Articles

Independent practice is a new Responsive Classroom strategy for introducing concepts and skills to middle school students by creating opportunities for them to interactively explore the content through hands-on learning. In independent practice, students work by themselves without guidance from their teacher. This kind of practice requires students to have…

Responsive Advisory Meeting provides an effective and helpful structure for middle school teachers who are looking for opportunities to empower their students to be assertive and use their voices in the classroom and in their communities. To learn more about how Responsive Advisory Meeting can be used to support students…

Written by Sarah Scavone At this point in the school year, we have spent a great deal of time intentionally building our learning community. The strong relationships we build with our students, both student-to-teacher and student-to-student, are intended to provide them with a strong feeling of belonging and significance with…

Written by Kristen Vincent, Responsive Classroom Consulting Teacher Lesson design is about planning and structuring lessons in a way that engages students in learning, practicing, and applying academic content and skills. Well-designed, engaging lessons reduce misbehavior by keeping students focused on their learning. High-quality lessons communicate a purpose for learning,…

Written by Chris Carter, New York City Public Schools kindergarten teacher After multiple delays, New York City schools started this school year in late September with both hybrid and remote instruction. I began the school year with the same goal I have every year: to build relationships. My first opportunity…

Written by Margie Dorshorst As students continue to learn at home through various educational models, many parents have expressed concern about how to motivate their children to stay engaged and complete tasks both on-screen and off. Some parents have expressed the need to use threats or rewards to motivate their…

According to Vocabulary.com, the word “intrinsic” is an adjective that means “belonging to a thing by its very nature.” Some synonyms for intrinsic are: essential, built-in, constitutional, inherent, integral, inner, internal. This naturally puts us at a disadvantage when trying to develop intrinsic motivation in our students, because we are…

Did you know that according to poets.org, National Poetry Month is actually the biggest literary celebration in the world? It’s never too early to start fostering a love of the English language with your students, and there’s no better time to begin than Poetry Month! Following are some great ways…

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” –Frederick Douglass This famous quote, printed on bright pink cardstock and posted above the whiteboard of a third grade classroom, stood out during a recent school observation.  I tend to see a lot of these on walls during observations—words of wisdom…

Students come to ACS Cobham International School in England from all over the world. Some stay for their entire pre-collegiate school experience and others make a home there for just a few years before the next stop on their globe-trotting journey. “There is a huge range of cultural expectations [among…

Consider the energy and intensity that often accompany the middle of the day. Lunch and recess provide students with opportunities to run, play, eat, and socialize, and teachers often see this energy spilling over into the classroom as students reenter for the afternoon. They often run into the room, bumping…

When I look around my classroom, I see students making choices. The first graders I teach make choices all through the day, from the time they arrive until Closing Circle. The choices are simple, but meaningful: they each decide the order in which they'll do their Morning Jobs, and in…

If your classroom life is like mine these days, it's gotten harder to make learning fun. This year in my district we have a new teacher evaluation system, new report cards, new online math resources, and new pacing guides for each curriculum. The administrative work involved in managing all this…

When they are working towards a common goal, engaged in a fascinating topic, or trying to figure out a solution for a meaningful problem, students feel more connected to school and each other. Engaged learners have lots to talk about, including discoveries and interesting facts, experiments, predictions, and what they…

When I was a second grader, my teacher would take us outside on mild afternoons to relax with whatever book we chose. We’d munch snacks and chat as we read together. Those lovely times celebrating books and ideas are cherished memories and something I wanted my own students to experience.…

Four classes of second graders have just begun a new science unit on insects at the University School of Nashville in Tennessee. I and the other three second-grade teachers have each invited our classes to share what they know about insects and what they would like to learn. To our…

It's social studies time in Karen Baum's fifth grade class and the room is humming with activity. The class is finishing a unit on women gaining the right to vote, and the teacher has given students choices of ways to show what they learned during the unit. Some children are…

When I was in elementary school more than fifty years ago, I struggled with geography. I found it very hard to keep all those place names and locations straight. The only thing I could do was start memorizing. I tried to picture the fifty states in relation to each other,…

Integrating academic choice into a prescribed curriculum Several years ago, the school at which I was teaching adopted a new series of teacher’s manuals for reading and spelling and asked that teachers use them to guide their instruction. The manuals included "red check" skills that students needed to learn each…