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Articles

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 unfamiliar territory, I couldn't wait for the school year to be finished. Everything felt new, uncomfortable, and stressful, and trying to…
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Nov 12 2020
Virtual Learning

Tips, Activity Ideas, and Resources for Virtual Learning

As you make the transition to online teaching, here are some tips, activity ideas, and resources to support your virtual classroom: Communicate to parents the supplies their children will need for at-home learning. Set up your digital classroom rules or at-home learning rules: send students home with the rules for…
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Mar 27 2020
Test Prep

Making Test Prep Engaging and Stress Free

When we think of spring, we imagine birds chirping, leaves turning green, flowers blooming, and the sun shining its warmth over everything. If you are an educator, spring has a second meaning: it represents another testing season full of student worries about standardized assessments as well as teacher stress as…
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Mar 03 2020
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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Dec 19 2019
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
academic choice activity

Developing Intrinsic Motivation with Choice

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…
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Nov 20 2019

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 our knowledge of developmental strengths and needs, administered initial assessments, reviewed benchmark data, and have likely had one (or more)…
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Nov 18 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

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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Jan 02 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
Bring Social Studies Into Morning Meeting

Bring Social Studies Into Morning Meeting

It’s the end of the week and Mrs. Cofie’s fourth-graders are gathering in the meeting area to begin Morning Meeting. As they find their places in the circle, they review the morning message. In Mrs. Cofie’s classroom, Friday’s message is always connected to the week’s social studies learning. There’s a…
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Jun 21 2017

Spring Rejuvenation

It’s March, and in many parts of the country, teachers and students are facing the tail end of a long, gray winter, and cabin fever may be setting in. No matter what the weather is like where you are, it can be challenging for both students and teachers to maintain…
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Mar 07 2017
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Breathe Life into Learning with Engaging Academics

(an adapted excerpt from The Joyful Classroom: Practical Ways to Engage and Challenge Students K–6) Ms. Romano has gathered her fourth graders in a circle at the start of a science lesson. “Today,” she says, “you’ll begin learning about the properties of light and shadow. This will help you better…
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Mar 14 2016
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Making Learning Meaningful: It’s All About the Why

A few years ago, as I looked around the fourth/fifth grade combination class I taught, I saw a student staring at her math notebook and slowly shaking her head. I wandered over to her and said, “You can always talk to me if something is puzzling you. I might be…
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Jan 12 2016
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

A Teacher Shares

Get Moving! It’s 1:30 in the afternoon, and our class is preparing for language arts block. Recess and lunch seem like hours ago, and we still have an entire content area to teach. As my co-teacher and I begin setting up for the lesson, we notice Jenna rocking in her…
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Apr 22 2015
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.

Doing Language Arts in Morning Meeting

Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is a great way to set a positive tone for the day of learning ahead while also having fun and building community. It’s also a great way to give students rich experience with the language arts. Into each meeting component—greeting, sharing, group activity, and morning message—teachers…
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Feb 05 2015
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Active, Engaging Test Prep: The Walking Quiz

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of incorporating movement into classroom work and gave an example of one way to do that with an editing activity. In this post, I’d like to share a way to add movement when the class is reviewing material right before a…
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Jan 13 2015
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Pen Pals With a Twist

Not long ago, my second grade classes started pen pal projects. These weren't your usual pen pal ventures where children write to students in another state or country. These had a twist. In our Pen Pal Notebook project, the students write a letter every Friday to an adult at home:…
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Sep 18 2014

Test Prep with Less Stress

As we approached testing season, the already anxiety-prone fourth graders I teach began asking questions about test dates, format, and content. These signs of stress, combined with antsiness brought on by the arrival of long-awaited spring weather and a week of spring break, all came at once this year. I…
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May 02 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.

The Hot Seat

Are you looking for interactive learning structures that will help your students gain a deeper understanding of content while also developing and practicing higher level thinking skills? The Hot Seat is a strategy I've used successfully across disciplines with 3rd and 4th grade students. I borrowed it from Jeffrey Wilhelm,…
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Apr 07 2014
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Choices Choices

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…
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Jan 24 2014

Asking Strategic Questions

Adapted from the new book The Language of Learning: Teaching Students Core Thinking, Listening, & Speaking Skills  Curiosity is at the heart of learning—and a healthy curiosity depends on questioning. Learning to ask questions moves children beyond themselves; they become able not only to consider what they know or think…
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Jan 03 2014
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Teaching Students to Stay Focused

Welcome to Room 327! Here, on a warm day in May, you'll find thirty third graders reading independently. The room is silent, save for the occasional chuckle or sound of disbelief you might expect from children fully immersed in their reading. Meanwhile, I'm conferencing with individual students, running guided reading…
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Jan 03 2014
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Teaching Love

I recently had the pleasure of spending two full days at Garfield Elementary School in Springfield, Virginia, a school that has been using the Responsive Classroom approach for close to ten years. After that visit, I am fully convinced that the best teachers teach love. The thing that struck me…
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Oct 31 2013
Photograph by Jeff Woodward.

Challenges Are Fun!

Recently I've been thinking about how enthusiastically the students in my class take on challenges, and how challenging them has helped us build a more positive community and made learning more fun for all of us. How things have changed since the beginning of the year! As I got to…
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Mar 21 2013

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