Teachers are going back to school (or soon will be), hoping and praying for a better year after three years of COVID impacting schools and teaching. Besides setting up the classroom and attending endless meetings, the most important activities to plan are routines and procedures that build classroom community. Here are the most important routines… Read More
How do we get every student to stay engaged and participate in group work? How can we be sure that everyone even understands what we’re teaching? The answer: checking for understanding frequently and making sure our students know that they will be held responsible for showing their learning! I’m sharing four of my favorite ways… Read More
Any time is a good time to reset classroom your classroom environment. If you are bothered by anything in your classroom (student engagement – or lack thereof, messy areas, unkind comments, incomplete assignments, etc.), it’s time for a reset. Read through the list of tips that follow, try one or two, and let me know… Read More
With the Thanksgiving break behind us and three weeks to go before winter break, it’s a great time to re-establish some good routines and procedures in your classroom. Helping your students to focus might be one of those! What do you do when you notice that your students are not focused? If you tend to… Read More
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase by now – we need to “Maslow before Bloom.” What does it mean and how do we do that? The phrase itself refers to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In Maslow’s theory, there are five levels of needs. The most basic is physiological needs (air, water, food, shelter, sleep,… Read More
At this time of year when going back to school is on the horizon, many teachers are thinking about all the things they need to do to prepare. But maybe it’s a good idea to spend some of the precious summer time thinking about how we need to be as a teacher. How we want… Read More