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What Is Responsive Advisory Meeting?

Responsive Advisory Meeting is a purposeful routine for meeting the needs of young adolescents through building positive, meaningful relationships with caring adults and peers. There are four sequential components: arrival welcome, announcements, acknowledgments, and activity. Why Middle Schoolers Benefit from Responsive Advisory Meeting Responsive Advisory Meeting serves as an…

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Using Social Interaction to Engage Students

Using Social Interaction to Engage 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…

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Increase Student Engagement with Your Lesson Design

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,…

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Giving Students Choices

Giving Students Choices

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…

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Five Ideas to Help Parents Empower Students during At-Home Learning

Five Ideas to Help Parents Empower Students during At-Home Learning

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…

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How Responsive Classroom Practices Can Act as the Glue for a Virtual Classroom

How Responsive Classroom Practices Can Act as the Glue for a Virtual Classroom

Ever since March 23, 2020, when the school where I work, Steel City Academy, transitioned to virtual learning, I’ve found myself constantly asking what education will look like moving forward. This school year, the majority of students at Steel City Academy are still learning virtually (a small percentage of students…

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Ending the School Year with Distance Learning

Ending the School Year with Distance Learning

The end of any school year can be a bittersweet time for both teachers and students. This year, these feelings are heightened as we consider how to have closure with our students when we might not be physically together with them in school. Students and educators may experience feelings never…

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MM and CC online

Providing A Sense of Normalcy Amidst Uncertainty

Morning Meeting and closing circle are the bookends of the day. These powerful strategies ensure that students start and close their days with a sense of purpose and connectedness. These time-honored routines and rituals can provide a sense of normalcy for both teachers and students. Many educators have been engaging…

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Maintaining a Positive Community Remotely

Maintaining a Positive Community Remotely

Over the weekend, a friend shared a video with me that you may have seen as well, as it has been widely shared on social media. The video was taken in a neighborhood in Naples, Italy, a country that is currently under national quarantine. Despite that restriction, the residents of…

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Teacher self-care options

Finding Time for Self-Care During the School Day

Research doesn’t have to tell us the effect teachers’ mental and emotional health has on the classroom community (though it does). As we all know from experience, it impacts not only ourselves and our successes at school but our students’ experiences and school successes as well. Responsive Classroom’s second guiding…

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Students Sharing

Student Sharing: A Strategy for Culturally Responsive Teaching

Responsive Classroom strategies, structures, and techniques offer a wide array of practices we can use for culturally responsive teaching. One of these strategies is student sharing. Providing opportunities for students to share about themselves and learn about each other helps build a positive classroom community, which is foundational for building…

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain,

Using the Responsive Classroom Approach to Support ALL Students

Ensuring that all our students are academically engaged is our highest priority as educators. We want to teach our students the skills needed to creatively engage with content while becoming critical thinkers— to be effective communicators and problem-solvers while successfully collaborating with their peers. These are skills our students will…

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Cultivating a Classroom that Represents Students

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 experiences make us feel like valued members of a community. This is the way students feel when they see images…

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Circle activity

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 routine answer: “Everything was fine.” She then asked me, “Is there anything that you feel we could do better?” I…

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Teacher and Family

Valuing Cultural Norms That Differ From Your Own

Black History Month is an opportunity for us as educators not only to teach students about historic contributors to our American history, but also to help students experience and find value in different cultures. This important work of raising awareness and appreciation shouldn’t be confined to one month; rather, we…

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Positive Community Reflection

Building a Positive Community Through Reflection

As the year draws to an end, we find ourselves reflecting on the past 12 months. New Year’s Eve in 2019 also marks the end of the decade! Reflection can be a powerful tool for both teachers and students, not just at the end of the calendar year, but all…

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social interaction

Igniting the Fires of Learning

By the time the school year reaches November, students feel a familiarity with the rhythm of the school day that leads to more intensified learning. This increase in academic challenges can be stressful for students and teachers alike. That stress, coupled with shorter days and anticipation of the Thanksgiving break,…

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Caring Ln

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 opportunity for schools to focus on a serious, prevalent problem that affects the social and emotional well-being of students. Bullying…

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Testing Limits

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 a great start. So why are you noticing some students beginning to test limits and misbehave? And what can you…

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Co-teachers

How to Create Meaningful and Rewarding Relationships with Colleagues

A guiding principle of Responsive Classroom is “How we work together as adults to create a safe, joyful, and inclusive school environment is as important as our individual contribution or competence.” In order to create meaningful and lasting change in schools, we must have good working relationships with our co-teachers…

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Clearing the Way for New Growth

Clearing the Way for New Growth

Recently I was in a school conducting observations, and I noticed that all of the classrooms were picture-perfect. The decorations on the walls looked like an advertisement for a teacher store, and would make some avid pinners jealous! As I watched the students in the class work, gather supplies, and…

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Highlighting Academics with Belonging, Significance and Fun

“When we start the day with everyone together, face to face, welcoming each person, sharing news, listening to individual voices, and communicating as a caring group, we make several powerful statements. We say that every person counts. We say that the way we interact individually and as a group is…

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Hopeful teacher and students

What Are Your Hopes?

As we prepare for our upcoming Teachers and Leadership Conferences, we’ve been thinking a lot about hope. Students’ hopes and dreams are, of course, an integral part of the beginning of the school year. In addition to providing students with a model for setting and achieving goals, having students name…

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Our Actions Speak Louder Than Our Words

In 1991, Ruth Charney, co-founder of Responsive Classroom, wrote a book that impacted K-8 educators all over the world, Teaching Children to Care. A reflection of her 20-year teaching career as well as the stories and observations of colleagues, her practical and empathetic guidance has inspired teachers for decades and…

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It’s Time to Reconnect

Helping students build relationships with each other is a key to creating an optimal learning environment. Stronger bonds mean students will be less likely to be unkind, to exclude others, to call each other names, or to stand by in the face of mean behavior toward a classmate. The safer…

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Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

What’s in a Name?

How do you refer to the students in your class when addressing them? At first glance, this may seem like a trivial issue; but consider how many times throughout the day we speak to students to get their attention. The patterns we establish for naming our class will be repeated…

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Take it Slow with Morning Meeting

It's hard to believe that the school year is upon us. I remember the excitement—and apprehension—I felt as I made my lesson plans for the first weeks of school. One of the things I was most excited about was getting to know the children and helping them get to know…

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Categories

Classroom Management & Discipline

Positive Community

Teacher Language

Morning Meeting

Engaging Academics

First Weeks of School

Energizers & Activities

Positive Language

Special Times in the Year

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