Yardsticks Guides

Share Yardsticks Guides with families at open houses, teacher conferences, and back-to-school nights and keep one on hand in the classroom for quick and easy reference.
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Yardsticks Guides: Elementary (Gr. K-6) Sample Pack

The Elementary Sample Pack includes Yardsticks Guides for grades K-6. Share Yardsticks Guides with families at open houses, teacher conferences, and back-to-school nights and keep one on hand in the classroom for…
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Yardsticks Guides: Middle School (Gr. 5-8) Sample Pack

The Middle School sample pack includes one of each Yardsticks Guide in the Middle School grade range. Share Yardsticks Guides with families at open houses, teacher conferences, and back-to-school nights and keep…
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Yardsticks

Yardsticks is a comprehensive guide that helps educators better understand students’ social and academic behavior through a developmental lens.
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Midyear Child Development Review: Adapting to Students

At the start of the school year, as new classroom communities are forming, teachers begin planning ways to connect and form relationships with new students. By the middle of the Read More…
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Ways To Address Common Behavior Challenges That Pop Up Midyear

It’s a few months into the school year, and you may be noticing an increase in challenging student behaviors. Suddenly students are struggling to follow classroom rules that they learned Read More…
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Movement Activities That Help Learners of Every Age Refocus

An increase in wiggles and whispers or holes torn in papers from too much erasing can be important clues that your students are beginning to reach their individual or developmental Read More…
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Linda Hagan

Linda Hagan is a newly retired teacher of thirty-one years. She spent all of those years as an elementary teacher for Ann Arbor Public Schools in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She Read More…
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Five Things Every Teacher Should Do on the First Day of School

There is such a sense of potential that comes with the freshly sharpened pencils, organized supplies, and stacks of books waiting to be handed out at the start of a Read More…
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Gentle Steps to Prepare for the Upcoming School Year During the Summer

Summer is a recharging station. It offers teachers a mental and physical break from the day-to-day routines and demands of teaching. While recharging, teachers begin to dream of and envision Read More…
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Navigating Challenging Middle School Behaviors in the Second Half of the Year

It’s the time of the year when middle school students are more comfortable with their learning community. They know what the expectations are. They know where their classes are. They Read More…
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Learning Loss

Learning Loss According to The Glossary of Education Reform, “learning loss refers to any specific or general loss of knowledge and skills” caused by “extended gaps or discontinuities in a Read More…
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Goodness of Student Intentions


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Approaching Discipline with Compassion

Teaching and learning has been transformed this year by various models of hybrid, virtual, and remote learning. Along with restructuring and modifying how they deliver education to students, the coronavirus Read More…
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My Approach to Virtual Kindergarten

Last spring, when terms like global pandemic, virus, hybrid-, distance-, synchronous-, and asynchronous-learning first became a regular part of educators’ vernacular and most educators across the country were thrown into Read More…
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Creating Space for Students to Discuss Social Issues

Along with new structures and strategies teachers are employing in response to the multitude of changes to their teaching environments, the beginning of this school year is defined by the Read More…
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Strategies for Cultivating a Classroom That Represents Students

Imagine walking into a family member’s home and seeing your photograph on the mantel, or being in class and hearing your professor use a cultural reference you connect with. These Read More…
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Strengthening Your Community: Continuing to Connect with Students and Families

Recently, as I was returning a rental car, the associate behind the desk asked me an all-too-familiar question: “How was everything?” Without very much thought, I smiled and provided my Read More…
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It’s a New Year – Time to Look at Students Through a New Lens

A new calendar year provides the ideal occasion to reflect on who our students are now compared to who they were at the beginning of the year. Depending on how Read More…
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Stop and Think: Teaching Students to Reflect

As educators, we all want to help our students develop valuable life-long skills, including the ability to think critically about their own work, truly know themselves and their learning styles, Read More…
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Using Observation to Enhance Learning

This time of year, it can be easy to begin thinking that we’ve got students all figured out. We’ve had them in our classrooms for a couple of months, refreshed Read More…
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Bullying Prevention: How Aware Are You? 5 Steps You Can Take

According to stopbullying.gov, between one in four and one in three U.S. students say they have been bullied at school. October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and this provides an Read More…
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What to Do When Students Start Testing Limits

The school year is in full swing: hopes and goals have been established, classroom and school expectations are in place, and learning is in high gear. Everything is off to Read More…
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Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: Re-establishing Balance in Your Classroom

With the changes in fall weather outside, the weather inside the classroom is likely changing too. As a result, teachers often find themselves responding to misbehavior more than they did Read More…
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Having Effective, Affirming, and Energizing Conversations with Families

Every interaction we have (or don’t have) with parents does, to some degree, reflect how much we value families’ input and the extent to which we see caregivers as our Read More…
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Creating a Place for Learning

We all can think of stores that felt inviting and organized, places that created the optimal shopping experience. Classrooms, like stores, can be places where we frequently want to spend Read More…
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Establishing Balance at the Start of the School Year

Summer’s adventures and excursions are dwindling, and your email inbox is filling up with welcome back notifications, professional growth opportunities, new initiatives, and meetings. These clear signs that a new Read More…
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