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Articles

Overcoming Learning Challenges with Envisioning Language

Recently, my third-grade class and I were reading books about learning challenges and the strategies characters used to overcome them. During our discussions about the books, I wanted to guide them into thinking about their own learning challenges and how they could be overcome.  As a class, we noticed that…
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Mar 09 2021
Creating Space for Students to Discuss Social Issues

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 conversations across the country regarding social justice issues. Middle school students are going to want to have rich, deep conversations…
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Sep 17 2020
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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Feb 19 2020

Strategies for Getting Students Back on Track

Helping students get back on track when they are engaged in off-task or rule-breaking behavior is an important goal when responding to misbehavior. We want students to quickly get back to positively participating in the lesson or activity. Our ultimate goal is for students to recognize when they are off-task,…
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Jan 15 2020
Asking open-ended questions

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, reflect on their individual strengths and challenges, and measure their progress toward goals. We want our students to become autonomous…
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Dec 13 2019
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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Nov 14 2019
Middle school students collaborating

Strengthening Students’ Speaking and Listening Skills

Having productive conversations requires students to listen deeply, reflect on what is said, express ideas clearly, sustain attention, ask insightful questions, debate respectfully, and develop comprehension of information taken in. These essential listening and speaking skills need to be taught and practiced and will help students have successful conversations both…
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Nov 12 2019
Teaching Students to Speak Confidently

Teaching Students to Speak Confidently

“As their teachers, we hold in our hearts our own hopes and dreams for [our students]. We want them to engage in academic rigor and to be ideamongers who contribute to classroom learning—and we also want them to become the very best people they can be; to live the very…
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Feb 08 2018

Helping Students Give Effective Compliments

Jane, a fourth grade teacher, was reviewing compliments her students had given one another on a recently completed set of projects. On sticky notes, the students had written things like “It looks like you put a lot of time and effort into your project,” “I noticed you put very detailed…
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Feb 15 2017
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

The Building Blocks of Collaboration: Partner and Small-Group Chats (Grades 5–6)

Children learn a great deal, academically and socially, by collaborating—working together toward common goals. A good way to help students begin developing collaboration skills is by teaching them how to exchange ideas, information, and opinions as they converse with partners or in small groups. Partner and small-group chats require complex…
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Apr 09 2015
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Adapting Morning Meeting Greeting for ELL Students

Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is a powerful way to create a classroom climate of respectful, engaged learning and the greeting component sets the tone by helping all students feel noticed and appreciated at the very start of the meeting. But how do you help ELL students participate fully in greeting?…
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Mar 18 2015
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Relationships: Always More to Learn

I teach a class of fourth graders with a span of academic skills, developmental characteristics, and cultural and economic backgrounds. If I had to describe what makes such a diverse class work and learn together productively, I’d start with one word: Relationships. The relationships we form with each other are…
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Jul 28 2014

Teaching Skillful Communication

A Standards-Based Approach to Morning Meeting Sharing Ryan holds up the book so all his classmates can see the cover and begins: "Reptile Facts is my favorite first grade book. Every first grader should read this book because it shares facts about reptiles." He displays a few pages showing similarities…
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Apr 11 2014
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Waiting to Speak

Recently, more than a handful of my first graders were struggling with waiting to ask questions or make comments during direct instruction. I responded by using tried and true teacher practices: giving a clear signal (shaking my head no) to let the child know this was not an appropriate time,…
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Mar 11 2014
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

A Principal’s Job Is Also to Teach

Early in my career as a school leader, I learned a great lesson: that as a principal, I needed to help children learn the skills that would enable the behavior their teachers and I wanted to see. As a teacher, I'd used myriad proactive and reactive approaches to handle classroom…
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Jul 29 2013

Enjoying Each Student

With some classes, the characteristics of the group tend to overshadow the personalities and interests of individual students. Earlier this year, I had that experience with my current third grade class, and I took some deliberate steps to get to know each student better. When I read Margaret Wilson's blog…
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May 29 2013
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Teaching Children to Disagree

Not long ago I watched an animated group of second graders happily share their opinions about a children's picture book. They were responding to their teacher's open-ended question about what might have motivated one of the characters in the book. As they chatted with partners, I heard students say things…
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Oct 01 2012
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Partner Sharing in Morning Meeting

If you visited my classroom during Morning Meeting these days, you'd probably see first graders working with partners and using the conversation skills we've been working on all year. We're now doing lots of partner work during the school day, and Morning Meeting is one of the times when we…
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Mar 09 2012

Partner Greetings in Morning Meeting

By now my first grade students are pretty good at chatting with a partner. They know how to pair up quickly and how to decide who will go first. They sit knee-to-knee and look each other in the eye. They usually stay on topic, and each person has a chance…
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Feb 23 2012

Teaching Children How to Converse

These days, curriculum often recommends using "partner chats," "turn-and-talk," and other one-on-one conversation strategies to help students reflect on and deepen their learning. Although it may seem like a simple thing, chatting with a partner involves a complex set of skills that many children do not come to school with:…
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Oct 24 2011

First, Partner Skills

This year didn't start off quite as I'd planned. I'd hoped to start teaching conversation skills right at the beginning of school, but once I met my new class, I decided that this particular group of first graders needed to be more comfortable working in pairs before I started teaching…
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Oct 24 2011
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Coaching Children in Handling Everyday Conflicts

"Teacher, he won't play with me." "Teacher, she cut in line." "Teacher, he took my book." Such classroom conflicts are familiar in elementary school life. For years, resolving such conflicts for children filled my days. I lost valuable teaching time, and the children learned nothing about resolving their own conflicts—or…
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Feb 01 2009

How do you manage to have private conversations with students?

A: With kindergartners, I do a lot of quick check-ins during class time, but when a longer conversation is needed, I use the quiet corner in our classroom. It's a small space set up with soft, comforting things (bean bag chair, stuffed animals)—specifically meant for children who need to calm…
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Nov 01 2008

The Art of Commenting

Teaching Children to Make Caring Comments during Morning Meeting Sharing On a late spring morning, Mr. Marino’s fourth graders are gathered quietly on their Morning Meeting rug, all eyes on Joe, whose turn it is to share. “I played a basketball game on Saturday,” Joe says. “We lost, but my…
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Aug 01 2007

Power in Speech

One of the most valuable things we can teach students is how to assert themselves in respectful ways. In spontaneous and planned moments throughout the day, teachers can work with students to think about what they want to communicate, to examine their words, and to try new and different ways…
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Feb 01 2005

Speaking Up

Question: Every year I have students who seldom or never speak up in a large group. Often, but not always, these are children from non-mainstream cultures. Do you think it’s important for all children to learn to speak up in groups? How do you handle this in your classroom? A:…
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Apr 01 2004

A Conflict Resolution Protocol for Elementary Classrooms

A basic belief underlying The Responsive Classroom approach to teaching is that how children learn to treat one another is as important as what they learn in reading, writing, and arithmetic. We believe that social skills such as cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control are essential to children’s academic and…
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Mar 11 2001

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