Articles

As they step into the 2020-21 school year, teachers across the country are facing a wholly unique set of challenges brought on by the novel coronavirus, including the question of how best to deliver instruction when circumstances require that their delivery diverge—in some cases substantially—from what’s been effective in the…

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…

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…

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…

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 early the school year begins, some of us have been with our students for almost six months! In that time,…

It’s the start of a new year! Day one is either right around the corner or has just recently taken place. The beginning of the year is filled with so many fresh faces watching your every move and listening eagerly for the next direction. With all this newness, it can…

It’s the middle of the summer, another school year is successfully in the books, and preparations for the new school year are not quite in full swing. Now -- while you’re hopefully finding time for some well-deserved relaxation -- is an ideal time to reflect and recalibrate on the type…

An adapted excerpt from Responsive Classroom for Music, Art, PE, and Other Special Areas. Published in July 2016 by Center for Responsive Schools, the book is packed with easy-to-implement ideas for adapting core Responsive Classroom practices to specialists’ unique teaching situations. Learn more about the book. What happens in the…

As the school year draws to a close, you’re probably thinking about ways to keep students engaged in their learning during the last weeks of school. But now is also a good time to reflect on the successes and challenges of the school year and consider how you’ll begin the…

What's going well in your classroom these days? At this time of year, especially, it's common for teachers to focus more energy on challenges such as reteaching procedures that aren't going smoothly, having problem-solving conversations with students, parents and colleagues, and stopping misbehavior quickly and respectfully before it escalates. Doing…

It's getting to be the time of year when teachers' efforts during the first weeks of school begin to pay off. With classroom routines becoming well-established, a blossoming sense of community, and teachers who've gotten to know the children they teach, school days begin to fall into a rhythm. Students…

Sarah was under the classroom work table again. "Sarah, now is the time for writing. You need to come out and start your work in your writing folder." I used my best teacher language, even though it hadn't worked with Sarah so far. She often shut down while the rest…

Which parts of your school day just don't seem to work as well as you'd like? Now's a great time to do some problem-solving, imagine new possibilities, and plan to make changes when school starts again. It's also a great time to brush up on Interactive Modeling, a key Responsive…

"Mr. Anderson! Kelsey cut in line!" calls out Nicole. "No I didn't! I was here a second ago. I just had to get my lunch ticket!" Kelsey retorts. The fourth grade girls glare at each other and then look at me, waiting for my response. I don't want to spend…

Three years ago, I noticed my first grade class having real difficulty putting away the materials for one of our workstations. Although these students usually followed the cleanup routines we'd developed and practiced for other stations, they would often leave words strewn about the poetry workstation. To set up this…

Are you looking for a strategy to help your students navigate particularly tricky times of day, such as transitions, recess, lunch, or dismissal time? Try making a "looks like/sounds like" chart (often called a T-chart) or a "looks like/sounds like/feels like" chart (aka a Y-chart) with them. This activity and…

What happens in your classroom during arrival time? Those first minutes are so crucial for setting the tone and the pace for the day! The routines you put in place for arrival time help children reconnect to the classroom and their place in it, as learners and as classmates. Think…

I often hear teachers tell students, "Don't worry about who's first—we're all going to the same place (or "going to do the same thing"), so it doesn't matter who's first." This reasoning wouldn't work for me as I waited in line to board an airplane, buy things at the store,…

During the long winter months, when children may experience less physical activity and movement, try sprinkling in some energizers—quick breaks that get children moving, breathing, and having fun together—throughout the day. These much-needed physical and mental breaks can increase children's motivation for learning, and can also make their learning more…

In this video clip, third grade teacher Kerry Tuttlebee uses several different positive language strategies to keep students moving during a transition while maintaining control in the classroom. I am really inspired by the way Kerry uses reinforcing, reminding, and redirecting language here, and by her calm-yet-firm tone of voice.…

A step-by-step example of how it might look and sound for a teacher to use interactive modeling. 1. Name the goal. State it as a positive behavior. “At the end of a testing session, you need to put your answer sheet inside the booklet and set it aside on your…

In many classrooms, it's during transition times that things get a little chaotic, possibly resulting in behavior problems that frustrate in the moment and spill over into the rest of the day. Many teachers resign themselves to the chaos. For years I did that myself. Then one year, I decided…

Question: Many teachers spend a lot of time creating good beginnings to the school day through carefully planned morning meetings. But what about the end of the day? In this newsletter's Teacher to Teacher section, NEFC consulting teacher Carol Davis talks about using a closing meeting to bring the school…