school classes? How many of you find deep gaps in the conceptual understanding of your students? How many of you are able to do something about it? I would like to introduce you to my SAFE framework, which is designed to build self-esteem and confidence in students to facilitate their success in math.

I remember my first year teaching. One of my key roles as a substitute for a math specialist was to work with some of the struggling students in a small group and engage with them to meet their math goals. The students displayed a lack of interest in math and low confidence in their ability to problem-solve.

I observed a disruptive student in algebra class who was very quiet in my small group. He would look at the different 3D shape manipulatives in my room whenever we were together. One day, I deviated from the usual plan for my students to solve equations and asked the boy if he would like to help me explain the 3D shapes and their dimensions. He started showing some interest and taught a couple of peers how to construct a 3D form from its 2D nets.

At the end of the class, he felt accomplished and more confident. My student opened to other things we learned in the small group afterward. His story changed the way I believe students learn in a math classroom. My focus changed to building self-esteem and confidence to enable students to learn math. I use the SAFE framework not only to help students believe in themselves but to gain their trust.

A SAFE Pathway to Learning Math

Self-Reflection: Practices that are self-reflective help students know where they are and where they want to be. I use a feelings poster for my students to reflect on their feelings and develop self-awareness. Using a checklist, they reflect on their goals with clear expectations and learning outcomes to visualize the path to success. My students use a learning meter to rate their prior knowledge from 0% to 100%. They use the meter again at the end of the lesson to gauge their mastery of a concept.

Affirmation: Starting the class with a reflection on something positive can encourage students to open up. I start the lesson with how my weekend was-if I cooked dinner with my family, went to see a new movie, or took my golden retriever out for a jog.

Beginning the class with this fosters positivity. I hear my students say, "I cannot do this problem" and then, with some scaffolding, change to "I can do this now." Using "heartful" affirmations with statements that begin with I am develops and builds my students' confidence. These statements help in reminding them to self-affirm.

Failing Forward: Making mistakes is always a welcome sign of learning in my class. Knowing that failures can be a stepping-stone for success and growth builds self-esteem in students. According to Martin Covington, a professor at UC Berkeley, the fear of failure is directly linked to your self-worth, or the belief that you are valuable as a person.

In my class, students are open to making mistakes without any judgment. They encourage each other to learn from the mistakes and develop the confidence to try new learning paths. Using statements that change students' current mindsets from can't to can is essential for learning. Students with a fixed mindset tend to give up easily, while students with a growth mindset are persistent problem solvers.

So how do we develop a growth mindset in our students? When you believe in your students, they believe in themselves. I use posters on growth mindset in math in my classroom to create my Intention Wall, which helps my students keep working whenever they are struggling.

Enliven: Inspire every student by celebrating even small successes. Praising the students for their efforts can go a long way in building their confidence. As educators, we focus on goals, high expectations, and learning outcomes most of the time. I like to celebrate even small accomplishments in my class and make it a big deal for my students.

Calling a parent or emailing them to share something positive about the student can strengthen your relationships. I applaud my students in the class and write a small note to congratulate them for their every small effort. We also build a good rapport in class through this acknowledgment, and students start to be open to learning more. Enliven your math classroom by connecting math to real-life scenarios, engaging with your students, and encouraging productive struggles.

Building self-esteem and confidence in our students impacts how they learn math. Self-belief unleashes the students' potential to be creative and reach higher goals. Using SAFE can build the mathematical confidence that reflects a growth mindset and a positive attitude, shifting students from I cannot do math to affirming that they can.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Framework for Boosting High School Students' Math Confidence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Activities designed to help students believe in themselves may improve their math skills. PhotoAlto / Alamy Stock Photo As a math teacher, I like starting class with questions. So here are some questions for you: How many of you feel frustrated teaching math in your high school classes?

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Ways to Motivate Students to Learn Math Effectively

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Ways to Motivate Students to Learn Math Effectively

# data[].attributes.body
Students generally feel less anxious and more excited to explore concepts when they connect the math they’re learning to real-life situations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Students generally feel less anxious and more excited to explore concepts when they connect the math they're learning to real-life situations.

Alice Mollon / Ikon Images

Teaching high school math is no easy feat. Stress factors such as students' math phobia and anxiety, gaps in math skills, and stress associated with adapting to the technological environment have considerably impacted students' and educators' physical, emotional, and mental health.

Reflecting on teaching my math students, I focus on the question "Why do I want to teach?" to inspire and motivate my students to share my passion for math. Here are five strategies I've used to encourage students to learn math more effectively in our classroom.

1. Transformational Teaching

Teaching has the potential to transform the lives of students as they look for opportunities for growth. This transformation happens in my classroom when my students feel less anxious about math and more excited to explore concepts by connecting them to real-life situations. Using hands-on activities and experiential learning to engage with my students, I encourage them to collaborate with their peers, build their math skills, and think more critically about what they've learned.

When my students were learning about finance, interest, and percentage, for example, I designed a project where my budding entrepreneurs would work on a dream project, like starting a car garage, a restaurant, or a gym. First, the students wrote a proposal for a project to consider the loan they needed for it, the interest they would be paying, and how long it would take to make a profit.

It was interesting to note how they created models and worked on mathematical calculations to finance their project. I also learned several ways to present finances and appreciated the strategies that students came up with to make a profit as soon as possible. At the end of the project, the whole class celebrated the accomplishment of the task with a pizza party.

2. Engage and Encourage

Students are always looking to be inspired to reach their fullest potential and achieve their learning goals. I use visual aids and activities to differentiate individual student needs and encourage student choices to show their understanding. I use graphic organizers such as KWL charts to create a visual of what we are about to learn, making connections with prior knowledge to current learning and outcomes. Students also utilize the Frayer Model to reinforce key ideas about a concept, such as slope, by defining it and sharing ways to calculate it.

Fridays are extra-fun in my classroom, where my students are engaged in exploration and rigor with creative problem-solving. Making learning relevant and building connections help me create an environment where my students feel inspired to express their thinking and participate by sharing their ideas openly.

I use discussions in my classroom to explore math concepts and understand my students' interests. During one of those conversations, I had a group of students who shared their interest in baseball. With the help of my peers, I was able to arrange a field trip for my students to watch a baseball game. This special Math Day included presentations from several speakers in the sports industry showcasing how math is used everywhere in professional baseball, from the pitcher's average, statistics behind the quality of the pitcher, to the dimensions of the field.

The students enjoyed the whole experience and got a taste of how they could connect their math learning with baseball. Students build positive relationships through the activities that interest them and help them collaborate, feel respected, and participate without the fear of put-downs.

3. Acknowledge and Be Aware

Building on students' strengths and working on their weaknesses help create an awareness of where my students are and what they need to do to improve. My math classroom relies on learning from making mistakes and falling forward. I use falling forward as one of the strategies from the SAFE framework that I have designed and introduced in a previous article.

As we explore a new concept, I explain that making mistakes is a critical milestone to deeper understanding. I model failure, turn it into a teachable moment about the value of making mistakes, and benefit from a constructive discussion to allow students to learn from this. It is vital for us, as educators, to show our students that when we are learning something new, it is OK to struggle, fail, try again, fail again, and then succeed. I use positive feedback, praise, and compliments to encourage my students to try something challenging. It is always amazing to see the "aha" moments that the students get when they acknowledge and become aware of problems and how to solve them.

4. Collaborate and Connect

I use cooperative learning tools to foster tolerance, develop communication skills, and promote deeper understanding, such as mixing diverse learners in small groups. I pay close attention when I set up groups and guide students to understand their responsibilities, learn from their peers, and treat their peers with respect and fairness.

I used the strategy called " Try It, Talk It, Color It, Check It " to do a unit review where students first tried some problems, discussed them in breakout rooms, then used a Padlet to share their work. Students were engaged and worked together to solve problems. Math scavenger hunts are a fun and exciting game to play to explore a concept more deeply.

5. Hold Students Accountable for Their Success

Student accountability matters even more now with remote education, as they need to be self-motivated and responsible for their learning. I focus on building social and emotional tools in my classroom using the Heartfulness approach to create a culture of trust and positivity. These tools help develop students' self-esteem and confidence and prepare them to take risks in creative problem-solving.

Students receive a weekly checklist with clear expectations and learning goals. I collect student surveys to get feedback and learn how to best support my students' diverse needs. I use self-reflection to allow my students to assess their progress, reflect on their learning, and seek supporting tools to improve their understanding.

The essential components of excellence in teaching math include being flexible, developing creativity, encouraging fun, and providing an engaging environment that connects learning to real-world meaning. Then every student will love to dream big and be a lifelong learner.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Ways to Motivate Students to Learn Math Effectively

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Students generally feel less anxious and more excited to explore concepts when they connect the math they're learning to real-life situations. Alice Mollon / Ikon Images Teaching high school math is no easy feat.

# data[].attributes.headline
4 Steps to Discussing Challenging Behavior With a Student

# data[].attributes.subject
4 Steps to Discussing Challenging Behavior With a Student

# data[].attributes.body
Addressing students’ behavior can be tough, but it’s possible to approach them in ways that show compassion and help them feel ready to discuss the issue.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. Start by Checking In

Check the situation: Before you enter a conversation, it's important to first determine if the situation warrants a conversation or requires a behavioral intervention. Ask yourself, "Is this a crisis?" If the student is engaging in behaviors that are unsafe toward themselves or others, attend to the safety issue first, and then once the crisis is over and the student is de-escalated, you can prepare for a conversation.

Check yourself: Before you enter any conversation, do a quick check-in with yourself to see how you're doing and if you're ready and able to engage in a difficult conversation. These are questions to ask yourself: What am I feeling? Am I my best self? Am I calm? Can I think clearly and rationally? If you find yourself feeling anxious, frustrated, or not your best self, take a few minutes to settle your own emotions. There are many great mindfulness exercises that will quickly help you settle your own emotions and help ground you. Remember, you put on your own oxygen mask first before you can help anyone else.

Check the student: Take a few seconds to look at the student and observe their body language, eye contact, and behaviors. See if you can quickly determine any information about whether it's a good time to approach the student by carefully observing their appearance and actions. Perhaps the student is looking disheveled as if they have not showered recently, or they seem tired or hungry. These may be signs that the student's basic needs must be addressed and could also be impacting their behavior.

Check the environment: Make sure that you and the student are in a safe and confidential place before engaging in a conversation.

2. Converse to Understand the Student's Needs

Once you've completed your checks and come to the conclusion that you're emotionally ready to have a conversation, the student is willing and able to talk, and the setting is conducive to chatting, then you can start the conversation. Using restorative practices in the conversation helps you focus on supporting the student.

Engage the student: The first part of any effective conversation involves engaging the student. This can be done through a regular greeting like "Hey" or asking an opening question like "How are you doing?" As you start engaging the student, it's important to focus on the issue at hand. State the facts without any emotions or feeling statements, making comments such as "I have noticed you've been showing up late" or "You seem really tired and have been sleeping in class." If the student doesn't immediately respond to the facts, it's helpful to normalize struggles through compassionate statements such as "It's a hard time for a lot of people right now" or "I know a lot of people are really struggling with... now."

Explore what's going on: Take some time to explore what's going on in the student's life. You can do this by asking open-ended questions to elicit more information, focusing on details such as who, what, when, where, and how. When you find yourself stuck on not knowing what to say next, you can always ask, "Can you tell me more about that?"

Validate, don't fix: When a student starts talking, it's important to provide validation through comments such as "That sounds really rough" or "I think a lot of people would feel the same way in that situation. It makes perfect sense that you felt that way."​ Validation shows that you care about the student. Remember, it's not your job to fix everything. Watch this short video, It's Not About the Nail, for a humorous look at the difference between validating someone and trying to fix the problem.

Confirm your understanding: To ensure that the student feels heard and to make sure you have an accurate understanding of the situation, it's helpful to ask clarifying questions like "When you said..., what did you mean?"​ Paraphrasing or summarizing involves retelling what the student shared and voicing statements such as "It seems like you have a lot going on. You talked about..."​ and "In my understanding, the main challenges here are..." It's helpful to ask, "Was there anything else that I missed?"

3. Make a Sincere Connection

Connect with the student: To let the student know you care, you can say things like "I'm here for you" and "You have a lot of people, including me, who care about you."

Connect potential solutions: To let your student know that they're not alone, use "we" instead of "you" statements, as in "What can we do to make this better?" Instead of simply offering advice, ask the student questions like "What are some options of what could be done?" or "What do you need right now?" If the student is having trouble thinking of ways to help the situation, you can ask, "If your friend had this challenge, what would you say to them?"

Connect to resources: This is the important part of the conversation, where you help direct the student to supportive resources and coping strategies. Through asking questions like "What can you do the next time you're struggling?" "Who else can you talk with about this?" or "What or who can make this better?" you can guide students in exploring and identifying their support systems.

4. End on a Positive Note

Thank the student for sharing​: To wrap up the conversation and reinforce that you care about the student, it's important to thank them with phrases such as "Thank you for talking with me today" or "I appreciate you opening up and sharing with me." It's helpful to think of difficult conversations as a gift and an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with the student.

After conversation, plan to follow up​. Serious conversations aren't simply a onetime thing but are opportunities to continue the topic at later times. To conclude the conversation, you can end it with a statement such as "I want to check in later. Let's plan to talk more tomorrow" or "Next week, I'll follow up with you to see how you're doing with this."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 Steps to Discussing Challenging Behavior With a Student

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Check the situation: Before you enter a conversation, it's important to first determine if the situation warrants a conversation or requires a behavioral intervention. Ask yourself, "Is this a crisis?" If the student is engaging in behaviors that are unsafe toward themselves or others, attend to the safety issue first, and then once the crisis is over and the student is de-escalated, you can prepare for a conversation.

# data[].attributes.headline
A Powerful Lesson About Hurtful Words (upper elementary)

# data[].attributes.subject
A Powerful Lesson About Hurtful Words (upper elementary)

# data[].attributes.body
This interactive lesson incorporates narrative storytelling and art to help students understand how damaging words can be.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In middle childhood during the upper elementary years, children begin to expand their range of interactions and to understand others' perspectives, feelings, and integrity. They start to learn about differences and to be accepting of them. This is also a time when children become sensitive to the impact of their words on others. As parents and teachers know, these kids certainly are sensitive to words used with them. Now, they begin to grasp the reciprocal effect.

Here is an activity that can be used in schools, extracurricular activities, and out-of-school groups to build the competencies noted above and more, as children exercise their social and emotional learning (SEL) skills in the service of building virtues like respect, fairness, and kindness.

A Hands-On Exercise in SEL

Start with a rationale: Think about a time when you joined something new, like a new class, group, or club. What feelings do you remember having? (Take a few replies.) Today, we are going to do an activity so that we can all understand what it means to join a group and how to make it easier for others when they join a new group.

Using chart or construction paper, draw and cut out a life-size silhouette/outline of a person (to avoid gender- or race-specific figures, you might want to cut the figure from green paper, prepared in advance; note also that children respond best when the silhouette is as close to life-size as possible, so consider creative options like taping several sheets of paper together).

Introduce the activity: Gather students in a group, and introduce them to their new "classmate." (You might give the figure a name such as Greenie or Bluey to avoid any association with a real person.) Explain that new students often have difficulty fitting in because they are entering a situation where groups of students have already formed bonds of friendship. Point out that some people will automatically put up barriers to a new student, deciding quickly-without even trying to get to know him or her-that they dislike this new person.

Ask students to imagine that Greenie (for example) has just come into a classroom where students don't pay much attention to newcomers and worry about people who are different. Tell them that you are going to read a short story about a day in school for Greenie.

Have them listen for every time a mean thing is said to Greenie. When they hear something mean, ask them to raise their hand. Then, either call on someone to come up and rip off (or cut off) a piece of Greenie's body or do it yourself. Give the piece to a hand-raiser to hold on to. (Tip: When ripping or cutting, don't remove small chunks; it will need to be obvious to students where each piece fits into the whole when they work to put Greenie back together at the end of the story.)

Here is the story: Greenie was pretty new in the school. As Greenie got on the bus and sat down toward the back, a student blocked Greenie's way and said, "We don't want you sitting with us." When Greenie got to the classroom, Greenie put away Greenie's coat and books and said hello to a few students, who said hello back.
In PE class, Greenie went to join a group of kids shooting baskets. One came over and said, "We don't like people who are different from us." Greenie went off and kicked a soccer ball with another group. When Greenie got to the next class and said hello to some new people, one said, "Your hair is a mess, Greenie." During the class, Greenie was in a small group. Everyone took turns sharing their ideas about a book they were reading. After Greenie shared, a student in the group said, "Your ideas are not important at all."
Ask students, If Greenie really was a new person in school and this happened, how might Greenie be feeling? Give at least half of the class a chance to express a feelings word. Then say, Since there were so many mean comments to Greenie, it's time for everyone to help tape Greenie back together. Invite each student who has a piece of Greenie to come up and use tape to reattach his/her piece of Greenie in its proper place.

As each piece is reconnected, ask the students to say something apologetic to help Greenie feel better about what happened. You can prompt this by asking, "If someone had said some of these mean things to Greenie, what might they say to apologize and help Greenie feel less torn and more put-together?"

Getting to closure and summarizing key points: When the torn body is taped back together, no matter how hard the students have tried to fit the pieces back in, Greenie will not look the same as when students met her/him for the first time. Ask questions to lead students to the understanding that although some of the damage has been repaired, Greenie will never be exactly the same. Greenie's feelings were hurt, and the damage remains.

Be sure to make this point: Apologies certainly help, but the chances are, this damage will never go away completely. Greenie will always remember what happened.

If possible, hang Greenie on a wall as a reminder of the power that words have to hurt and as a prompt to point to when incidents, or potential incidents, arise in the classroom. Greenie's presence will serve as constant reinforcement of a vivid lesson in social and emotional and character development.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In middle childhood during the upper elementary years, children begin to expand their range of interactions and to understand others' perspectives, feelings, and integrity. They start to learn about differences and to be accepting of them. This is also a time when children become sensitive to the impact of their words on others.

# data[].attributes.body
Unconscious bias may be unavoidable, but here’s how you can reduce its destructive impact.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We are all subject to implicit bias, the research says, in spite of our best efforts to prevent it. Asian and Black job applicants who " mask" their race on résumés get more callbacks. Black patients seeking medical treatment are consistently " undertreated for pain" compared with White patients. And when a job applicant's weight is concealed, they're perceived as more suitable for employment than heavier candidates.

In the classroom, decades of evidence confirm that teachers are not immune and that some degree of unconscious bias is often at play, especially in the absence of intentional measures to control it. Bias has a way of seeping through the smallest cracks, imperceptibly influencing the way we perceive students, compromising accuracy in grading, and even altering a wide range of educational outcomes.

An inaccurate grade may appear to be a temporary setback, but taken together across a child's K-12 educational career, biases in grading can have lasting consequences, discouraging students by repeatedly sending the message that their best efforts don't meet the mark, producing a ripple effect with far-reaching implications-from course placement to scholarships, college admissions, and even job opportunities.

There are ways to course-correct, says David Quinn, an assistant professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education in a recent study. "The long-term goal is that we want to fundamentally change teachers' attitudes because that can have downstream impacts on behaviors, and thus on students' experiences. But we haven't figured out how to do that yet," Quinn tells Edutopia. "In the meantime, we need to significantly reduce the impact of those implicit biases."

SAME SAMPLE, DIFFERENT GRADE

In the study, Quinn asked 1,549 preschool through 12th-grade teachers to evaluate two versions of a writing sample. The sample was a short personal narrative written by a fictional second-grade student who described a weekend spent with a sibling.

"The versions were identical in all but one aspect: each used different names for the brother to signal either a Black or a White student author," Quinn wrote in an article for Education Next. "In one version, the student author refers to his brother as 'Dashawn,' signaling a Black author; in the other, his brother is called 'Connor,' signaling a White author." Half the teachers were randomly assigned the Dashawn version, the other half got the Connor version, and they were asked to grade the work based on grade-level standards.
Courtesy of David M. Quinn
The differences in the writing samples were negligible, but the bias effect was striking: Overall, teachers were 4.7 percentage points less likely to score the "Dashawn" writing sample as meeting or exceeding grade level than the "Connor" sample, and that gap opened up to 8 percentage points for White teachers. Teachers of color, however, did not show obvious bias in the evaluation.

SLOW IT DOWN TO GET IT RIGHT

In classrooms, there are "opportunities all the time for teachers' unconscious racial biases to come out, even when we think that they aren't," says Quinn, who taught third and fourth grade in North Las Vegas, Nevada, before moving to K-12 education policy research. "So encouraging teachers to reflect on that and be aware of it is the most important thing for students' experiences."

But there's more that can be done to make assessment less prone to bias. A simple, low-cost tool is a well-formulated rubric in which grading criteria are laid out in advance, delineating for teachers exactly what criteria-including gradients within that criteria-they'll use to assess student work. "Rubrics are a way of slowing down that thought process," says Quinn. The point is to create a bulwark against "the automatic cognition that filters in and influences behavior." By forcing a slow-down, the rubric allows teachers to "compare the work to the actual performance criteria. It's an opportunity for the impact of the bias to be reduced, rather than simply acting on a gut reaction."

In the study, when teachers rated the two writing samples using a rubric with specific grading criteria-which included standards such as: fails to recount an event, attempts to recount an event, recounts an event in some detail, or provides a well-elaborated recount of an event-instead of a general grade-level scale, the difference in grades was nearly eliminated.

GET A SECOND OPINION (AND A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP)

Another simple way to reduce bias is by having colleagues at times check each other's work-in a quick weekly or biweekly check-in, for example, or in a regular professional learning community environment. "It may be working with grade-level colleagues to compare writing prompts, and to look at how teachers assessed those prompts based on the established rubric," says Quinn. "There is good evidence that even just the awareness that people's work will be reviewed for bias decreases the level of bias that is shown in the work."

Middle school math teacher Jay Wamstead used a clipboard to keep track of his classroom management and conversations for one month, a focused effort "to check the spaces in my pedagogy where bias and prejudice were leaking through." His list tracked his habits across areas like discipline, calling on raised hands and cold calling, and who he most often chatted or joked around with. "If you keep track of these aspects for a month, you may discover something surprising about the way you interact with students. I know I did," Wamstead writes. "But it gave me something to work on, a plan to make, and an action item to fix. I know it's only scratching the surface, but it gave me a place to begin."

Finally, research shows that implicit bias tends to creep in when we're tired, overworked, and stressed-factors that besiege many teachers' professional lives. "We know that implicit bias has more of an influence on behavior when you're under stress, when you are fatigued, or when there is some type of time constraint," Quinn concludes. Becoming aware of this tendency during grading is helpful, but when schools genuinely commit to reducing those contextual factors-ensuring that teachers have enough time built into the schedule for evaluations, for example, and that they can do the work in an environment where they're not distracted and pressured-it can make a real difference.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We are all subject to implicit bias, the research says, in spite of our best efforts to prevent it. Asian and Black job applicants who " mask" their race on résumés get more callbacks. Black patients seeking medical treatment are consistently " undertreated for pain" compared with White patients.

# data[].attributes.headline
Phrases You Can Keep Handy to Say ‘No’ Clearly

# data[].attributes.subject
Phrases You Can Keep Handy to Say ‘No’ Clearly

# data[].attributes.body
Many teachers are tempted to take on too much at school, but setting firm boundaries is a responsible way to make the work sustainable.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Alex Shevrin Venet stopped eating lunch when she took on a leadership position at her old school. The school leader turned community college teacher-and author of Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education-recalls saying yes to every request that came her way during that time because she was in charge and "every day felt like an emergency," writes Venet in Unconditional Learning: "Crisis support. Class coverage. Tech troubleshooting. Yes, yes, yes."

Venet soon realized this wasn't a sustainable workload and that even relying on the support of her supervisor and colleagues wouldn't be enough-she needed to set healthy boundaries for herself as well. "Boundaries are how we protect ourselves and others and how we stay centered in our roles," she writes. "They are one of the best ways to combat burnout."

It can be daunting to turn down requests from your colleagues and students at school, especially if you haven't had a lot of practice doing so-and Venet notes that teachers may feel guilty about doing this. She shares a few concrete examples of what to say when you want to say no to colleagues and students in a respectful, productive way.

Just Say It

Saying no can mean literally saying "no" to a task, but it can also include clarifying your role at school or bringing in context for setting a limit.

When saying no to coworkers or administrators, Venet suggests using these phrases:

"No, I can't take that on right now."

"My current role focuses on _____. I don't have room on my plate for that."

Phrases to use with students include:

"No, I can't have students in my room for lunch today."

"I'm here to help you learn _____, so I am not going to talk about _____ with you right now."

Take a Pause

Saying no can sometimes be nerve-wracking due to the pressure to respond right away, writes Venet. She recommends slowing things down to give yourself some space to think through a request. "You may even find that creating space to slow down helps the other person rethink their request, or helps you recognize when things actually are doable," writes Venet.

With coworkers or administrators, consider saying:

"Can you tell me more about how you see that fitting in with my other responsibilities?"

"I'm potentially interested, but I'm not sure how that will fit into my current workday. Can we discuss?"

With students, Venet suggests saying:

"Let me think about it, and I will follow up in class tomorrow."

"Thanks for asking me about this. Let me check with the principal, and I will give you an update at the end of the week."

Suggest an Alternative

Sometimes the best approach is to say, "No, I can't do that... but I know who can," Venet writes. "Seeing yourself as a bridge-builder can help you say no, especially when you walk across those bridges alongside students," she adds.

With coworkers and administrators, Venet suggesting using this language:

"That doesn't fit within my current role. It sounds like a good fit for _____ to take on in their role, however."

"I appreciate you thinking of me for this, but I don't have the right training/expertise. Can I loop _____ into this conversation so they can help you find the next step?"

Bridge-building with students can sound like:

"I want to help you get support, but I'm not the right person for this conversation. Let me introduce you to _____."

"I'm so grateful that you trusted me to share this. I have to tell you that I can't give you the support you need, but I will help connect you to _____."

There might be pushback when you do this, as Venet points out: "What if there actually is no one else to take this on?" This is a legitimate concern-many schools don't have enough staff and resources to support their students. But it's important for teachers to remind themselves that "just because someone else can't do it doesn't mean you should," Venet continues. "Be honest about the limits of your role, and if possible, push back with a group of colleagues for more fair working conditions and workloads."

When you begin creating healthy boundaries at school, it takes time and effort to sustain them, and there might be struggles along the way, but when Venet finally figured out how to assess what to take on and what to delegate to others, she found that it was all worth it.

"I am a better leader when I'm taking care of my body and prioritizing self-care, and the leadership of those around me flourished when I stopped trying to be the only problem-solver," she writes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Phrases You Can Keep Handy to Say 'No' Clearly

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alex Shevrin Venet stopped eating lunch when she took on a leadership position at her old school. The school leader turned community college teacher-and author of Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education -recalls saying yes to every request that came her way during that time because she was in charge and "every day felt like an emergency," writes Venet in Unconditional Learning : "Crisis support.

# data[].attributes.body
by Paul Gorski
Students experiencing racism can't wait for schools to move at their own pace and comfort level.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In schools committed to racial equity, educators who resist anti-racist measures should feel uneasy, isolated on the outskirts of their schools' institutional cultures. I mean this literally. The educators least invested in racial equity should wonder whether they belong.

Sadly, research shows the inverse tends to be true in many schools, even when leaders claim equity commitments. Often, the educators most adamant about racial equity are cast to the margins of institutional culture. They are the ones feeling isolated, wondering whether they belong (Kohli, 2018; Picower, 2011). Colleagues call them troublemakers for naming what others refuse to name. Some are shushed or encouraged to adopt a color-blind perspective by equity-skittish leaders. They are accused of being too "political" simply for pointing out conditions that harm families of color. Educators of color who raise these concerns tend to face even greater hostility, as Kohli (2018) documented through the narratives of racial-justice-oriented teachers of color. They often are labelled "militant" or "angry" for telling the racial equity truth.

This is a failure of equity leadership.

A Racial Equity Reckoning

If the most emphatic racial equity advocates feel silenced and less central to institutional culture than their equity-resistant colleagues, what we have from an equity point of view is a sick institution.

Any meaningful accounting of racial inequities in schools must reckon with this reality. Is our commitment real? Why do emphatic equity advocates often face harsher repercussions for their advocacy than equity heel-draggers face for their inaction? Why is taking a strong, impassioned stand on racism interpreted as deviant while refusing to take a stand on racism is interpreted as in a developmental process (Mayorga & Picower, 2018)?

Are we driven by authentic desires for racial equity? Or are we content with rearranging inequities, hiding them behind multicultural arts fairs and diversity clubs (Au, 2017)?

The disturbing reality is, in my 20 years of experience working with schools and districts on matters of equity and justice, I've found that most initiatives and strategies that pass for "racial equity" efforts in schools pose less of a threat to racism than to the possibility of racial justice. Following Olsson's (1997) accounting of the detours white people follow to protect their privilege and avoid the messy work of racial justice, I call these initiatives and strategies equity detours.

The detours vary in scope and nefariousness but share a function: They create an illusion of progress toward equity while cementing, or even exacerbating, inequity. They can be more devastating than explicit racism because they do racism's work while consuming resources ostensibly earmarked for racial equity. They are the anti-anti-racism.

For example, people who study equity initiatives in schools have tracked educational leaders' tendencies, in the name of equity, either to implement deficit-oriented strategies, such as "grit" initiatives that obscure inequity (Kohn, 2014) or, worse, to build equity efforts around debunked approaches that create more inequity, like the "mindset of poverty." Some educational leaders inexplicably continue to embrace the "mindset of poverty" even though it reinforces racialized stereotypes (Redeaux, 2011)-and despite the fact that research clarified that there is no such thing as a mindset of poverty 50 years ago (Valentine, 1968).

What all these types of initiatives and frameworks have in common is that they mask racial inequity. They relieve us of the responsibility to name and eliminate the ways racism operates in our schools (Ladson-Billings, 2017). Rather than being paths to equity, they are detours around it.

Four Racial Equity Detours

Described below are four racial equity detours commonly embraced in schools, 1 followed by equity principles that can help educators avoid these detours and build a more transformational racial equity approach.

1. Pacing-for-Privilege Detour

This detour underlies the other detours. It speaks to the situation described earlier, wherein an equity approach coddles the hesitancies of people with the least racial equity investment while punishing people with the most investment.

In too many schools, the pace of equity progress prioritizes the comfort and interests of people who have the least interest in that progress. Professional development in these schools appears designed to accommodate the feelings and fears of white educators in "difficult" conversations about race rather than to advance equity for students of color (Swanson & Welton, 2018). A common "equity" PD framework in these contexts is cultural competence -an approach that provides a way to talk about "cultural differences" without having to name or confront racism (Gorski, 2016a; Pon, 2009). Cultural competence is important. But by itself it's no threat to racism.

The hard truth is, racial equity cannot be achieved with an obsessive commitment to "meeting people where they are" when "where they are" is fraught with racial bias and privilege. Students, families, and educators experiencing racism cannot afford to wait for us to saunter toward a more serious racial equity vision. They cannot afford to wait, in particular, for all white educators to ease into racial equity commitments at a pace of our choosing while they suffer the consequences of our casualness.

In schools committed to equity, the time is now. We must prioritize equity over the comfort of equity-reluctant educators. We move on racial justice first by honestly identifying and addressing all the ways racism operates in our schools, and then we bridge the equity hesitaters to our equity vision. We refuse to equivocate on racial justice. We find the will to implement, and hold one another accountable to, policy and practice changes today, rather than waiting for an elusive consensus.

When I make this argument to education leaders, they often emphasize the importance of staff buy-in. I appreciate consensus-based leadership-but not always when it comes to equity. The school-to-prison pipeline is flowing (Annamma, Morrison, & Jackson, 2014). Students who are disproportionately targeted with assignment to special education, harsh applications of discipline policy, unengaging pedagogy, and the sorts of "school reform" initiatives that redistribute access up the privilege continuum don't need consensus. They need justice.

Start where we need to be: Equity is neither optional nor negotiable. This is who we are as a school; these are the values to which we will be held accountable. Our best resources in these efforts are equity-minded educators-the ones accustomed to the shushing. When we make them the center of our schools' and districts' institutional identities, we are primed for equity progress.

2. Poverty of Culture Detour

Culture is one important equity consideration. However, although racial identities may inform cultural identities, racial inequities aren't predominantly cultural misunderstandings. Racism is a tangled structural mess of power, oppression, and unjust distributions of access and opportunity. This mess cannot be resolved with greater cultural awareness alone.

I call this the poverty of culture detour in honor of Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006). In "It's Not the Culture of Poverty, It's the Poverty of Culture," she describes the hazards of adopting diversity frameworks built around vague notions of "culture." "[T]he problem of culture in teaching is not merely one of exclusion," she explains. "It is also one of overdetermination.... [C]ulture is randomly and regularly used to explain everything ... from school failure to problems with behavior management and discipline" (p. 104).

The result is that we too often attribute educational disparities to students' cultures. We cannot allow racism-infused misperceptions of their cultures to justify our failure to create racially just schools. Often, we interpret racial disparities in which students are suspended or expelled, for example, not as the result of racial bias, as research shows it primarily to be (Rudd, 2014), but as a cultural defect in communities of color. So we might attempt to solve these disparities by adjusting the behaviors, mindsets, or emotions of students of color rather than by adjusting educators' racial presumptions or schools' inequitable practices.

We cannot fix a problem we refuse to name. If our equity initiatives feature the word culture more than the word racism, we're probably off track. If we adopt an approach that obscures racism behind vague nomenclature like cultural competence or the diverse kids, we might be off track.

3. Deficit Ideology Detour

If we spend any of our equity efforts attempting to "fix" students of color-fortifying their grittiness, modifying their mindsets, adjusting their emotions-we need a reaccounting, not only of our equity understandings, but also of our equity intentions. These strategies locate the source of educational outcome disparities within communities of color while often ignoring the role of racism-the clearest sign of deficit ideology (Gorski, 2016b).

We should be instinctively suspicious of popular educational approaches that often detour us around equity with a deficit approach. For example, presuming we can resolve racial inequities by simply teaching students of color to have grit is like presuming we can resolve climate change by teaching coastal communities to swim faster. It shifts the onus of responsibility away from schools and onto the very youth who are cheated out of equitable opportunity-and who, due to this cheating, often already tend to be quite resilient. It can obscure structural conditions with which marginalized communities contend. What good is grit against curricular erasure or inequitable school policy?

As somebody who attended school having experienced the childhood trauma of sexual abuse and often found myself being punished for the implications of that abuse, I find the growing interest in mindfulness and trauma-informed practices compelling. But too often, these practices are adopted as though they are racial equity initiatives. In some cases, we offer students of color coping mechanisms rather than correcting in-school conditions-like inequitable policy or racially tinged tracking practices-that exacerbate racism's traumas. Our best strategy for minimizing the impact of racism is to eliminate racism. Trauma-informed practices as implemented in most schools don't do that.

Before we follow the deficit ideology detour, we should ask ourselves some questions. In whose image is school policy and institutional culture crafted? Which students have the most access to higher-order pedagogies, relevant curricula, and a full range of course options? Which students face grinding inequities in and out of school? What do trauma-informed practices look like for students whose primary source of trauma is the racism they experience at school?

Equity initiatives should focus on eliminating conditions that marginalize students-never on fixing students of color. If we cannot describe how our efforts are eliminating those conditions, it's time for an equity overhaul.

4. Celebrating Diversity Detour

Recently, while visiting a colleague's classroom to facilitate a conversation about race and poverty, I asked a group of African American and Latinx 10th grade students about their school's upcoming Diverse Friends Day. For one lunch period, they would be forcibly integrated, coerced into celebrating diversity by sitting with classmates racially or ethnically different from themselves-classmates with whom some of them normally wouldn't socialize.

"They mean well, but this activity is racist," Pam shared. 2

"I don't know about racist," Tariq responded, "but I don't want to do it."

José added, "A lot of the white students don't like us. I don't want to be forced to hang out with them."

I asked Pam to elaborate on her observation that Diverse Friends Day is racist. "There's a lot of racism in this school," she insisted. She wondered how disturbing her lunch-the only time she could relax in a predominantly white school-was going to change that. "I think Diverse Friends Day is for white people," she concluded.

Is she wrong? I don't think so, especially in the absence of more serious racial equity efforts, which these students agreed were missing from their school. In my experience, many "celebrating diversity" initiatives are crafted to help white students learn about diversity-not racism, but diversity -in ways that will be most comfortable for them.

In some cases, students of color are used essentially as props for the gentle diversity education of white students through activities like Diverse Friends Day. This allows white people to opt out of considering racial justice while deriving social and cultural benefits from diversity awareness. It creates the illusion of diversity appreciation while entrenching inequity.

Requiring students of color to participate in these diversity spectacles while failing to attend adequately to inequity can be exploitive. Pam, Tariq, and José didn't need to share lunch with white students to learn about difference, much less how racism operated around them. They developed these insights as a matter of survival. White educators were asking them to celebrate a diversity in which their experiences were invisible. This is one way white privilege persists even in the context of diversity efforts.

Five Principles of Equity Literacy

At this point, I presume readers are thinking, "So what should equity efforts look like?" I'm cautious about addressing this sort of question. It may signify a common impulse in education to grasp for simple strategies to address challenges that are more about ideology and will than strategy. I encourage us to think, instead, about principles that can guide our equity actions.

Here are five equity literacy principles (Gorski & Swalwell, 2015) that can help us avoid equity detours and maximize the impact of our equity efforts.

1. Direct Confrontation Principle

The path to racial equity requires direct confrontations with racial inequity-with racism. We start, again, by asking, "How is racism operating here?"

Gather the racial equity advocates in your school, district, and community and map the ways-big and small, implicit and explicit-that racial inequities persist. Examine policy, curricula, and discipline practices. If you struggle to identify how racism is operating, invest time to learn how to do it. When I work with educational leaders committed to acquiring an equity lens, I find simple prompts like these can provide opportunities for meaningful practice:

What is one practice in your school that focuses on fixing students of color rather than fixing the conditions that marginalize them? How can you reshape that practice for racial equity?

What policy might have harsher consequences for students of color if applied by educators who harbor racial bias even if they aren't intending to be racist? What do you need to change about that policy, or about the racial ideologies in your school or district, to make it equitable?

2. Redistribution Principle

Equity involves redistributing access and opportunity at the most basic institutional level. This includes material access to things like learning materials, technology, healthy food, and even healthcare. It also includes nonmaterial access to higher-order pedagogies, relatable curricula, and equity-conscious teachers.

The idea here is to intimately examine how institutional policies and practices provide some students more access and opportunity than others. It may mean re-examining how school practices are crafted in relation to students' lived experiences and whether institutional policy and culture are responsive to the interests of the most marginalized students.

For example, as we examine behavior policies, we might ask ourselves whether we're cognizant of the depth of racial bias associated with how educators tend to interpret behavior and dole out behavior referrals.

Policy handbooks are another good place to start. Study your school's policies line by line. Might any perpetuate racial inequity-like a dress code policy banning items associated with specific racial groups or assessment practices that could mask racial bias? Work with the equity advocates in your school and community to revise those policies and practices right now. Then attend to dynamics of institutional culture that resulted in the existence of biased policies to begin with.

3. Prioritization Principle

The only way to redistribute access and opportunity is to prioritize the interests of students of color. Every policy and practice decision should be filtered through this lens: How will this policy impact families of color? How will it improve conditions for students of color? Remember that, in inequitable contexts, equality-attending equally to everybody's interests-reproduces inequity. For example, we know that students of color are disproportionately tracked out of "upper-track" classes (Leonardo & Grubb, 2018) and that on average, students in "lower-track" classes have less access to engaging pedagogy and more exposure to control-oriented teaching practices. And because we also know these disparities are driven significantly by racial bias in referral and assessment processes (Faulkner et al., 2014), a racial equity commitment should lead us to abandon traditional tracking methods. We can prioritize the interests of students of color by trading what we perceive as the equality and efficiency of those methods- efficiency for whom? we might ask-for a process that eliminates the influence of racism.

4. Equity Ideology Principle

Equity is a lens and an ideological commitment. No strategy can help us cultivate equitable schools if we're unwilling to understand how racism operates. Professional development opportunities related to equity should emphasize the ideological work required to more deeply understand the dynamics of racism in society and schools. Then we can draw on those deeper understandings to build our practical approach for eliminating racism.

5. #FixInjusticeNotKids Principle

Effective equity efforts focus not on fixing students of color, but on eliminating racist conditions. If we find ourselves, in the name of equity, adopting initiatives meant to improve educational outcomes by adjusting mindsets or cultures in students of color, it's time to reconsider our efforts.

Do We Have the Will?

Implementing a transformative racial equity commitment is difficult, especially if we face significant resistance. Of course, it's not more difficult than navigating racism, which many students, families, and educators of color endure. I cling to hope that most of us want racial equity. The question for those of us who find the detours alluring is whether we have the will to align our actions with our philosophies. My hope is that, by considering the detours and principles discussed here, we can find ways to strengthen our equity efforts and create schools that deliver on the basic ideals of equity and justice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In schools committed to racial equity, educators who resist anti-racist measures should feel uneasy, isolated on the outskirts of their schools' institutional cultures. I mean this literally. The educators least invested in racial equity should wonder whether they belong. Sadly, research shows the i

# data[].attributes.headline
Uncovering the hidden clutter in your curriculum so you can simplify lesson design

# data[].attributes.subject
Uncovering the hidden clutter in your curriculum so you can simplify lesson design

# data[].attributes.body
PODCAST ARTICLES, TRUTH FOR TEACHERS COLLECTIVE   |   FEB 13, 2022

By Sally Berquist

Writing Instructional Coach

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Truth For Teachers - Uncovering the hidden clutter in your curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I’ve been watching Marie Kondo on TV. In case you’re not familiar, she’s an icon of organizing and getting rid of clutter, “tidying up” she calls it. For me, just lying on the couch and watching other people’s closets get a makeover is relaxing. Even though my closets don’t look great, I highly valu…

# data[].attributes.headline
7 Attention-Getters to Use Instead of Raising Your Voice

# data[].attributes.subject
7 Attention-Getters to Use Instead of Raising Your Voice

# data[].attributes.body
These visual and audio cues can help middle and high school teachers quickly get students back on track.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
These visual and audio cues can help middle and high school teachers quickly get students back on track.

For many new teachers, classroom management can be one of the biggest obstacles to achieving success.

Without a toolbox of strategies to get students' attention, raising your voice may feel like the only option when students are engaged in a loud activity or simply not meeting expectations. To avoid creating a negative classroom culture, which ultimately impedes learning, new teachers, or teachers facing new circumstances in this less than ideal school year, can employ these attention-getters.

For each of the attention-getters below, it's important to explicitly teach students what your expectations are for how they should respond. For older students, it will likely take only a few minutes for you to demonstrate the attention-getter and share your expectations-voices are off, eyes are on the board, etc.

7 Effective Attention-Getters

1. The Clap-In (or Snap-In): The clap-in is a classic attention-getter for good reason! While many teachers resort to raising their voices when the classroom gets too loud, clapping provides an equally noticeable but far more positive way to get students' attention. To use a clap-in, simply pick a pattern to clap and have students repeat it back. As more students join in, the clap gets spread across the room until all students are participating in the clap and ending their conversations.

There are a few ways to make this more interesting for students. One option is starting with a clap and switching to snaps. This requires students to be even quieter to be able to hear the pattern you snap and then repeat it. You can also select a student to lead the clap-in or snap-in to build further investment in the attention-getter. Finally, rather than making up your own pattern, you can work with your students to design a unique clap-in or snap-in pattern for your class.

2. Give Me Five: This is a great option that not only helps bring students' attention back to you but also provides an opportunity for them to work together to get everyone back on track. For this attention-getter, raise your hand high so that students can see you. As each student sees the signal, they will also raise their hand. This will continue to spread until all students are silently raising their hands and looking to you for further directions.

To make this more exciting, I have timed my students to see how long it takes for everyone to raise their hand and then challenged them to beat their time. This has been a very efficient way to get the attention of all students without even using my voice at all.

3. Class-Wide Countdown: This strategy is similar to Give Me Five, as it has a cascade effect across the classroom when students join in to bring their attention back to the teacher.

To employ this strategy, the teacher begins a countdown, generally from 10, but teachers can make adjustments as needed for their individual groups; and as students hear the countdown, they join in until all students are participating. Once the entire class reaches zero, all students are silent and have their attention back on the teacher.

4. Call-and-Response: Using a call-and-response is another easy way to get students' attention, as they will have to not only listen to join in but also stop any side conversations in order to provide the accurate response. This attention-getter provides lots of room for creativity that both teachers and students can use to make the calls-and-responses best suited for them.

It's beneficial to involve students in the process of creating these calls-and-responses and then practice how they sound and what students are expected to do when they hear them-similar to the Clap/Snap-In.

5. Timer/Song: This strategy uses other sounds rather than a teacher's voice to get attention and relies on a specific timed activity.

I use this strategy if I have given my students a group or partner task to complete for a specific amount of time. When they start, I begin the timer or song (instrumental works best!), and by the time the timer or song goes off, students are expected to end their conversations and return their attention to me. The timer works best for potentially louder group activities, while the song is a great option for a slightly quieter partner activity.

6. Hit the Lights: This strategy is one I use only when I need student attention immediately back up front on me. Just like the theater signal that a performance is about to begin, a quick flash of the lights can alert students that something is about to happen. I explicitly explain to them that a quick flash of the lights means that they need to turn off their voices and track me.

I often use this strategy if students are working in groups and I only need to remind them of one quick piece of information but plan to let them return to working at their previous noise level.

7. Sound Effects: This strategy can be a more fun way to get student attention but one that must be explicitly taught so that students can be mature and meet expectations when it's used.

For this strategy, the teacher should identify a sound-I like to use this one -that will quickly get student attention and play the sound when needed. My students know that when they hear the sound, they are expected to be in their seats, silently tracking me for directions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
7 Attention-Getters to Use Instead of Raising Your Voice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These visual and audio cues can help middle and high school teachers quickly get students back on track.

# data[].attributes.body
From Lisa Bowman, SJCOE

# data[].attributes.body
When students take charge of their own feedback, they learn to work with others in the room—and not just their friends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When students take charge of their own feedback, they learn to work with others in the room-and not just their friends.

# data[].attributes.body
Presenting information is a great task for world language learners, and these four engaging activities will get them talking.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages regard presentation communication skills as being essential. Here’s how to meet those standards with engaging activities.

# data[].attributes.body
From dropping a pin into online texts, to teaching students the art of checklists, here’s how teachers are upping their edtech game.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From dropping a pin into online texts, to teaching students the art of checklists, here’s how teachers are upping their edtech game.

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Resilience in Young Math Students

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Resilience in Young Math Students

# data[].attributes.body
Support provided by early childhood educators can put students on a path that will lead to success in math for years to come.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Building Resilience in Young Math Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Support provided by early childhood educators can put students on a path that will lead to success in math for years to come.

# data[].attributes.headline
A Discussion Protocol for Group Learning Experiences

# data[].attributes.subject
A Discussion Protocol for Group Learning Experiences

# data[].attributes.body
High school teachers and students can use a theater-based strategy to cultivate curiosity and engagement in class.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Discussion Protocol for Group Learning Experiences

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
High school teachers and students can use a theater-based strategy to cultivate curiosity and engagement in class.

# data[].attributes.headline
Teaching Self-Regulation During Choice Time in Pre-K

# data[].attributes.subject
Teaching Self-Regulation During Choice Time in Pre-K

# data[].attributes.body
With a few simple supports in place, students learn how to manage their emotions and take turns—and the whole classroom runs more smoothly.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching Self-Regulation During Choice Time in Pre-K

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With a few simple supports in place, students learn how to manage their emotions and take turns—and the whole classroom runs more smoothly.

# data[].attributes.body
What are the "Essential Standards" and what makes a standard "Essential?"​​​​
Power Standard or Building-Block
StandardCritical for learners' success later in the year; in the next grade or course level; across other domains or content areas

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Tiny Language Shifts (That Can Make a Big Difference in Classrooms!)

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Tiny Language Shifts (That Can Make a Big Difference in Classrooms!)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Language Shifts That Can Make a Difference in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.headline
EduTip 6: Try a tiered activity for simple differentiation.

# data[].attributes.subject
EduTip 6: Try a tiered activity for simple differentiation.

# data[].attributes.body
While you probably know that it’s not necessary to plan a unique lesson for every student, you may not be aware of some of the simplest ways to provide differentiation, so in this tip I’ll share just one, the tiered activity, also known as a tiered assignment.

You can find this strategy in lots of places, but I learned about it from the work of Carol Ann Tomlinson in books like How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms (Bookshop.org link | Amazon link).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sponsored by Floop.

This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links,
Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.
What's the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org?
Despite knowing that our students have different needs, many teachers struggle with differentiation, not because they disagree with it in theory, but because in practice, the idea of planning so many different lessons is overwhelming.

While you probably know that it's not necessary to plan a unique lesson for every student, you may not be aware of some of the simplest ways to provide differentiation, so in this tip I'll share just one, the tiered activity, also known as a tiered assignment.

You can find this strategy in lots of places, but I learned about it from the work of Carol Ann Tomlinson in books like How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms ( Bookshop.org link | Amazon link).

Here's how it works: Suppose you're teaching students how to type on a keyboard without looking at the keys. After giving a brief pretest, you've determined that some students have no idea how to do this, while others have had a few lessons in a previous course, and a few seem to have slow, but moderately good touch typing skills. It would not make sense to have the whole class work through a typing exercise that consisted entirely of hitting the f and j keys; this would be a waste of time for those who are past that point. But if you made everyone do an exercise consisting of complex words, punctuation, and numbers, that would be incredibly frustrating for the beginners.

So instead, you offer students three options, or tiers, to choose from:

Exercise 1 uses single keystrokes of the home keys.

Exercise 2 uses whole words that only use the home keys.

Exercise 3 uses whole words with a few more keys beyond the home keys, plus capitalization, commas, and periods.

Each exercise takes five minutes to complete, and students only need to complete one of them.

This kind of assignment makes it much more likely that every student will be working at the level of challenge that's just right for them, and it doesn't require you to create individual assignments for every student.

In some cases, you can take one assignment and just break it up into three tiers. For example, if you have 20 practice problems for a math, chemistry, or grammar lesson that go from easiest to hardest, instead of giving all students all 20 problems, tier 1 might be problems 1-10, tier 2 might be 5-15, and tier 3 might be 11-20.

In English, if students are writing a personal narrative, the length of the final piece might be the same for all tiers, but each successive tier might contain more advanced skills, such as a certain amount of complex sentences, specific styles of dialogue, or the use of certain literary devices like interior monologue or metaphors.

In social studies, tiers might consist of three different texts about the same topic, written at different levels of complexity, or the same text offered at different levels on a platform like Newsela.

The point here is that if you're not doing much differentiation, but you want to be, don't think you have to create a whole bunch of separate assignments. Start with a core assignment with clear objectives, then think about how you can simplify it for some students so they still get the most important components, and add more complexity for those who are already further along with that particular skill or body of knowledge.

A few important notes for making this work well:

Each tier should offer a relatively equal amount of work and challenge. In other words, students who are advanced with the material in question shouldn't be given more work than beginners; they should have work at a different level. Similarly, those same advanced students should experience a similar level of struggle with their task as those who are working at the beginner level; if they fly right through their tier in no time, it's probably not challenging enough.

Tiers should be flexible and fluid. Do not give students fixed labels that keep them in the same tier all year long, for every activity-ideally, students should move from tier to tier depending on the particular task at hand. Even better, help students develop the metacognitive skills to select whatever tier gives them the right amount of challenge, and encourage them to tune in to how a tier feels once they've chosen it; if they're feeling overwhelmed, they may need to move down a tier, but if they're bored, they may need to move up.

Mindset and classroom culture can make a huge difference in how well this approach works. If students feel embarrassed about working on lower tiers or "punished" by working on higher ones, a tiered task won't work nearly as well as it could. Ideally, you can model an attitude of practicality, of each person getting what they need when they need it. Before starting your first tiered task, have a conversation about how everyone has strengths in some areas and needs to grow in other areas-use an example from your own life about something you've recently learned or something you're trying to get better at-and emphasize the idea that we grow the most when we're challenged just enough to stay interested. Make it a regular part of your classroom conversation to ask questions like, "What tier do you think will be best for you this time?" or "How did that tier work for you?" to help students see the tiers as self-directed choices, rather than labels.

See all EduTips here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EduTip 6: Try a tiered activity for simple differentiation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sponsored by Floop . This page contains Amazon Affiliate and Bookshop.org links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What's the difference between Amazon and Bookshop.org? Despite knowing that our students have different needs, many teachers struggle with ...

# data[].attributes.headline
Reciprocal Teaching: Selecting From the "Fab Four"

# data[].attributes.subject
Reciprocal Teaching: Selecting From the "Fab Four"

# data[].attributes.body
In this Video

This video introduces strategies that scaffold learning and further student use of the Fab Four steps. Lori Oczkus explains how each of the Fab Four foundations (think alouds, scaffolding, cooperative learning, and metacognition) help make reciprocal teaching lessons successful.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Reciprocal Teaching: Selecting From the "Fab Four"

In this Video

This video introduces strategies that scaffold learning and further student use of the Fab Four steps. Lori Oczkus explains how each of the Fab Four foundations (think alouds, scaffolding, cooperative learning, and metacognition) help make reciprocal teaching lessons successful.

Reciprocal Teaching at Work: Powerful Strategies and Lessons for Improving Reading Comprehension, 3rd Edition

In this fully revised and expanded third edition of the bestselling Reciprocal Teaching at Work, Lori D. Oczkus provides both tried-and-true and fresh solutions for teaching reading comprehension.

Social-emotional learning

ASCD empowers educators to achieve excellence in learning, teaching, and leading so that every child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

Sign up for our newsletter

Questions?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reciprocal Teaching: Selecting From the "Fab Four" - ASCD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Reciprocal Teaching: Selecting From the "Fab Four" In this Video This video introduces strategies that scaffold learning and further student use of the Fab Four steps. Lori Oczkus explains how each of the Fab Four foundations (think alouds, scaffolding, cooperative learning, and metacognition) help make reciprocal teaching lessons successful.

# data[].attributes.body
While most elementary students are learning in person now, these tools are a big help in promoting literacy in or outside of the classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I remember the first time I walked into a classroom that was utilizing remote learning to teach reading. It was a second-grade classroom in Orlando, and I was supervising a student teacher interning with the veteran teacher. As I walked into the room and did a quick sweep during reader's workshop, I saw a student sitting in front of a computer, headphones on, talking and laughing.

The cooperating teacher chimed in: "She's Skyping with my mother, who is a retired teacher in Texas. My mother hosts a daily word workstation in my class over Skype."

My jaw dropped.

This was 2012, long before Zoom was commonplace in our public schools (Zoom wasn't even launched until August 2012!). But it broke down a mental barrier for me with teaching reading, opening the floodgates that led to deep thinking around how we can use technology to help kids learn in authentic and meaningful ways.

Through my tutoring and academic coaching center, I lead a team of certified teachers who work both in our physical space and over Zoom. I've been wowed by the innovations I've seen these educators use to teach reading, and I'd like to share some of their ideas with you.

3 Tech Tools to Enhance Reading Instruction

1. The recording function on a tablet or smartphone. Sometimes the best tools are the ones right in front of us. When I was teaching in Tampa, Florida, the recording function on our classroom iPods became our favorite classroom tool. I found this piece of technology useful in both virtual and face-to-face teaching, using it for audio-journaling, for peer and teacher feedback, and as a way for students to reflect on their own reading fluency.

Audio-journal: Sometimes the physical act of writing can impede a student's ability to share their brilliance with an audience or even just get ideas down on paper. Using the audio-recording function offers students a way to record their thinking with fewer barriers. They can brainstorm writing ideas, record reflections on their latest read, or spin a tall tale inspired by the spider they saw on the way to lunch.

Feedback: The recording function can give a fresh update to student feedback or let students give feedback to peers. For example, students can exchange writing with peers, record feedback, and then insert the recording right in a Google Doc. By using the Voice Comments app in Google Docs, you can leave auditory feedback almost quicker than you can type (saving you time as a teacher).

Reflection: Now to my favorite use, having students record their own reading to improve their fluency. I'd have my students read a short passage on Monday while recording on the iPod, then listen to it with a fluency rubric in hand. They would then set a goal using the rubric during a peer conference, committing to practice the passage for the week with the goal in mind. Then came Friday, when they would record their reading again, listen to it with the rubric in hand, and reflect on their growth. Best part? I could send the recording to their parents by text or email.

2. Google Slides. Google Slides enable educators to watch students engage in active learning while providing them with on-the-spot feedback. Teachers can use Google Slides as a way to not only host their virtual reading lessons but also record notes and embed photos from the sessions, allowing the slide deck to also serve as a record of past learning and as a reflection tool for the reading student.

Some of my current favorite digital tools for reading instruction are Epic's digital library (free for educators), Flipgrid's easy-to-use short video recordings (for feedback, fluency practice, reader's theater, etc.), and Zoom's annotation tools that allow for immediate interactions (game playing, problem-solving, interactive writing, etc.).

Teachers can also purposefully weave in social and emotional learning (SEL), including a slide in every reading lesson that teaches students how to manage their feelings, regulate their emotions, and build life skills. SEL not only supports students but also allows them to access grade-level reading content by being prepared to learn and navigate challenging endeavors. You can see a few classroom examples here.

3. Pixar Shorts. Pixar Shorts are quick, silent movies. They serve as perfect, high-interest comprehension activities that promote a wild amount of participation. In a span of about 15 minutes, you can have students utilizing multiple comprehension strategies like making inferences and predictions, discussing story elements, thinking critically about character feelings, or looking at the cause and effect relationships throughout.

These movies rely heavily on our ability to interpret and make sense of the visual information we are given. When we combine new information with our prior background knowledge, we are actively making inferences. This is such an important comprehension skill to learn as students begin to tackle more complex texts, but it is not an easy skill to teach. As students watch these silent films, they are making countless inferences to interpret the visual clues provided by the director.

Pixar Shorts can be used during in-person teaching as well as remote learning. Just as you would stop and pause to discuss a story read aloud, you can press pause and ask students a wide variety of comprehension questions. These questions may flow pretty naturally for an experienced teacher who has used this tool before, but you can always prepare a lesson ahead of time by predetermining stopping points with purposeful questions. Not only will students enjoy these short comprehension lessons, but you will love seeing the enthusiasm and engagement from a range of students at varying reading levels who are all able to access the same content.
Mary Phillips and Christina Webster contributed to this report.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I remember the first time I walked into a classroom that was utilizing remote learning to teach reading. It was a second-grade classroom in Orlando, and I was supervising a student teacher interning with the veteran teacher.

# data[].attributes.headline
10 low-prep, high-return activities for class TOMORROW

# data[].attributes.subject
10 low-prep, high-return activities for class TOMORROW

# data[].attributes.body
There’s no shame in low-prep! Here are 10 solid teaching ideas for tomorrow that will free up some time in your life.

Low-prep doesn’t have to mean less learning. Technology allows us to be more efficient and effective in the classroom in many ways. When we focus on sound teaching and learning, we can do high-quality learning in less time — AND take less time to prepare for it!

Here are 10 ideas that take little to no prep time that can yield some great critical thinking, collaboration, creation and more.

Try one out in class tomorrow!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Ed Tech

Low-prep doesn't have to mean less learning. Technology allows us to be more efficient and effective in the classroom in many ways. When we focus on sound teaching and learning, we can do high-quality learning in less time - AND take less time to prepare for it!

Here are 10 ideas that take little to no prep time that can yield some great critical thinking, collaboration, creation and more.

Try one out in class tomorrow!

1. Instant virtual field trips with Google Maps Street View

Google Maps lets you take students almost anywhere around the world and see it as if you're standing right there with Street View. Studying a specific location? Reading a book that's set in an actual place? Looking at biomes or habitats? Show students what it looks like to be there with a panoramic Street View. Just open Google Maps (maps.google.com) and find the little yellow peg man in the bottom right. Drag him on a blue line, blue circle or yellow circle to view it first person! (Mobile device users: There's an app for that ... for iOS and for Android.)

6. Solve problems with the 5 Clue Challenge

Classes all over the world have enjoyed playing Mystery Skype, a fun global guessing game that encourages geography and problem-solving skills. But Mystery Skype requires a live video call, which takes some setting up. Use the 5 Clue Challenge videos to simulate that experience on demand! In 5 Clue Challenge videos, someone reveals clues about their location one at a time. The sooner you can guess the location, the more points you win!

Below is a 5 Clue Challenge video I recorded! Can you guess where it is?

7. Share to an audience with a class podcast

Student motivation can soar when they know they're creating for an audience bigger than just the teacher. I've used the Anchor app (anchor.fm) to record short podcast episodes but you can also use the mic only feature in Flipgrid within Wakelet. What if your class created a podcast to share what they're learning with a big audience?

1. Set up a podcast on Anchor. It's easy. (I made my cover image on Google Drawings!) OR use Flipgrid and Waklet (link to post with directions on how is below)

2. Record short clips of students talking about what they're learning in class. Do it little by little all week.

3. Collect all of them into an episode on Friday. (Or Monday. Pick a day to publish!)

4. Write a title and description and then publish it!

8. Plan lessons with EduProtocols

An EduProtocol is a way to design lessons where the content changes but the way you teach it (and your students learn it) stay the same. These aren't stale, dry lesson plans ... they're the kind your students will BEG for and will stay fresh all year. It's an idea published in a book called The EduProtocol Field Guide by Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo (Amazon affiliate link). Try one of the ideas below out or get a copy of the book!

For notifications of new Ditch That Textbook content and helpful links:

Are you looking for quality, meaningful professional learning that both equips and inspires teachers?

Matt provides in-person and virtual keynotes, workshops and breakout sessions that equip, inspire and encourage teachers to create change in their classrooms. Teachers leave with loads of resources. They participate. They laugh. They see tech use and teaching in a new light. Click the link below to contact us and learn how you can bring Matt to your school or district!

Ready to take your teaching skills -- and student learning -- to another level?

Check out our online courses. ALL under $50!

©2022 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 low-prep, high-return activities for class TOMORROW

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ed Tech Low-prep doesn't have to mean less learning. Technology allows us to be more efficient and effective in the classroom in many ways. When we focus on sound teaching and learning, we can do high-quality learning in less time - AND take less time to prepare for it!

# data[].attributes.headline
Guiding Older Students to Enter and Exit the Classroom Smoothly

# data[].attributes.subject
Guiding Older Students to Enter and Exit the Classroom Smoothly

# data[].attributes.body
After so much time out of school, middle and high school students may need multiple refreshers on classroom procedures.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After so much time out of school, middle and high school students may need multiple refreshers on classroom procedures.

Although most students around the country have been back in physical classrooms for a few months now, there are still many middle and high school students who need support when it comes to entering and exiting the classroom properly. As students continue to get used to being back in school, there are a few quick things we as teachers can do to support them in creating routines that both help them adjust and maintain the sanctity of instructional time.

How Students Enter the Classroom

Over the past year, many students have had the ability to simply wake up and log on to a computer as their entering-the-classroom procedure. With the shift back to in-person learning, it's imperative that we teach students what we want to see as they enter our physical spaces.

Students should have a clear set of guidelines regarding the noise level at which they enter the classroom, the location in the room they should move to, and what they should be doing once they reach their seats. By teaching and practicing these procedures, teachers can ensure that they are able to begin class on time and that students will be set up for success in that class period. Additionally, these consistent structures help students understand what is expected of them and ensure that they are able to immediately focus on content rather than attempting to decipher how to behave as they enter the room.

What noise level is expected as students enter?

Will students have assigned seats?

Is there going to be a "Do Now" on the board? Is it going to be something students do silently or with a partner?

What materials should students have out on their desks by the time instruction begins?

What should a student do if they are missing materials-where are extra pencils, books, paper, etc.?

How long do students have to get settled before instruction begins?

Here are some questions to consider when introducing the procedure to students:

How Students Exit the Classroom

As with entering, students have not necessarily had to physically exit a classroom in over a year. By creating a procedure for students to exit the classroom, teachers can ensure that students are prepared to effectively, calmly, and safely enter their next class or dismiss from the building. Additionally, teachers can avoid unwanted behaviors by clearly outlining and explicitly teaching their expectations for how students exit.

As the class period comes to an end, it's important for teachers to have a plan of how they will wrap up the lesson, collect any materials, and prepare the space for the next group of students. Ideally, students will have the opportunity to demonstrate their learning from the day's lesson through a written exit ticket, a verbal discussion, or another medium. This closing activity cues students to the fact that they are going to be transitioning out of the classroom shortly. Students should have a clear understanding of how they are to submit any completed class assignments, how they are expected to return any classroom materials, and how they are to collect their belongings and exit the room.

Clear procedures will support teachers in ensuring that each class period is given closure and that they are prepared for the start of the next class. Students will benefit from being given the time to recollect themselves and their belongings before moving into a new space. Additionally, students are more likely to avoid unwanted behaviors as they transition between classes when they understand and have practiced the procedures.

Will each student hand in their own work, or will it be collected?

Should students leave materials on their desks for the next class or return them to a specified location?

Should students leave the room when they hear the bell or wait for the teacher to dismiss them?

Do students all leave at once, or will they be dismissed by area in the room?

Some questions to consider when introducing the procedure to students:

We cannot yet know the extent to which virtual learning has impacted and will continue to impact our students. However, we do have the power to support them as they make the transition back to in-person learning by creating clear and consistent structures that help them navigate our physical classroom spaces. The traumas caused by Covid-19 cannot be undone by simply welcoming students back into the building; we as teachers must be prepared to provide wraparound support and structure throughout the day to help students once again feel safe and confident in these spaces. Simple procedures like entering and exiting the classroom are a meaningful starting point.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Guiding Older Students to Enter and Exit the Classroom Smoothly

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After so much time out of school, middle and high school students may need multiple refreshers on classroom procedures.

# data[].attributes.body
For students who have internalized a message that they’re destined to fail, promoting realistic optimism can be game-changing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For students who have internalized a message that they’re destined to fail, promoting realistic optimism can be game-changing.

# data[].attributes.headline
A Simple Tool to Help Teachers Regulate Their Own Emotions

# data[].attributes.subject
A Simple Tool to Help Teachers Regulate Their Own Emotions

# data[].attributes.body
In a year that’s bringing a lot of stress, this tool is no cure-all, but it can help teachers keep their emotions in check.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a year that's bringing a lot of stress, this tool is no cure-all, but it can help teachers keep their emotions in check.

I remember my first year of teaching being difficult and then each subsequent year getting easier as I improved at the job. But now, for many educators, each year is getting more difficult to navigate, and the emotional toll is devastating.

The reports of educators teaching through trauma and instructional leaders tending to the business of supporting their schools under drastically unfavorable conditions aren't going away, unfortunately, anytime soon.

In my work with schools, there's a lot of talk about the abovementioned issues and using emotion regulation strategies to combat the toll of the emotional pain that many educators are undoubtedly experiencing. Although social and emotional learning (SEL) strategies can be critical to restoring our own emotional health under chaotic conditions, it's important to remember that emotional regulation strategies are not a panacea for the problems and issues facing our schools today-especially those out of our control.

However, neglecting our emotions over time may trigger excessive anxiety and cause apprehension, irritability, or anger. Some may withdraw socially or engage others negatively as a result. Not only can our mood be disrupted, but so can other aspects of life if we do not cope and heal by working through emotional exhaustion due to the buildup of stressors. Unfortunately, many in our profession are living with this.

In an episode of Queen Sugar (one of my favorite shows), a main character, Micah West, said, "I can't control what happens, but I can control how to respond to things." I think this is an empowering outlook-even in the most discouraging of times facing schools.

In a previous article, I covered using Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions to help students label and recognize the emotions they're experiencing along with an emotions planner for self-regulation; with a few tweaks, I have revamped the tool for educators who may need it.

Accurately Labeling Our Emotions

Psychology tells us that emotion is a complex state of feeling that impacts people physically and psychologically. For those of us beginning to understand emotions, it's essential to realize the way emotions affect the mind, body, and behavior by learning how to recognize and accurately label what we're experiencing at any given moment. Leveraging a tool like Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions can give us a good starting point for recognizing the wide range of emotions that cause us to feel fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, joy, and love (among other things).

To start labeling accurately on your own, use Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions to recognize your emotions in different situations. The wheel simplifies emotions by causing us to focus on eight primary ones: anger, anticipation, joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, and disgust. This helps categorize emotions and responses to them. Additionally, over time and with practice, one can recognize that other emotions we experience daily are an amalgam of the eight basic emotions and can stem from others as well. This is critical understanding, as it can help us identify emotional triggers required for planning to respond with good self-regulation tactics.

Moreover, this insight is beneficial for understanding the impact of emotions on our own overall well-being and social interactions. For example, in the classroom, a teacher's anxiety may result from the buildup of stressful situations like focusing on learning recovery, lax or rigid mask mandates, harmful TikTok challenges, or testing amid the pandemic.

Other helpful tidbits for demystifying emotions are that our brain creates emotions by assigning meaning to bodily sensations from our lived experiences; and although they are highly related, we experience emotions and feelings in sequential order- emotions precede feelings, and feelings precede our moods and behavior.

Using an Emotions Planner

During a podcast episode, Sarah Thomas, a school official in Maryland, explained that it's OK to not be OK if you have a plan to get better. For this purpose, I developed this handy three-step Emotions Planner using my insights from the work of Stanford professor James Gross (see his process model) along with the range of emotions from Plutchik's tool.

Now that we've developed a better understanding of emotions and have Plutchik's tool for labeling and recognizing them, we can begin gauging where our emotions reside and identify strategies for regulating them effectively by using the Emotions Planner purposefully. This simple check-in can be in response to feeling off or having trouble restoring your inner peace after a difficult social interaction or an intense day at work.

Step 1: Describe the situation or the event that triggered your emotion(s).

Step 2: Label the emotion(s) you are currently experiencing. I recommend using Plutchik's wheel as a reference, beginning with the eight primary emotions and then elaborating on other emotions.

Step 3: Identify possible emotion regulation strategies. You may also identify which of the five SEL competencies from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, your strategies pertain to. This is helpful if we are imparting SEL to students.
My sincerest gratitude to Sarah Jubar and Errol St. Clair Smith for pushing my thinking and being the thought partners I needed.
Before anything becomes a mindset, it needs to be a framework first. This tool provided me with a much more streamlined and straightforward process to implement daily or as needed. I found that by paying closer attention to situations and triggers, I began changing how I would experience certain difficult emotions (mainly annoyance and grief) over time. I eventually learned how to conquer some of them as I began to experience small successes in showing up emotionally and responding better to situations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Simple Tool to Help Teachers Regulate Their Emotions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a year that's bringing a lot of stress, this tool is no cure-all, but it can help teachers keep their emotions in check.

# data[].attributes.body
By ensuring that their grading methods accurately report content knowledge, teachers can promote and reward student growth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Moving Away From Traditional Practices

1. Averaging scores over time: Most grade books average scores over time. We teach for a semester and evaluate students at different intervals. For a student who comes in with strong skills, this feels like a fine practice.

But think about this scenario: Marisa came to class with super-strong skills and aced the whole year. Jacob's performance was fine to start out, it improved over time, and he ended up at the same place as Marisa. Elias's and Taylor's journeys were more of a struggle, but they worked hard, and you did a fantastic job teaching them! If at the end of the semester all four students have the same level of understanding, shouldn't their grade reflect their current level of knowledge?

Everyone learns at a different pace. Should we penalize students who had a bad foundational experience, may have experienced some trauma that caused a temporary dip, or just take more time to learn something new? No. I think all four students deserve the same grade if they demonstrate the same level of understanding. Grade books communicate teacher values.

Over the past few years, teaching students a growth mindset has pervaded teacher blogs and ed speak. However, I think that the way teachers typically grade completely undermines the talk about a growth mindset. If our grading practices don't promote, encourage, and reward growth, then we don't value it. How do we show kids that their growth matters? We eliminate averaging scores over time and do something else instead.

This is how my practice has evolved: I consistently update old performance scores with new and more accurate ones. Students get unlimited retakes on assessments. I require them to continually practice essential content and demonstrate retention of that content. I tell students that learning doesn't stop after an assessment. An assessment isn't a final judgment, it's a progress marker. I believe that every student can succeed in my class.

I tell them, "I will not give up on you just because you don't know how to do something yet." I stick to that statement, and it's reflected in my grade book. If a student scores below proficient on a standard, mandatory retakes are assigned and completed during class time. Students are given individualized opportunities to practice and are reassessed after they've learned more. I only keep the most recent reports of demonstrated proficiency. This also requires retention of content knowledge, which has always been a problem in math classes.

2. Adding elements other than content understanding into grading: I've had students who passed my class, but I knew they had little content understanding. I've also had students who I knew understood the material pretty well but had a really low grade. How? Students with inflated grades might have tutors who do their homework, so they collect the "busywork" points, and they might copy work or use Photomath to complete assignments.

In reality, with a 60/40 split of assessments and classwork/homework, a student could fail every test (averaging 33 percent) but do all of the "work" and still pass. The student doesn't know the content, but they'll pass.

It's worrisome when grades don't accurately reflect that a student needs extra attention. Alternatively, a student with good content knowledge and a poor grade is likely in this predicament because they don't demonstrate good "studenting" behaviors. Instead of grades reflecting these behaviors, it's more accurate for them to focus on content knowledge.

I now base 100 percent of a student's grade on demonstrated proficiency of learning targets.

"They don't get points for their work?"

"Nope."

"Do they still do work?"

"Yeah."

"Do some kids have missing assignments?"

"Yup."

I report those work habits in the online gradebook to parents so they can support their kids, but those points don't affect the numerical grade (positively or negatively). There's no more point grabbing, and students do the work because we've built a culture of work that yields results.

I constantly talk about the correlation between practice and performance. Kids understand this connection thanks to sports, dance, video games, and other hobbies. Why wouldn't we lean into that connection with something as important as education?

3. Reporting opaque scores like "Quiz 4B: 71%": I'm extremely transparent with students and parents on what their grade is. I report on students' current level of understanding on specific learning targets that are based upon learning progressions designed with my colleagues. Using my professional judgment of student understanding, I score assessments on a proficiency scale:

4-Nearing Mastery (A)

3-Proficient (B)

2-Emerging (C)

1-Not Yet (D)

0-No Evidence of Learning (F)

If an assessment covers four learning targets, the assessment results in four separate scores in my grade book:

Target 1: 4 (A)

Target 2: 2 (C)

Target 3: 2 (C)

Target 4: 1 (D)

I have current data on each target for each student. Everyone transparently sees where this student is excelling and where they are struggling. If this is the only thing in the grade book, the student's overall grade would be a C (9 / 4 = 2.25). That feels accurate to me.

Alternatively, if I graded this test based solely on percent correct (and let's assume each target had four problems), the student would have 9 / 16 (56%), which is traditionally an F. That feels inaccurate to me. Based on my professional judgment, this student has passing knowledge on three out of four topics and really good understanding on one of them.

Do they really deserve to fail with that level of demonstrated knowledge? This way of reporting grades to students allows them to take more ownership of their learning path. They can track their progress over time, set goals, and see how they advance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1. Averaging scores over time: Most grade books average scores over time. We teach for a semester and evaluate students at different intervals. For a student who comes in with strong skills, this feels like a fine practice. But think about this scenario: Marisa came to class with super-strong skills and aced the whole year.

# data[].attributes.headline
7 Things Teachers Say to Create a Supportive Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
7 Things Teachers Say to Create a Supportive Classroom

# data[].attributes.body
The things teachers say can cut deeply or build a lasting foundation for success. Here are seven teacher-tested expressions to try this year.

There’s no way for a teacher to get through a whole school year without blurting out the wrong thing a few times. Difficult mornings sometimes become insufferable afternoons, and kids of all ages know how to press adults’ buttons. When you do slip up, extend yourself some grace.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There's no way for a teacher to get through a whole school year without blurting out the wrong thing a few times. Difficult mornings sometimes become insufferable afternoons, and kids of all ages know how to press adults' buttons. When you do slip up, extend yourself some grace.

The good news? You can prepare to be supportive, and even practice before you step into the classroom. "One of the hardest things I had to do was learn how to change my 'teacher' language so that I could encourage and empower students on a daily basis," confides sixth-grade teacher Alyssa Nucaro. In time, she concluded that " using powerful and effective teacher language takes a lot of practice and awareness."

For professor of English education and former elementary and secondary teacher Todd Finley, being mindful about supportive language means surveying students about how they like to receive praise. Do they prefer "receiving acknowledgments via private or public oral communication? Do they want personal notes or notes home?" Finley even recommends that teachers keep track of who has received positive feedback: "Chart who you've praised so you can spread the love evenly," he says.

Being intentional and reflective about the way you deploy language is the key. You can start by imagining common classroom scenarios that call for the thoughtful use of language-delivering hard feedback after considerable student effort, for example, or discussing academic or behavioral struggles-and walk through your responses mentally to make sure you hit the right notes. To find more advice on the productive use of language, we combed through teacher comments and articles by experienced educators to identify phrases that empower learners and create a supportive environment.

7 Phrases to Keep in Mind for Regular Use

1. "I believe in you." Teachers are required to correct papers, hand out grades, and at times chastise poor behavior. That power dynamic can subtly undermine students' self-confidence. Saying "I believe in you" is a powerful way to redress the imbalance and remind kids that you are there first and foremost to help and to serve-and that at the root of all of your feedback is an abiding belief in their uniqueness and their potential.

Finding language that blends constructive criticism with faith in the student's ability can be delicate, but being straightforward generally works. In a seminal study in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, when teachers used language like "I have high expectations" for an essay, for example, but "I know you can reach them," the number of kids who submitted revisions doubled, from 40 percent to 80 percent.

2. "We missed you." Instead of asking, "Where were you?" which can carry a note of suspicion-or simply sound like prying-try to respond to a student's absence with a more positive twist. Say "We really missed you yesterday" to signal that you thought about the student when they weren't there and to underscore that they are a valuable contributor to the classroom community.

3. "I'm listening." Used as both a confirmation and an invitation-for example, as an open-ended prompt when a student looks troubled or starts to feel frustrated-the phrase "I'm listening" signals that there is space and respect for student voice in your classroom.

Experienced educators in our community are keen to remind fellow teachers not to jump in to fill the silence too quickly. Refrain from speaking directly after an "I'm listening," and pair the phrase with body language-eye contact if the student is amenable to it, for example-that invites them to fill the vacuum and speak their mind.

4. "Oops, I made a mistake." There are a thousand ways to say you messed up. Saying "That's a real whopper!" or "I can't believe I did that again!" can even convey the idea that academic or social miscues can be both frequent and humorous.

In several threads on Edutopia 's social media feeds, teachers emphasized that a certain comfort level with errors is essential to academic resilience in students. To reinforce this idea with their students, many educators weave preplanned mistakes into their lessons, stop to acknowledge and praise the thinking behind a student's creative error, or pepper their instruction with references to epic mistakes that they've made themselves. While mistakes are never the objective, academic progress always involves failure-and actively challenging the taboo against academic error by saying "I made a mistake," in whatever form you prefer, should be a regular occurrence in your classroom.

5. "We'll figure it out together." This deceptively simple phrase, suggested by teacher Ashley Oweazim in a recent Edutopia Instagram post, is more profound than it seems. In classrooms, where instruction tends to flow in one direction, collaborative language that positions the teacher and student as partners and co-learners flips the script and is subversive in all the right ways.

Students who are struggling with a concept and hear you say "We'll figure it out together" retain a sense of agency, are reminded that even teachers need help, and are encouraged to think of themselves as competent, equal participants in a problem-solving exercise.

6. "You've really improved..." and "I really admire..." Feedback that is specific, measured, and focused on a student's process or effort is motivating and actionable. But it also requires that teachers be attentive to the intricacies of a student's learning journey.

When teachers notice and then articulate areas of academic progress by saying "You've really improved on your descriptive writing-I loved the way you described your family in this story," for example, they signal that learning is a tangible, ongoing process powered by effort and persistence.

7. "I'm sorry." Saying "I'm sorry" can be a bitter pill. It's a frank admission of wrongdoing, and in classroom settings it can feel like ceding authority and thus losing ground in the struggle for discipline and focus. But a judicious use of "I'm sorry" also models one of the most powerful-and rarest-acts of civility and instantly humanizes the relationship between teachers and students. A simple, heartfelt "I'm sorry," recommended by middle school teacher Haley Luckenbill in our Instagram post, instills trust, signals respect for the receiver, and makes you more accessible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
7 Things Teachers Say to Create a Supportive Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The things teachers say can cut deeply or build a lasting foundation for success. Here are seven teacher-tested expressions to try this year.

# data[].attributes.headline
How Novice and Expert Teachers Approach Classroom Management Differently

# data[].attributes.subject
How Novice and Expert Teachers Approach Classroom Management Differently

# data[].attributes.body
A 2021 study reveals the ways in which new and experienced teachers think about discipline—plus 6 takeaways for managing your classroom effectively this year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Good classroom management is mostly invisible. While outbursts and disruptions are inevitable in the course of an academic year, they can be kept to a minimum by employing subtle techniques that work behind the scenes to create a positive classroom culture.

Understandably, there's a significant gap between how novice and expert teachers approach classroom management-one that can take years of experience and training to fill, according to a new study. And while there's no replacement for spending time in the classroom, an awareness of the right strategies, and the right mindsets, can put new teachers on the fast track to adopting tactics that work but might feel counterintuitive or risky. Meanwhile, more experienced teachers can benefit from insights that may help them sharpen or extend their existing playbook.

In the study, researchers asked 39 novice and expert teachers-school leaders and mentors in charge of training new teachers-to watch video clips of a high school classroom. In each video, an educator could be observed giving instructions or walking through the class while students worked. During each video, a disruptive event would occur, ranging from students talking loudly to students refusing to participate in the lesson. The teachers in the study provided feedback on the events in the classroom, critiqued the observed teacher's own classroom management strategies, and offered their own solutions.

Here's how expert teachers approached classroom management-plus six teacher-tested strategies to make changes in your own classroom this year.

SEEING THE BIG PICTURE

While both novice and expert teachers relied on reactive strategies to address student misbehavior-for example, by giving a reprimand like "Eyes on me!" if students were being disruptive-expert teachers were far more likely to consider how proactive strategies could have prevented the misbehavior in the first place.

New teachers tended to view classroom management narrowly, as a way to respond directly to disciplinary problems, while expert teachers had a "more comprehensive understanding of classroom management and its complexity," the researchers found-conceiving of discipline in the broader context of how lessons were organized and executed, how clearly the teacher communicated expectations, and even how the physical environment was arranged.

SEEKING ROOT CAUSES

Expert teachers were more adept at interpreting the causes and influences behind student behavior. If students weren't paying attention, for example, inexperienced teachers were more likely to focus solely on correcting behavior, while expert teachers entertained the idea that the behaviors were situational and sought strategies to improve the learning environment to short-circuit future disruptions.

Compared with novice teachers, experienced teachers tended to have a "more elaborate and interconnected" understanding of student misbehavior, forming a holistic picture of their students.

STRIKING THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY

Establishing a set of rules and then demanding compliance doesn't work, especially with older students. Eventually, expert teachers come to see the classroom as an ecosystem involving a delicate balance between teacher authority and student autonomy. "They viewed student behavior in the context of teacher behavior, thinking about reasons and solutions" instead of overemphasizing "order and discipline."

Sometimes when students act out they are merely exhibiting normal, healthy developmental behaviors. For the most experienced teachers, a healthy classroom is one in which students are allowed some reasonable leeway in their behaviors and are taught how to think of others and regulate themselves.

FINDING YOUR PLACE AND TONE

All teachers made efforts to monitor the room, but expert teachers were more proficient, often because they also had greater positional awareness, making sure that they occupied locations where students-and student work-would be in view. For example, one teacher noted that he frequently "walks through the rows and looks at what they (students) are doing"-a common strategy to ensure that students are on task when doing independent work.

Expert teachers were also mindful of how their body language, facial expressions, presence, and ability to control their own emotions affected the emotional state of their students.

"Emotions are contagious, and when a teacher is able to model a calm presence through their tone, facial expression, and posture, students are less likely to react defensively," writes Lori Desautels, a professor of education at Butler University. Work to project enthusiasm, and try to keep cool if at all possible.

GETTING ADAPTIVE

"Successful classroom management requires the adaptive application of a repertoire of different strategies," the researchers explain. If a student is acting out because they're having a bad day, that's going to require a different approach than if they're frustrated by the difficulty of a lesson or are confused by the instructions-researchers discovered that the latter issues account for 20 percent of classroom misbehavior, according to a separate 2018 study.

As teachers become more experienced, they undergo a "shift in perspective" from "seeing parts versus seeing the whole," the researchers report. While novice teachers relied more on routines and consequences, essentially following a script when it came to managing students' behavior, expert teachers had "adaptive expertise" that allowed them to draw from a variety of strategies depending on the context.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

1. Plan your environment. Your classroom plays a key role in shaping the behavior of your students. A 2018 study, for example, found that heavily decorated classrooms made it harder for students to focus on a lesson, leading to off-task or disruptive behavior. While certain visual elements of the classroom can support learning-anchor charts, maps, images of role models, and displays of student work, for example-an overabundance of decorations can overstimulate.

Seating plans also matter: A 2012 study found that students were three times more likely to be disruptive if they chose their own seat rather than being assigned one. If you're going to offer seating choice-many teachers say it ultimately improves classroom behavior-consider doing so only situationally, and provide clear rules to let students know the consequences of frequent misbehavior.

2. Co-create norms. A common classroom management mistake is to display a list of rules and expect compliance. It can be more productive to have a conversation with your students about the reasons why rules exist, and then produce a set of governing principles by consensus. In California, high school English teacher David Tow instills a sense of shared responsibility and ownership over the classroom's civility by co-creating classroom norms with his students. Together, they identify guidelines like being respectful of others, and then they evaluate the guidelines' feasibility throughout the year, discarding the ones that don't seem valuable, meaningful, or useful.
Conscious Teaching
3. It's not one size fits all. Find ways to measure the size of the problem, and respond accordingly. When a student misbehaves, Grace Dearborn, a high school teacher and the author of Conscious Classroom Management, has developed a series of tiered choices framed "as consequences, not punishments" to give students more autonomy. For example, low-level misbehavior might receive a "gentle" response, such as using nonverbal hand signals to encourage students to pay attention, or Dearborn might try "drive-by discipline," like saying the child's name quickly to disrupt the behavior without getting drawn into a bigger battle.

Consequences are clear to the students and increase in intensity if the misbehavior persists: Students may be asked to change seats or take a time-out to reflect on their actions. Ultimately, the most severe consequences-detention or a meeting with parents-are used if the student's behavior doesn't change.

4. Consider what's unspoken. Nonverbal communication like eye contact, body language, and even how you position yourself in the room has an impact on student behavior.

"Presence is crucial to maintaining classroom management and to effective delivery of instruction, and it's a skill we can develop with effort," explains Sol Henik, a high school teacher. Develop your teaching presence-you can record yourself while you're teaching or solicit advice from trusted colleagues-circulate in areas where you can see and be seen, and make productive use of eye contact, not as a tool for surveillance but as a way to connect with your students, project confidence and accessibility, and build rapport.

5. Relationships, relationships, relationships. Ultimately, classroom management begins and ends with strong relationships. A 2018 study found that greeting students at the door set a positive tone for the rest of the day-for example, dramatically improving academic engagement and behavior. Another study concluded that engaging in prosocial activities throughout the school year-such as regular check-ins or morning meetings-can reduce disruptions by up to 75 percent.

Finally, learning a little about students' personal lives through get-to-know-you surveys and identity activities can provide insights into the root causes of behavior. Students can draw their own "identity portraits" to share both visible and invisible details about themselves, like religion, ethnicity, or the hobbies they enjoy. You can also use writing prompts like "What inspires you?" or "What dreams do you have for after high school?" to mine information you can use to deepen relationships and connect classroom lessons to students' interests.

6. Pick your battles (but do battle when you have to). Students who are frequently the target of negative attention-being called out if they're not paying attention or are chatting with another student, for example-are more likely to become disengaged and apathetic, which leads to more behavioral issues in the future, according to a 2016 study. Don't try to fix all misbehavior in your classroom-pick your battles, avoid escalating the situation if you can, and remember that the most effective classroom management strategies are based on building relationships and increasing engagement with the content.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Novice and Expert Teachers Approach Classroom Management Differently

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A 2021 study reveals the ways in which new and experienced teachers think about discipline-plus 6 takeaways for managing your classroom effectively this year.

# data[].attributes.headline
The  2×10 strategy is simple: spend 2 minutes per day for 10 days in a row talking with a student who is currently struggling about anything she or he wants to talk about.

# data[].attributes.subject
The  2×10 strategy is simple: spend 2 minutes per day for 10 days in a row talking with a student who is currently struggling about anything she or he wants to talk about.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 2x10 strategy: a miraculous solution for behavior issues?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 2×10 strategy is simple: spend 2 minutes per day for 10 days in a row talking with an at-risk student about anything she or he wants to talk about.

# data[].attributes.headline
With Stress in Schools Increasing, Simple Strategies to Stay Calm 

# data[].attributes.subject
With Stress in Schools Increasing, Simple Strategies to Stay Calm 

# data[].attributes.body
In North Carolina, a program offers ‘rapid resets’ to help teachers and students calm their minds and bodies and get back to learning. There are short video models of each idea.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The 6-year-old boy's eyes welled up with tears. His teacher, 30-year veteran Leigh Yelton, could see the explosive anger building in the first grader. After his mother died unexpectedly in his kindergarten year, he struggled with what his grandmother called "mommy days," or periods during which he would often cry uncontrollably. Instead of asking him what was wrong or trying to distract him, Yelton asked him to do something simple and unexpected: go to a private part of the room and push against a wall. It worked.

Yelton learned the technique from a resilience training program that shows teachers how to help themselves-and their students-calm the central nervous system. Stress and trauma can trigger a response in the amygdala, the part of the brain that sends the body into fight, flight, or freeze mode, hijacking the rest of the brain so it becomes focused solely on responding to or fleeing the perceived threat.

"Our thinking brain is where we process language, so if I have flipped my lid, and you talk to me, you sound like the Charlie Brown teacher," says Ann DuPre Rogers, executive director of Resources for Resilience, the nonprofit organization that conducts the training. When a person is triggered and can't be reached through conversation, the training directs them to take a sip of water, press against a wall, or try a quick walk while paying close attention to their physical sensations.

For example, when drinking a sip of water, a participant might try to feel every droplet of water in their mouth. How does it feel as it passes over the lips? Is it cool or warm? Does it have texture? This process of closely examining sensory details called sensing-in is similar to mindfulness practices which are increasingly backed by research, and even prescribed by doctors, for addressing acute stress and trauma.

"You notice all the sort of sensory elements of the sip," said Rogers, explaining one of the strategies that allows teachers and kids to calm their brains and bodies. Once the amygdala is calmed, she continues, "then the brain can come back and we can talk it through. We can make a plan."

Understanding Triggers

The simple techniques, called rapid resets, are designed for "anyone with a nervous system," Rogers says, but they can be especially helpful in the school setting where teachers and students of all grade levels experience different levels of stress and trauma. Students or teachers who have had many adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as living in an abusive household or having an incarcerated parent, may be more easily triggered.

Rogers and her staff train teachers, counselors, and other school personnel to recognize the triggers that cause a person to "flip their lid," or activate the stress response. Triggers in a classroom can seem minor: a student takes another student's pencil or a student teases another student about their appearance. But even these events can spark a response rooted in mounting frustration or underlying trauma and disrupt learning-for both the student and the wider classroom.

While the methods tackle the immediate problem-getting the child to calm down is the first step-the program advises teachers to follow up and address the deeper issues as soon as they can. Getting brains back "online" is a vital prerequisite for exploring the student's challenges and making plans to help the child or teen self-regulate in the future.

"These are quick strategies that you can implement into your classroom with a little effort, but get a big response," says Susan Puckett, a counselor at Forest Park Elementary.

Put On Your Mask First

Despite initial skepticism, Yelton calls the training "the most valuable workshop experience that I have ever been to." Like the flight directive about putting an oxygen mask on yourself before helping a child, the training encourages teachers to use the strategies for their own fight, flight, or freeze responses before teaching them to students.

After learning the rapid resets, Yelton tried them first on herself and then her husband. When she found herself growing angry, she would practice the grounding technique by focusing on the sensory experience of feeling the floor beneath her feet. The strategy brought Yelton back to a place where she could interact again.

The skills she learned in the training had immediate application in her classroom and transformed how she relates to her students. She taught her kids to imagine that their amygdala-which produces the first inkling of anger or anxiety-is like a barking dog. When the "lid is flipped," the dog barks to alert the rest of the brain to fight, flight, or freeze, and getting children to recognize the presence of the dog is a necessary prerequisite for getting them back to a place where they can learn. In her class today, Yelton's students use hand signals to demonstrate that a dog is in the house, periodically gesturing to indicate that they are starting to get anxious.

Before the training, if a child became upset, Yelton might ask "What's wrong?" and press the student to articulate the reason for their discontent. "Often I would say, when kids were really flipping their lids, 'Give me your words. Use your words and tell me,' not really thinking that they can't do that at this point," she says.

The training sparked a paradigm shift in Yelton's interactions with her students. Instead of trying to fix the problem, she approaches triggered students with a new sense of patience and understanding. She realized that "when they get that out of control, they're not in a zone where they know what's happening. They are so amped up or so shut down... and they can't hear you. They can't listen."

Yelton related to the grief of her young student who lost his mother in a different way than she would have before the training, acknowledging his anger without trying to distract or control him. "He was angry, and he had every single right to be angry. I never tried to change that," she said. "You have a right to be angry. I get it. I understand where you're coming from. I would be upset too."

Over time, the student's crying became less frequent and he began to self-regulate, taking time-outs when he felt himself getting triggered. The young boy moved at the end of the year, but Yelton feels she sent him off with a toolbox of tactics he could use to deal with some of the effects of the trauma he had experienced.

Changing School Community

The shift in Yelton's classroom is just one of many in the Kannapolis City School system, a small district in the central part of the state that began training school personnel in the resilience practices in 2016.

Teachers and staff appreciate the simplicity of the practices and their easy implementation in the classroom. "I remember walking out and thinking I can use this tomorrow. I don't have to wait," says elementary school psychologist Amy Roberts. "I don't have to prepare anything. I don't have to make anything. I can just do it."

The practices have created a positive shift in the overall school culture at Forest Park. "Teachers would come to my office and say, 'I did this and this worked for these kids. I haven't seen anything work like this before,'" says counselor Puckett.

The shared practices have created a common language in the school community. Fourth grade teacher Kelcie Lewis says her students know the strategies and respond when they observe her using them. "If I am getting frustrated waiting for them to pay attention or if they're not getting a skill, I might just go over and lean against the wall and they're like, 'Uh oh, guys, Mrs. Lewis is about to blow her lid,'" she says.

Bringing themselves back to a calm state is critical for teachers to avoid exacerbating triggers students may be experiencing. "Through the training, I learned that even the way that you approach the room can make such a difference," says Martha Motley, principal of Forest Park Elementary. "If you get called if there's a fight, a disturbance, or a student being disrespectful, and you show up... escalated, even from the quick walk there, then kids are going to respond differently."
Kelcie Lewis
When school takes place in-person, Forest Park teachers create physical space for students who need to take a break and reset. Lewis set up a corner of her classroom for her students to try the strategies with a wall adorned with posters of typical emotions along with more specific synonyms. If a child says, "I'm mad," she asks for a more nuanced understanding of their feelings-are they betrayed, frustrated, or annoyed? For kids who can't yet read, Yelton uses a board with emotion words, coupled with pictures depicting a range of emotional states.

"The student knows that they can go to the calm down corner and do those strategies without the teacher, or they can let the teacher know that they need help," says teacher Lindsay Stowe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
With Stress in Schools Increasing, Simple Strategies to Stay Calm

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In North Carolina, a program offers 'rapid resets' to help teachers and students calm their minds and bodies and get back to learning.

# data[].attributes.body
This video is part of our series on rapid resets, tools for de-escalation that can help teachers and students build resilience, calm their nervous systems, and bring their thinking brains back online. Special thanks to Resources for Resilience, an organization in Asheville, North Carolina, that trains educators in how to use these tools for themselves and with their students.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This video is part of our series on rapid resets, tools for de-escalation that can help teachers and students build resilience, calm their nervous systems, and bring their thinking brains back online. Special thanks to Resources for Resilience, an organization in Asheville, North Carolina, that trains educators in how to use these tools for themselves and with their students.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Getting in Tune to Soothe the Nervous System

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This video is part of our series on rapid resets, tools for de-escalation that can help teachers and students build resilience, calm their nervous systems, and bring their thinking brains back online. Special thanks to Resources for Resilience, an organization in Asheville, North Carolina, that trains educators in how to use these tools for themselves and with their students.

# data[].attributes.headline
How to Build Executive Function Skills in Preschool

# data[].attributes.subject
How to Build Executive Function Skills in Preschool

# data[].attributes.body
From imaginative play to storytelling, certain activities help build self-regulation, memory, and planning skills—setting the littlest learners on a pathway to academic success.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From imaginative play to storytelling, certain activities help build self-regulation, memory, and planning skills-setting the littlest learners on a pathway to academic success.

For more ideas, information on the links cited in the video, and activities that build executive function, check out the links below:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Build Executive Function Skills in Preschool

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From imaginative play to storytelling, certain activities help build self-regulation, memory, and planning skills-setting the littlest learners on a pathway to academic success. For more ideas, information on the links cited in the video, and activities that build executive function, check out the links below: