New Year New Classroom

Aaahhhh...It's the beginning of a long break from the classroom. Maybe you've jetted off to someplace arm, or maybe you've chosen to snuggle in at home and just have a quiet week or two with your favorite books or hobbies. And yet, for the entire time, the spectre of returning in January may be hanging over your head and following you as you enjoy the merriment of this season. Keep reading for some ideas on how to combat that anxious feeling.

A new year, and yet another chance to get it right. Another chance to be the teacher they'll always remember, and to have the class that will stay in your heart for the rest of your life. Wait, what? You're dreading your return to school, worried about an unruly class of kids who have forgotten "how we do things around here", worried that they'll never settle in enough to pack in all the standards that you will need to cover before the next round of testing, or just worried that the peace and serenity that you found over break is about to crumble before your eyes. I've heard teachers talking about all that. Really. In many ways, the January return is just as anxiety-producing as the first day of a new school year. We've all just had too much time to get really used to not doing school.

Here are some resolution suggestions to help you and your students ease back in!

The Gift of Time

Time! Don't you wish you had more of it? So do I, and so do your students! Why not resolve to schedule some more choices into your day. I know! You don't have time! Right? I seriously always found that the time added to give kids a voice and a choice in activities was easily made up by subtracting the time I might have had to use to wait for the class to pay attention, stop talking, or just settle in.
Try giving your students a little more time in the day to read. Just read. Any book they choose, without a book report or reading log dangling from the edge of it. Just some time to indulge themselves as readers. You just might build a beautiful lifelong habit here!

Have you tried Genius Hour or any type of Project Based Learning yet? You could resolve to stretch your students' brains with a little more open-ended and less time-urgent work this month. They just might amaze you with all they can be motivated to learn!

Do your kids enter talking and keep it up all day long? Try surprising them with an occasional "conversational opportunity" during the school day - a time when it's a-ok to just talk with each other. Walk around and listen. Awesome sauce amazement!

The Gift of Kindness

Do you wish that your students were kinder to each other and maybe even to you? Why not make the teaching of kindness a standard for your classroom community? Infuse it in your lessons by finding examples of kindness as a theme in reading novels, biographies, and in studying current events. Find or write some math story problems in which the theme is kindness. (Hmmm... I think I'll do that myself!)

Remember to model kindness too. Please don't ever be afraid that another teacher or an administrator will think that you are being "too easy" on your class or that you are weak as a teacher because you are too kind. Been there. Heard that. My thirty six years of classroom experience affirms that you can never be too kind. Never. How can choosing to let other human beings know that you care about them and are there for them be wrong?

Talk about acts of kindness every day, maybe at a morning meeting, or just in passing as you notice them. In a kindness-focused classroom, the noticing will become more and more frequent over time!

The Gift of Peace

Aaah... Peace! Remember: You in your pjs or yoga pants, your coffee or tea or hot chocolate, the fire softly sighing in the background, soft music playing... CLASSROOM NOISE!!!!!! Ugh, back to reality! Well, maybe not. Why not try to recreate a little of that peace in the immediate environment of your classroom every day? Play some soft music while kids are working. Use music for your transitions. You might even bring up a screen saver fireplace video on one of your classroom computers. Remember to have a thermos of a warming and soothing drink that you enjoy, and let the kids have a thermos of their favorite on their desks. (Spillproof please!)

Here's an idea you might or might not have tried yet. Speak in a very soft voice. Even when your class is talking loudly all around you at first. Watch the fun as they strain to hear, nudge each other to listen, and then just focus in on what you're saying. Even if you think this is nonsense, how will you ever really know unless you give it a try? So many kids only know one volume level. They hear it at home, and they hear it all around them every day at school. Show them that the volume level is adjustable, and they have the power to turn it down.

Try bringing the elements of peace you have at home into the space where you spend most of your waking hours each day. Try a yoga break, a breathing break, or a short meditation time. Before you know it, school just might not be the place you need a break from. It might be yet another peaceful spot in your life.

The Gift of Safety

Everyone needs to feel safe and secure in the space where they are. Kids who feel threatened and under stress can't learn. You need to provide a safe zone within your classroom. You can do that by making sure your kids feel that they are noticed and heard and respected and cared for. Give them a voice. Show them that things happen WITH them, not TO them.

Make sure that your students feel safe in expressing their opinions and feel safe answering questions, even if they aren't really sure they have the exactly right answer. They need to feel safe to explore learning and new ways of thinking and looking at things.

 Home and neighborhood aren't the safest-feeling places for many of our kids. Make sure you know who your kids are and what challenges they find outside of your classroom. Then provide that place for them where they will feel safe and valued.

The Gift of Significance

Ownership. Authorship. Knowing that the work that you do is important and that it matters. This is a resolution that you can make today and give as a gift to your students every day. Frustrated that kids rush through assignments, turn them in looking sloppy, often with no name on it? You might want to try finding ways to lessen the paper load. Find some other ways for kids to respond: discussion, graffiti boards, individual and group performances, computer work. When people believe that work is valued and important, they don't forget to put their name on it. They're proud to announce that it is theirs!

Don't forget to celebrate the achievements of your kids often. When planning a unit, make sure that you add a plan for how you will celebrate the works produced by your students. Will you invite parents/community in to view your work, will you have a panel presentation, set up a fair, will kids make videos for students in future years to view, or will you invite another (perhaps younger) class in to be an audience? Celebrating at the end of unit is a great way to pause and say, "Hey! Your work has significance! You have made a contribution! Thank you!"

The Gift of Wisdom

Finally, you can resolve to give your students and yourself the gift of wisdom this year. Wisdom is an elusive and slippery little creature. You won't ever hear its soft voice unless your mind is quieted and you are listening carefully. Acquiring wisdom takes time and reflection. We can't stuff our heads full of facts and equations and then expect to emerge with wisdom.

You can share this gift with your class by offering plenty of reflective time for the lessons you are teaching. If you haven't tried Interactive Notebooks yet, this might be a good time. Just please, please, please make sure that your Interactive Notebooks are truly interactive. They really shouldn't even be about cutting and gluing. (Although that's the first vision that comes to mind for most teachers when they hear the term "Interactive Notebook". Admit it - that's the vision you had just now, too!) Don't make your Interactive Notebooks cutesy fill the blanks and color receptacles. Make them a place to collect valuable notes on the lesson, and then a space for reflection and individual responses to the learning. Time + Quiet  Reflection = Wisdom.

Here are some resource suggestions to support your use of any of these gifts this year!

                   TIME                                                                                                       PEACE           

KINDNESS

               SAFETY                                                                                              SIGNIFICANCE   

   

WISDOM

          

I hope you found an idea or two here to make your winter break and New Year return to school even better! Wishing you a year ahead filled with all the joy that makes you remember why you chose to be a teacher! 

For more ideas to make your January easier, cozier, and filled with learning, be sure to check out these bloggers talking about teaching.

For more winter ideas, please check out the fabulous bloggers of Teacher Talk! 

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts

that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at    TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

0

Recipes for the Holiday Season

 

My family has decided that our annual Thanksgiving reunion is very low priority this year. The pandemic sidetracked our celebration for a couple of years, and this year we just couldn't get confirmation from enough people to have it. I think it's over, and I'm pretty sad about it. I do believe that we all make decisions every day on what is important to us, and what is not important. We find time for the things that are important.

One of the things I loved about our Thanksgiving reunion was that I didn't have to cook! No recipes were needed for this particular holiday, as we had it catered in a hotel ballroom in the town where we all grew up. This year, hubby and I will be hosting our daughter, son in law, and grandchildren at home.

My insomnia, aided by the helpful blog fairies, has my brain spinning this morning with recipes of all sorts: recipes for each of the upcoming holidays this year, recipes for self care, and recipes for a happy and successful classroom. I'm also in search today of ingredients for one of my biggest kitchen passions, Korean cooking. Looking for pickled white radish today for some culinary fun before turkey prep begins in earnest!

I love love love to cook! Adding that as a fun ingredient used to be an integral part of my classroom. The rise of peanut allergies and warnings about viruses put an end to that. Any good cook knows that ingredients can be subbed out and that recipes can still be shared with students and their families to be tried at home. I coauthored a book with my forever friend Fay, and we used to cook up a storm in sessions at conferences. Our lesson plan recipes  combined Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art, and Math long before anyone had ever heard of STEM, STEAM, or STREAM! Maybe you attended one of our packed sessions! It was a fun time! 

Here are a few recipes to get you through the holiday season with your energy, humor, and love of family and teaching intact!

A recipe for teacher self care:

• Gather up a few hobbies or things that you just enjoy doing, and deliberately put them into your schedule. I would choose reading, Zumba, and knitting. give them a value of one hour or 30 minutes each day, and make them as important as a doctor's appointment. They ARE as important!
• Spend some time with friends. Lunch or coffee, shopping, long walks,  whatever you enjoy doing together. Again, give it a spot on the schedule and honor its value.
• Add a new practice to your self-care routine: yoga, meditation, bubble baths, audiobooks or podcasts. Find a quiet, inward-facing thing that you like to do.

Some recipes to use this holiday season:

    

A recipe for a Calm and Successful Classroom:

Try these resources from Rainbow City Learning.

ZEN CLASSROOM              

RESOURCES TO BUILD CHARACTER AND BRING SUCCESS

Wishing you a peaceful, calm, and fun holiday season! 

For more November ideas, please check out the fabulous bloggers of Teacher Talk! 

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts

that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at    TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

1

Four Easy Ways to Encourage an Attitude of Gratitude

 

How do we encourage an attitude of gratitude in our students?

It's that time of year again - the time so many of us stop and say thanks for all the gifts we receive from the universe each day. It's a very reflective season, leading up to a season of giving and often of overindulgence. I often wonder at this time of year what we can offer to our students that will make the reflective and thankful aspects of Thanksgiving last throughout the year. 

How long for an action, a thought, or a practice to become a habit? I've heard varying opinions on this, but most settle at right around three weeks. I tried this out myself recently. I've done it before while going through Covey training, while making plans for my students, or after watching Oprah. This time I did it just for me. I tried to think of and write down three things each day for 21 days that I am grateful for. Sometimes I just really miss Oprah! I think she nudged so many of us to become more reflective. 

At first, it was the usual list that comes to each of our minds immediately: our families. Spouse, parents, children, siblings, grandchildren. Then maybe some special moments with each of them. Then I expected the list making to grow more difficult. The great surprise (to me anyway) was  that it became easier and easier each day to think of three things that make me feel grateful, and in fact harder and harder to stop at just three. 

Grateful for a warm breeze against my cheek here in Michigan in November.

Grateful that I can easily walk into the mall from the farthest parking spot. (This revelation should come in very handy when holiday shopping begins in earnest, and the only spots available are the farthest!)

Grateful for the first rays of sun that wake me up now that I am retired. (Got up in the dark every day for years!)

My personal list continues to grow and grow.

What's on your list? Are you comfortable sharing at least a part of it with your students? 

Introducing an attitude of gratitude to your students and building upon it until it reaches habit status just might make a difference in the atmosphere of your class in general and in the life of each of your students in particular. 

Some easy to implement suggestions:

Declare your gratitude together.

Add a declaration of gratitude to your class meeting time. 

(I'd call it morning meeting time, but most years my class meeting was never in the morning. It's so important, I think, to have that community building time, no matter what  the time slot during your busy teaching day.) Use talking sticks, a rainstick, a special ball, or even a glittered leaf to get the discussion started. As each student receives the talking prop, he/she must state one thing, person, idea, aspect of their life for which they are grateful. (OK to "pass" until some great examples have been set and all have the idea.)

Change up your playlist.

If you don't already use music to inspire your students to be kinder, better, stronger versions of themselves, now is the perfect time to start. If you already use music to enhance your teaching and your collective day, brief pause here for applause and a pat on the back. (At least a silent cheer for you, awesome teacher!) Add some songs to your daily playlist with the theme of gratitude. Two of my favorites available online for free (just click and enjoy!):

Journal it!

If your students already have journals, tab a section of it for thoughts of gratitude. If you would rather, start a new gratitude journal that kids can keep all year to nurture and continue to grow their new habit of declaring gratitude. Write right along with them at least at first. Make yours honest, heartfelt, descriptive, and a beautiful example of the way you'd like theirs to look. Use special paper, markers, pencils, etc. to embellish it. I have a Pinterest board where I save ideas for journaling that inspire me. Feel free to take a peek or to follow!

To encourage an attitude of gratitude this month, and to keep it going throughout the rest of your school year, try Rainbow City Learning's November Super Bundle! If you love this bundle, you will be happy to know that there is one for every month of the school year! Each month has a different theme.

I hope you have found a few ideas here to make this season of reflection more meaningful this year in your classroom. Please know that I am grateful for each and every one of you who reads this blog! 

If I can do anything else to help make your job easier this year, please let me know in the comments below! If I use your idea for a new blog post, you will win a TpT $10 gift card. If I create a new resource for Rainbow City Learning based on your idea, you will win a free copy of that resource to use in your classroom! (Note: all comments are reviewed before appearing on my blog. It may take a few hours for your comment to appear! Thanks for your patience!)

For more November thoughts on teaching, be sure to check out the posts below by the amazing bloggers in Teacher Talk. 

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

0

Teaching Perseverance Through the Arts

 

"It's a country club over there," my parents could often be heard to say during my fifth and sixth grade years. We had just moved back to the neighborhood and new, progressive school that we had to leave after my Kindergarten year.

We had moved next door to my grandparents and my mom's large and loving family, so as a kid I wasn't aware of the financial difficulties that had caused the move "back home", just thrilled to be up in the business of my young aunts and uncle all.the.time. I was known as the world's youngest teenager, showing up at my Aunt Harriet's after school living room dance parties, and a careful observer of my Aunt Rhoda's makeup application and hair styling as she left for work or dates. They took me to the library every week for stacks of books, taught me to twirl a baton, and drove me to school. We had long and serious discussions about Elvis, Richie Valens, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper. A member of a for real actual singing group, The Tempos, actually lived across the street! Two of the songs that they briefly made famous were "Since I Don't Have You" and "See You in September". My grandma always said that Gene was a very nice boy who served his country.  I think he was a friend of my uncle, but who knows? My uncle always seemed to be in his room studying. That room was the only space in my grandparents' house that was off limits to me, but that was ok. He knew nothing about hair and clothes and makeup, and I just went in to look around when he wasn't there. We danced the Strand. We drew and colored, knitted, cooked and ate together, laughed together, and took full part in each other's lives. I missed nothing in the area of life enrichments, and I liked my school and friends.

BUT... the summer before fifth grade, life was heading in a positive direction for my very young parents. My dad finished college, had a CPA practice, and was beginning to invest in deli restaurants among other businesses. They bought their first home, and I returned to my original school in fifth grade while my little sister started kindergarten. Our little brother was nine months old when we moved in, so no school for him yet!

Apparently, while I was gone, our public school system had decided to try out some new programs and practices at the newest building in their district. When I arrived in Miss Brooke's fifth grade, things were happening! Kids who were academically successful appeared to have been placed together in class, so there was never a chance to read any of the books that I had become used to shlepping to school with me every day for four years. (Well, actually three years. Too busy throwing up every day in first grade when reading groups started. Membership in the blue birds was not all it was cracked up to be.) Aside from watching super smart kids learning and responding and interacting on all sides, we had ENRICHMENTS! Yes, our district was on the cutting edge in the 60s with the very beginnings of gifted education. They didn't call it GT or anything like that, but in my opinion, they should have named it something because the confused young parents just called it a "country club over there".

At the "country club over there", we could leave our classrooms without having to make up anything that we missed while gone, and take Creative Dance, Art Enrichment, Science Explorations, and Chorus. We could also learn square dancing and polka. Yes, polka. It was Pennsylvania after all! As a dancing school dropout, I loved Creative Dance the most. Could not believe my good fortune at being part of a group with actual current dancing school students.  (Being a dancing school dropout is absolutely true - I left Saturday morning dancing school for Saturday morning cartoons at the ripe old age of seven because I just couldn't keep up with the other dancers.) In Creative Dance, we were presented with music and could create our own choreography. It was amazing! My love for dancing, nurtured as the world's youngest teenager dancing with Bandstand every day, was restored!

I took that "country club at school" spirit with me throughout the rest of my education and my career as a teacher. As I got to higher grades, I learned perseverance. Perseverance made everything I tried to do better. Study and practice became enjoyable pursuits because there was always a goal ahead, a reason for persevering. I studied harder in French class so that I could spend more time in Ceramics class in high school. I studied for and passed out of basic language arts, foreign language, and math courses in college so that I could load up on Art History and Anthropology. And when I became a teacher, I tried to make sure that my own students had opportunities to explore the arts and sciences as much they possibly could. I did this through project based learning and through centers, including Inventor's Center, an early incarnation of STEAM. My students' journals always had a drawing/sketching/diagramming component. A kid more in tune with art could use more art than words and still succeed in journal writing. I can point to several professional artists today who have told me that they appreciated being able to journal through art in those elementary years.

After that loooonnnngggg intro, this post on Perseverance is turning to the importance of including the arts in an elementary education. We learn to be awesome dancers by dancing. We learn to be artists by crumpling papers, erasing, and starting again. We learn to be writers by writing. I always had two signs in my classroom: Good Writers Write and Good Readers Read. Perseverance is what makes us successful, and I believe that it is best learned in the pursuit of the arts.

When I was thinking of picture books to use with this important topic, I couldn't narrow it down any further than four. I simply took all four out of the library. You don't have to own every book that you touch. I donated three of these when I retired, and just discovered the fourth one. The public library is a great place to find books, especially books that you will use for a brief lesson. School libraries are another great source, if you are lucky enough to still have one. I won't speak badly here of the district that I retired from, but no librarians? Seriously?

The very first book that came to mind was Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen. In this book, Sassy is a dancing school student who, unlike yours truly, persevered. She was "too tall" and her feet were "too big" for all the roles and participation that she longed for. Rather than drop out, she practiced, observed, and danced every dance from the wings, learning it as well as if she was on stage herself. Her hard work and perseverance pay off when a director of an important Washington dance festival notices her, chooses her from her entire dancing school and invites her to be part of a performance troupe. This is based on Debbie Allen's life and the experience of her daughter Vivian in dancing school.

Of course, a read of Dancing in the Wings naturally leads to a read of Brothers of the Knight also by Debbie Allen. It's an amazing retelling of the fairy tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", and in light of the recent public controversy over whether men should be dancers, it got my attention. In Brothers of the Knight, Reverend Knight is a single father raising twelve sons. The story is narrated by their dog, Happy. Reverend Knight is befuddled by the fact that his sons' shoes are tattered, torn, and generally wrecked every morning, although they appear to have been sound asleep every night. A new housekeeper solves the mystery, and the brothers come clean about their passion for dancing. They had thought it necessary to sneak out to the ballroom at night because they thought that their father would disapprove. Reverend Knight marries the housekeeper, adds dance to his sermons, and all live happily ever after. Dancing with perseverance can sure wear out your shoes!

And speaking of shoes, a story from the childhood of Michael Jordan, Salt in His Shoes, is another great example of how perseverance can lead to success. Michel Jordan was once a short child who wanted to play basketball with the neighborhood kids. He was shorter than they were and had a difficult time keeping up. He measured himself over and over, but never seemed to grow. His dad advised him to keep practicing and his mom advised him to put salt in his shoes and to pray every night to be just a little taller each day. Michael took the advice seriously, praying, salting, and PRACTICING at home. He eventually scored the winning point in a neighborhood game when another player was injured and unable to play. And... as we know.... he grew to be a famous six foot six pro basketball player! Was it the salt? Or the perseverance?

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman is also nothing short of amazing as a model for perseverance. Grace loves to read and to act. She loves stories - telling them, hearing them, acting them out. When she learns that her class is about to cast and perform "Peter Pan", Grace wants to be Peter. She is focused on her goal, and sticks with it through practice and auditions even though one classmate tells her that a girl can't play Peter, and another tells her that Peter is white. (Grace is African American.) Enter Grace's Ma and her Nana (gotta love the Nanas!), who inform Grace that those two kids who discouraged her don't know anything. Nana then takes Grace to a ballet performance where a famous brown-skinned dancer named Rosalie Wilkins ballet dances the part of Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet". After the performance, Grace adds the dance of Juliet to her practice, auditions for and gets the part of Peter Pan. Grace is an amazing Peter Pan, and according to her Nana, "If Grace put her mind to it, she can do anything she want." True for Grace. And true for all of our kids.  Putting your mind to it is perseverance!

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I had chosen to stick with Chorus when I was told by the teacher to sit in the back where no one had to listen to me. I could have been a famous singer! Nah, I just pursued the arts that mattered to me. Teachers, the important thing is to present the arts as possibilities to our students. Let them tinker and explore. Let them respond to assignments and projects infusing a piece of the arts that is important to them. Find time for performances in class. There are ways! Make your room just a little bit of "a country club over there". You never know what future artist, dancer, singer, writer, or scientist is sitting right before your eyes!

Check out some of the STEAM resources at Rainbow City Learning to add a little art to the learning in your classroom!

Click below for a FREE introductory lesson on using the arts to teach perseverance.

To hear the thoughts of our "We Teach So Hard" blogging group on this topic with lots of book suggestions, just click!

For the blog posts of our We Teach So Hard podcasters, click below!

Teaching Perseverance: Powerful Books to Change a Student’s Mindset

Books to Teach Perseverance

Never Give Up. . . Persevere!

Using the Arts to Teach Perseverance

And... before you go... Check out some amazing posts for the month ahead from my awesome blogging buddies at Teacher Talk!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

0

Five Tips for a Smoother September

 

 Did you blink? Summer is over! Everyone I know is finally back to school. The last round go back to school in Michigan this week! So many changes, new expectations, and new habits for a new school year! If you can stand one more piece of advice about smoothing out your September, mine would be to add just one new procedure at a time. Here are a few that I believe will make a difference in your year!

Start with the one that tells your students: Welcome! You are in a safe and accepting place, and everyone here is glad that you are here with us. Here's how I would get that started. (It's not too late to add this in for the current year, even if you've already started. Revised script follows here!) Close the door after all are seated and busy with whatever your morning work is. You: "Ok, I have something to share with you. The office has just discovered that they made a mistake. They placed all the BEST students in our grade right here, in this room, with me!"  Them: "Gasp!" (Gazing at you with wide-eyed wonder, as if to say, "How'd that happen?") You: "I know! Right? So how are we going to keep them from figuring it out?" Them: (Offer some ideas.) You: "Well, the key thing is to remember not to tell anyone in any of the other classes that this has happened. We have to kind of keep it low key and just act like we usually do, which is pretty close to perfect!" Them: (Looking around room, and knowingly smiling.)  This is not a fantasy. I have done this and it works.  You are telling your students that they are the best, and in most cases, they will try to live up to your faith in them. Want the best class ever this year? Just believe in that idea together. Send that idea out into your school, community, and the universe!

Use music for transitions, entering, exiting, and some of your writing time. Have certain songs that you play for lining up, for coming to morning meeting, for coming to the carpet for mini lessons, for starting center activities, and for cleaning up. Try keeping a playlist on your computer desktop for easy access when needed. Kids will respond by falling in step with the desired activity as they learn the music that is directing them to begin. I used a few of the Bullyproof Music tunes for most activities, but Seger's "That Old Time Rock n Roll" was a favorite cleanup song. "Got Your Back"(Bullyproof) is a great one for entering and lining up to go to specials, lunch, recess, etc. We loved "Gift" (Bullyproof) for coming to carpet for lessons because it made us think about how special the time we had together really was.

Try some tinker time. I have ALWAYS been a fan of project based learning, invention, and just plain old tinkering with stuff, long before STEM, STEAM, and saving Fred. Long before Genius Hour too! I would love to see you carve out a block of time wherever you can manage it each day where kids can interact with ideas and stuff and just set their imaginations free. Every classroom, science or not, can and should have a Maker Space, in my opinion. Here's an inexpensive Guide to Getting Started, if you're ready! The experiences that kids have with tinkering in a leisurely way will spill over into writing, discussions, and even test taking. It's great exercise for their brains. Try it and see!

Write every day. Journals, Interactive Notebooks note taking and responses, math word problems requiring longer answers, quick writes, or just free writing in a writer's notebook to be used at a later time. Students should write in the company of others, and they should see you writing too. Try writing your own journal using whatever projection method you use (I used Elmo, and in the olden days, an overhead projector). The writing that you model should be pen to paper though, not keyboarding into a document. Show that you are happily putting the same effort into your writing that kids are putting into theirs. They will learn much more from watching what you do than from just listening  to what you say about writing. As you develop a new Interactive Notebook lesson, be sure to project what you are writing so all can see it. Writers who write in the company of other writers have far fewer cases of writer's block.

Read together every day. Have a read-aloud going, no matter your grade level. Humans love to be read to. Don't just assign reading to be done at home. Let your kids read in the company of other readers. It will raise those reading levels much quicker! They will notice new books they'd like to try, see examples of others enjoying reading, and enjoy it themselves more and more each day.

Five habits for September. If these five things are in place by the time you and your students arrive at October, I'm guessing that you will say it's been a good month! Happy sailing through the days ahead! Take care of yourself, and enjoy these fresh new moments with your new friends!

For some fresh October ideas from Rainbow City Learning, just click below! (There is a Super Bundle for each month in Rainbow City Learning!)

For more ideas as you sail into your new school year, please check out the fabulous bloggers of Teacher Talk! 

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts

that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at    TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

0