How to Help Students Stay Organized

Disorganized students come in various guises: younger students, older students, male students, female students, well-mannered students, disruptive students, and, all too often, failing students. What these seemingly different students do share, however, is the tendency to be disorganized and overwhelmed. They are the ones still looking for their homework when everyone else has turned theirs in. They are the ones who never have a pencil or paper. They are the ones whose backpacks are stuffed with wadded up papers, broken pencils, and overdue assignments.  Fortunately, there is a great deal that caring teachers can do to help our students become more organized and successful. If you are currently teaching a student who needs help with organization, here are some simple strategies that may help.

 

Don’t let the problem grow. As soon as you notice that a student is disorganized, spend time working together to help that student become organized. Think in terms of small increments each day instead of an overwhelming clean out once in a while.

 

Make getting organized and staying that way part of the daily culture of your class. When students are aware of the expectations that their teachers have for them, then they are more likely to rise to those expectations. Good organization should be everybody’s business. The few minutes that you spend on this each day will reap big benefits when students can find work quickly.

 

Insist that students copy down their homework assignments in a planner. They should do this even if you allow them to photograph their assignments from the board or if it is posted on a class website. Using a planner encourages students to plan their work instead of just copying down homework in a rush.

 

Assign students to study teams or, at least, allow them to work on organization with a partner. Many students benefit from working with a study buddy so that they can check each other’s folders, binders, and book bags before leaving class. They can also take notes for each other and gather assignments when a team member is absent.

 

Keep the requirements for paper management as simple as possible. For example, ask students to use just one folder or binder for class instead of requiring them to several items to keep up with such as a binder, a spiral notebook, and folders with pockets.

 

Help students develop helpful routines for keeping belongings in good order. These routines should be as simple as possible so that they are easy to follow. Even simple steps such a packing up the night before will make a big difference for many students.

 

Make a point of checking in with disorganized students every class period to see that items are stowed away in a logical place where they can be easily retrieved. With frequent checks, the problems with disorganization can stay small.

 

 

Although creating methods of organization may seem obvious to you, be explicit in directing your students. For example, say “Clip this handout into the assessment section of your binder,” instead of “Put your papers away.”

 

Allow enough time at the end of class for students to pack away their belongings neatly. Insist that students clip their work into binders instead of stuffing them into a binder pocket or, even worse, into a book bag. Just two or three minutes of time with careful monitoring while everyone packs up will send the message that it’s important to be organized.

 

Provide students who struggle with organization problems with items that will help them stay organized. Calendars, planners, color-coded divider pages or notebooks, assignment notebooks, to-do lists, self-sticking notes, checklists, and pencil pouches will all help these students stay organized.

 

How to Manage a Successful Conference with Parents or Guardians

Now that we have had the opportunity to get to know our students, it may be time to schedule conferences to discuss some of the concerns that you may have about the academic or behavioral success (or problems) of your students. It is far easier to talk over problems and concerns early in the year when the solutions are still manageable rather than later when students are struggling under a huge burden of months of failures.

Teachers who want to communicate well with parents or guardians realize that what they want is to be reassured that their child is doing well and can succeed in school. Even though this may not be the current state of affairs with their child, families want teachers to work with them and with their children to make this happen. We need to connect solidly with the parents or guardians of our students if we intend to create a positive learning climate in our classrooms.

One way to have a beneficial conference is to make sure our goals for the conference are clear.

You should present yourself to parents or guardians as a friendly teacher who has their child’s best interests at heart and parents should leave with a sense of satisfaction because all of their questions have been answered and all of the points they wanted to cover were addressed. In addition to specific goals for a meeting with parents or guardians, there are lots of other steps that you can take to ensure that the conference is friendly and productive.

1. Be considerate. Meet the visitors in the school office and escort them to your room unless you are sure they know the way.
2. Be prompt.
3. Greet them cordially and express your appreciation for the fact that they came to the conference. This will create a tone of goodwill that you should strive to maintain throughout the conference.
4. Do not try to impress parents and guardians with your knowledge of educational terms and jargon. Use language that will make them comfortable.
5. Begin the conference with positive remarks about their child. Talk about the student’s potential, aptitude, special talents. Focus on strengths even if the reason for the conference is a serious breach of conduct. Do not lose sight of the fact that this child is very important to the parents.
6. Convey the attitude that the child’s welfare is your primary concern.
7. State the problem in simple, factual terms and express your desire to work together on a solution for the good of the child.
8. Allow upset or angry parents and guardians to speak first. After they have had the opportunity to say all of the things that they have probably been mentally rehearsing on the way to school, then and only then, can they listen to you or begin to work on a solution to the problem.
9. Show examples of the student’s work that illustrate the problem. If the problem is not directly work-related, be prepared to discuss specific examples of misbehavior.
10. If this is a problem that you have talked about before, perhaps informally or over the phone, share any improvement.
11. Be specific about what you have done to help correct the situation.
12. Listen to the parents and guardians. If you want a solution to the problem, give them your full attention throughout the conference. Your nonverbal language is crucial to the success of a conference. Be attentive, friendly, and positive.
13. Encourage parents and guardians to express their ideas. You need their insight and help.
14. Ask questions that will direct their thinking. These questions can also keep everyone focused on the problem at hand and on solutions to it.
15. Summarize the points of the conference at the end. Be sure to outline what you will do and what they will do to help their child be more successful in school.
16. Determine how you will follow up on the conference and keep them up to date.
17. Express appreciation again for their concern and the time they have spent with you in the conference.

How to Help Students Fit In

Here is a brief excerpt from The First-Year Teacher's Survival Guide about how you can help remove the barriers to peer acceptance in your classroom.

 

Although it is important for teachers to make it easy for their students to work together well, the undertaking requires diplomacy as well as dedicated efforts. Social inclusion is such a vital aspect of any student’s life, however, that the effort often results in beneficial dividends. Begin by identifying some of the barriers that could have a negative effect on your students.

          What are some of the most common barriers to social acceptance in school? Many students could feel excluded because they do not know their classmates. It is a mistake to assume that students know each other well. Even students who have attended school together for several years may not know much about their classmates.

          Another barrier is that your students may live in different neighborhoods. If you teach in a school where students may live at a distance or come from very diverse neighborhoods, it is likely that they have not had very many opportunities to interact with each outside of school.

          In addition, students who have not been taught how to behave courteously or who have not learned socially acceptable ways to resolve conflict often struggle to form appropriate relationships with their peers.

          Perhaps the greatest barrier that you will have to help your students overcome, however, is the perception that they may not have much in common with a classmate whom they do not know well. With effort and persistence, you can assist students in learning to recognize their commonalities so that your students can learn to accept and support each other. Use the tips in the list below to guide you as you work to help students remove the barriers to peer acceptance.

• Make sure that each student’s strengths are well-known to the rest of the class.
• If a student has an unpleasant history of failure or misbehavior, make it clear that it is time for a fresh start.
• Show your students the correct ways to interact with each other. They need plenty of models and monitoring until they have learned to cooperate productively.
• Let each student shine. Every student should believe that he or she is really your favorite.
• Be sensitive to the differences that divide your students and to the potential for conflicts that those differences can cause.
• Make it a point to recognize students who work well with others. Whenever possible, praise the entire class for its cooperative attitude.
• Provide opportunities for students to get to know each other. These do not have to take up a great deal of time, but can be done in brief activities scattered throughout the year.
• Plan enough work for your students to do so that they are focused on school and don’t have time to discover their classmates’ negative character traits.
• Promote tolerance and acceptance with a display of posters and encouraging mottoes.
• Encourage students to share experiences and personal information about their families, cultures, dreams, and goals while working together.
• Make it very easy for students to understand class routines and procedures and to follow directions well.
• Students who know what to do are less likely to make embarrassing mistakes for which they can be teased or excluded later.
• Be careful that you model appropriate behavior so that you encourage your students to do the same.
• Don’t give in to the temptation of eye rolling or losing your patience when a student blunders in front of classmates. Your actions could set that student up for social exclusion later.

 

 

How to Move Beyond “Please, Please Don’t Torture the Sub”

Missing school is harder for teachers than many other professionals because not only do we have to leave appropriate plans and information so that substitute teachers can manage our classes while we are out, but also because even the best of students tend to have the classic, “Oh boy! We have a sub!” reaction. Unless you have a top notch sub and have done everything possible to ensure that your students will still learn while you are out, you will return to deal with the unpleasant aftermath of a disaster.


Being able to miss school without worries about your students and all the things that are going wrong in your absence is possible with a bit of planning and preparation. First of all, very early in the school year, create a binder filled with helpful information that any substitute teacher can use. When you change seating charts, add or drop students, or when other significant changes occur, update your binder. Here are some items that you may want to include in your sub binder.

• Class rosters with helpful pronunciation clues
• A photo seating chart. Photograph your students sitting in their assigned seats. Print these and write the name of your students under their photos. Your sub will know where students are supposed to sit and will be able to match names to faces right away.
• Medical information for students with chronic illnesses such as asthma or diabetes
• Your daily class and duty schedule
• Classroom procedures for daily routines such as lunch, restroom requests, fire drills and other emergencies
• A list of several activities that students can do if they finish early. You can do this early in the year so that it is handy just in case you are rushed for time.
• A map of the school with exits and fire extinguishers marked
• Copies of all necessary forms such as lunch or attendance counts
• Names and room numbers of helpful teachers
• A phone number where you can be reached

Next, make sure to leave workable plans that even the most harried sub can follow.

• Your lesson plans for any day that you are going to miss should be specifically written for the sub.
• Provide plenty of directions and a suggested time length for each assignment.
• Do plan independent written work that will be collected and graded.
• Make sure to photocopy, label, and organize all handouts.
• Leave work that will occupy students, but that is not merely busy work.  
• Avoid computer use, videos, media center visits, and activities involving scissors or other sharp tools.

Finally, it’s important to involve students in a positive way in maintaining the order and routines of the class when you need to be absent. You may consider having students write out what they can do to help the sub so that things can run smoothly. Having students be aware of their specific responsibilities is a positive way to enlist their cooperation. Have them take a pledge of instructional cooperation. Assign tasks such as turning in attendance or passing out papers. Make cooperation fun. Make it an intriguing class challenge. Best of all, make it their responsibility. When students own a situation, they will more often than not rise to the occasion and exceed even our highest expectations.

 

If your students have misbehaved while you were out, however, don’t rush to punish. First, have students write out their version of the events of the class. Read these, and think about what you are going to do before you punish an entire class or even individual students based on what a substitute teacher has told you. If you then have to deal with misbehavior after you have gathered the facts from the sub and from your students, strive to be fair.

Things I Wish I Had Known My First Year as a Teacher

Although I have published this list in various forms previously and in several places, I like to examine it at the start of a new school year as I make my resolutions for the upcoming term. Being an effective teacher does not happen by chance. Instead it takes planning, commitment, and a great deal of reflection. As you being your new school year, maybe this list can help you have the kind of terrific year that you would like for your students and for yourself. 

1. Don’t be afraid to experiment and have fun learning with your students. It’s okay to fail sometimes.
2. Realize that you will have to prove yourself all year long. To students, colleagues, parents, yourself…
3. Being regarded as trustworthy is an invaluable goal.
4. There will be plenty of opportunities to learn from mistakes.
5. If you don’t spend time reflecting on your teaching each day, it will be very hard for you to improve.
6. There will never be enough time to get all of the things you want to accomplish with your students done.
7. It’s important to think about student activities in terms of small blocks of time so they stay on task.
8. Leave your problems at school at the end of the day. Balance is key.
9. It’s important to show students how to help themselves. Learned helplessness does not have to be permanent.
10. Take good care of school resources and teach students to do the same.
11. Use your personal strong points and teach your students to do likewise.
12. Be selective. Don’t fight battles you can’t win. Ignore the small stuff.
13. Focus on what you can change and get then get busy doing it.
14. Use a multifaceted approach when presenting material.
15. Don’t just react to a problem. Solve it.
16. It takes time to get to know your students and even longer to gain their fragile trust.
17. Make it a point to build strong relationships with your colleagues. You need each other.
18. Parents do indeed expect you to live up to their ideal of what a teacher should be.
19. If you act like a professional, you will make it easier for others to defend you when you make a mistake.
20. Paperwork must be dealt with accurately, quickly, and efficiently.
21. Patience. Patience. Patience.
22. You are a role model, ready or not.
23. When you teach students to believe in themselves, you create lifelong learners.
24. Don’t allow any student to be invisible. Draw them in. Build confidence and engagement.
25. Establish routines for yourself and for your students. Everyone will benefit.
26. Students need structure. They also need fun and creativity.
27. Get them up and moving. Active students tend to misbehave less than those who are bored.
28. Be prepared for class. This means having a solid Plan B.
29. Spend more time telling your students what they do right than what they do wrong.
30. When you make a mistake, admit it and move on. Teach your students this, too.
31. Be unfailingly positive. After all, if you don’t believe in your students, who does?
32. Students are far more concerned with the idea of “fairness” than you can imagine.
33. Set goals for yourself and work with your students to set goals for them.
34. Stay away from those negative colleagues. They will poison your day, your week, your career.
35. Ask for help. We all need help at times. Speak up.
36. Actively work to improve your skills and knowledge about teaching.
37. Create your own PLN. Use social media to reach out.
38. Volunteer for extra jobs at school with caution.
39. Work hard to let your students know how special they are to you.
40. The worst students deserve the best in you.
41. No one comes to school determined to fail—despite evidence to the contrary.
42. You will make a difference in the lives of your students…it takes time, however.
43. Ask, “How can I help you with that?” and watch the magic happen.
44. Say, “I know you’re better than that” when a student misbehaves.
45. You will have some hard days as a teacher. Plan ahead how you will manage stress.
46. You can’t ever predict how a lesson will go or what your students will do.
47. Laughing with students is a great way to build a community in a hurry.
48. Connections with students are vital if you want to have happy days at school.
49. A well planned lesson is the best discipline plan you can have.
50. Never, ever forget that you may be the only person who shows a student that you care.

 

The Problems with Being a Popular Teacher

It’s that bittersweet time of year for teachers everywhere. No matter when you head off to school, you will have to leave your summer days behind. Even if you work a full-time job in the summer months, your days are probably more carefree than they will be when you have a room full of students with diverse needs to shape into a cohesive community of learners.

It’s not easy to make the connections that will make every student become a valued member of the class. Creating those bonds takes time, energy, effort, and serious planning. The result is certainly worth it, however. Positive relationships between student and teacher are often regarded as the most powerful motivational force in any classroom.  

Unfortunately, it is very easy to misjudge what it takes to create those positive relationships. Many of us do. It is especially easy to do when you are just beginning your teaching career and are uncertain about the right course of action to take when you are trying to establish the type of relationships that will help your students be successful.

One of the easiest ways to go wrong when trying to connect with students is to become popular for all of the wrong reasons. In this excerpt from The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide, some of the warning signs that any teacher will want to avoid are spelled out for those of us who are already planning how to create the positive classroom environment that we want for our students.

“It is natural to want to be liked. It is a wonderful experience to be in a mall or a restaurant and hear a young voice joyfully calling your name or to look out over a classroom full of students who are hanging on to your every word. The problem with being a well-liked teacher is that it is sometimes such an exhilarating feeling that you are reluctant to give it up, even when you should.

It is much more pleasant to hear your students cheer when you tell them there will be no homework than to hear their groans when you give a challenging assignment. Choices like this constitute a teacher’s day. As a teacher, you should base your decisions not on what your students want at the moment but on what they need for the future. Students can be shortsighted; you should not be.

There are many legitimate reasons for your students to like you. Are your classes interesting? Do you treat everyone with respect? Are you inspiring? Unfortunately, there are many other reasons for your students to like you that are seductive traps; you must avoid these by thinking of your students’ needs. If you ever overhear your students make any of the following statements about you, you are becoming popular for the wrong reasons:

She’s an easy grader.

He’s just like us.

We’re friends on Facebook.

He never calls home, no matter what I do.

She never makes us do real work in that class.

We never have to take notes.

She doesn’t really care if we swear.

He likes to joke around with us.”

Add to Your Classroom Library with Free and Appealing Nonfiction

During a field trip several years ago, I watched my students pile off the bus at a rest area. Instead of heading to the snack machines as I expected, however, they stood around a brochure display stand, trading travel pamphlets and discussing tourist attractions with enthusiasm.


Intrigued, I began to gather brochures for my classroom. In no time, I had amassed a collection that students were reading with enthusiasm in their spare time. They traded stories about trips they had taken in the past and decided where they would like to go in the future. They discussed shopping at outlet malls in other states, dreamed about visiting the beach, and learned all sorts of offbeat tourist trivia. The pamphlets were doing exactly what they were designed for — stimulating curiosity and sparking imagination.


Over time, I have developed an even greater appreciation for these throwaway tourist leaflets. In addition to being easy to find, they are free. It is possible to pick up a class set with very little effort. They are not only brief, but also written to appeal to a wide range of readers with a wide range of reading experience and ability.


Best of all, I’ve discovered that travel brochures lend themselves to many different learning activities. And although my collection of travel brochures is still one of the ways I make my classroom as rich in a variety of printed materials as possible, I also now use them to help my students develop critical reading skills.


I begin this process by obtaining class sets of brochures about a specific place or attraction. I prefer to use ones that are about a place that appeals to most students because they will read carefully if they are learning about a place they would like to visit. Pamphlets about Disney World and cities such as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York are attention-grabbers. Weird attractions such as alligator farms and anything to do with dinosaurs are also popular. So are theme parks, harbor cruises, petting zoos, and national parks.


Here are some of the questions I ask students to consider and be ready to discuss with the rest of the class after everyone has had time to read their pamphlets.

What does this brochure reveal about our social values?

What makes the brochure attractive?

Which methods of persuasion does the author use to entice people to visit?

What are some possible negatives about the place that are not mentioned?

At what point do you think the truth about the site could be exaggerated?

What sorts of careers do the people who work there have?

How did your ideas change from reading this brochure?

What advice do you have for people who want to travel to this place?

What information in the brochure did you find irrelevant?

How did the brochure appeal to your emotions?

Did reading the brochure change your thinking about the site?

At the end of our work with brochures, my students enjoy activities that appeal to their creativity. Here is a list of some of the more creative activities I’ve come up with that lend themselves particularly well to travel brochures.

Write a brief character sketch of the person who wrote this brochure.

Create a graphic organizer displaying the reasons why you want to visit the site.

Imagine that you have already visited the place and describe it in a letter to relative.

Use your imagination to add a new feature that would appeal to future visitors.

Create a budget for a trip to the site.

Plan what you would like to do there. How long would you stay? What would you do each day?

Make a storyboard to illustrate yourself on a visit to this place.

Invent a new feature that would appeal to visitors to your site.

Imagine that you overhear two visitors talking. Write their dialogue.

Collaborate with classmates to create a video clip of a typical day at the site.

Create a timeline of things visitors should do on a one-day visit, two-day visit, etc.

Create a comic strip depicting a visitor’s adventures at the site.

Write a letter asking to be considered for summer employment.

Like many other teachers, I have been dismayed to learn how little many of my students know of the world around them. Travel brochures bring the world to the classroom. If part of what good teachers do is enlarge their students’ lives, the practical reading material found in those throwaway leaflets can unlock at least a small part of the world around them.

Change Your Classroom with Random Acts of Kindness

“Don’t write in the margins.”

“Don’t sharpen your pencil while I am talking.”

“Don’t distract your neighbors.”

 

It is all too easy for an educator’s day to become filled with well-intentioned negatives. Instead of a constant barrage of negative directives, though, consider the positive environment you could create if you could 1. Help students learn to be considerate of others, 2. Build community in your classroom, and 3. Encourage self-motivation.

 

How?

 

It’s easy: encourage your students to perform frequent random acts of kindness.

Because classes vary so widely not just in age, maturity, ability levels, and general class chemistry, you will have to spend a little time determining how you want to unleash this powerful classroom tool.

 

Start by thinking about your students’ strengths and about the areas that you would like to see improved. Next, think about your students and the things that you know they enjoy. Just one or two simple actions would make a positive difference and is a great way to begin. Perhaps you could ask students to bring in extra pencils to share or write thank you notes to the cafeteria workers.

 

Small things can make a big difference in helping students think about how they can make their world a better place just by being kind. Here are a few more ideas for random acts of kindness written for students to follow that you can adapt for your own classroom.

 

• Compliment two of your classmates this week on something that they have done well.

• Bring in a book to donate to the school or classroom library.

• Help pass out papers that need to be returned.

• Make a study guide for a quiz or test and share it with classmates.

• Clean up your area of the room at the end of class and encourage others to do the same.

• Put a sticky note with an encouraging message on someone’s desk on in a book.

• Make sure that everyone is included in a conversation.

• If there is a new student in your class, be a buddy.

• Tell the bus drivers how much you appreciate them.

• Be on time to class and follow the rules so that you help everyone learn.
• Be willing to share materials when other students need them.

• If a classmate is absent, volunteer to get the handouts for the day and make sure that person knows how to make up work.

• Check with your teacher first, but offer to bring in healthy treats for the entire class to share.

• Pick up litter in the hall or around the school whenever you see it.

• Tutor a younger student.

• Play a charity game at www.gamesforchange.org to help those less fortunate.

• Donate rice to the World Food Programme by playing Free Rice at www.freerice.com.

• Make inspirational bookmarks and share them with classmates.

• Bring in classroom supplies such as paper towels, tissues, or hand sanitizer.

•  Write the custodians a thank you note and be sure to leave the classroom clean.

For more ideas about how to encourage your students, check out. www.randomactsofkindness.org.

IF YOU ONLY REMEMBER TEN THINGS ABOUT SCHOOL IN JUNE...

Let them be these:

1. Spend your energy on large problems first. Choose to deal with the problems that will provide the greatest benefit right now.
2. Use your strengths.  You are stronger than you realize.
3. Problems can move you forward when you choose to work to solve them. That's a good thing.
4. Make room for more emotional energy. Ask for help when you have a problem. Ask lots of people for help. Be willing to give help as well.
5. Learn to see problems as challenges that you can overcome.
6. Be proactive! Plan what you are going to do if...
7. Don’t forget that small attitude changes often create bigger patterns of success. What small attitude change can you make today?
8. If you can’t say it in front of the school board without looking silly, don’t.
9. Let professionalism be your guide.
10. Keep things in perspective. Ask yourself if the problems you have today will be important next year.

 

How to Be Everyone's Favorite Teacher

It’s not hard to be everyone’s favorite teacher. Really, it isn’t. If you think about your favorite teachers, there are some common denominators that they shared.

• You felt important.

• You felt as if your opinions mattered.

• You looked forward to class because while there was lots that was predictable, there was also lots that was interesting. Time flew by most days.

• You knew that you could ask for help without embarrassment.

• They made you feel intelligent and worthwhile.

 

So, whether school is out for you now or still in session, it is not too late to be everyone’s favorite teacher. Here are some easy tips that will make your students glad to be in your class.

 

• Don’t forget that the class is about your students and not about you. Be careful not to overpower your students with your knowledge or authority. Instead, be gentle and inclusive in your approach.

• Smile. Be super polite. Overwhelm your students with niceness.  

• Tell your students what you like about them. Make it a point to compliment them whenever you can. Compliment individuals, small groups, teams, pairs…the entire class.

• Be prepared for class. When you are prepared, you will not have to worry about what you do or don’t know. Instead, you can just focus on your students.

• Show that you have a sense of humor. Share a laugh with your students whenever you can. Playing together and laughing together will make school fun for everyone.

• When you speak with students, lean towards them slightly. Let your body language indicate that you are interested and accessible.

• Greet your students courteously as they come into the classroom. At the end of class, stand at the door and speak to them as they leave.

• Take the time to reveal a little bit about yourself. For example, a brief story about a silly mistake you made or how you learned a lesson the hard way will make you much more accessible and appealing to your students than if you are always right.

• Ask questions and wait expectantly for answers. Let your body language signal that you are interested in the responses that you may receive.

• Move around the classroom. Every part of the room should be part of your circuit.

• Use inclusive pronouns such as we, our, or us instead of ones that exclude students from ownership in their class.

• Get your students up and moving. Sitting in a desk day after day will not just bore them, but it will also make the distance between teacher and students greater.

• Find out your students' goals and dreams and help them work toward achieve them.

• Provide opportunities for students to share their opinions and beliefs with you and with each other in a non-threatening way.

• Be empathetic and sympathetic. Acknowledge it when a student is having a bad day.

• Take advantage of as many opportunities as you can to interact with your students on a one-to-one or personal level. Ask about their hobbies, problems, families…whatever it takes to connect.

• Be fair. Few things destroy a relationship between teacher and student faster than a student’s suspicion that he or she is being treated unfairly.

• Be tactfully honest. Students know when they are being lied to and those lies will destroy the relationship you may want to build.

• Show respect for all of your students as well as for their families, neighborhoods, and cultures.

• Use your students’ names frequently and with a gentle tone of voice.

Do Something Spectacular!

Lots of advice for any teacher this time of year tends to focus on making it to the end of the year. You know how it is: Lots of gritting our teeth and grimly hanging on until the very end. What a miserable way to spend even one minute of our lives, much less convey that attitude to our students. If we are as miserable as the gloomy advice would make it seem, just think how miserable our students must feel.

Instead of glumly counting the days until we can be freed from the prison that school can be this time of year, how doing something---well, spectacular? And by spectacular, think fireworks, cheers, applause, celebrations, a huge smile on every student’s face.

Changing a negative mindset this time year can change everything. It’s a sure win-win. Best of all, it is pretty easy to be spectacular. Here’s how.

1. Hold a classroom awards ceremony. Celebrate the little things that have made the year special: most improved, neatest papers, most cooperative…the list is endless.

2. Surprise students with a bulletin board dedicated to their accomplishments. Take sneaky photos of them working and print them out. Then, use bright paper to spell out their successes. Maybe a Top Ten list of the best moments of the year.

3. Have students write each other thank you notes for the kind things they did for each other during the year.

4. Hold a Teach-a Thon to prepare for final exams or end of the year standardized tests. You can manage it, but students can be the actual teachers.

5. Bury a class time capsule to be opened when they graduate. Fill it with notes to their future selves, headline clippings, and other memorabilia.

6. Hold a charity event where students work together to help others less fortunate. Online games such as Free Rice are wonderful for this. Locally, there are many organizations that could use student volunteers or donations. The key to making this type of project spectacular is that students will be having fun with classmates.

7. Turn review sessions into sporting tournaments. Hold an Olympics or a World Series or a Stanley Cup Playoff. Have students make up rules and procedures and have a blast!

8. Break out giant sheets of bulletin board paper and have students write advice to next year’s students. They can outline each other’s hands or feet and write their names on it as well. You benefit from the relaxed time now as well has with a wonderful bulletin board next fall.

9. Have students make two or three paper airplanes each. Then, have them write facts related to the material understudy on the wings. Take everyone outside and fly the planes. Students have to pick up someone else’s plane, read the information, and fly it again. Chaos? Yes. Fun. Yes. Learning. Yes. Spectacular? You bet.

10. Somehow, find the time to write each child a two or three sentence note about his or her strengths and accomplishments. Wish them well during the next year. Tell them you will miss them. These will sure to be treasured for a long time.

Redirecting Off-Task Students: Ten Tried and True Suggestions

Redirecting students skillfully is not an easy task. There is often a delicate balance between trying to gently redirect a student whose attention has wandered and disturbing the entire class. Many of us wonder just when to redirect—at the start of a problem when it is confined to just one person or when a group of students seem to be off task? As a rule of thumb, most experienced educators will agree that it is best to act fairly early and with the least intrusive methods.

 When you notice students off task, try these tried and true suggestions for gently redirecting without raising your voice or embarrassing students.

1. Matter-of-factly remind all students of the behavior you would like to see from them. The key idea here is that you have already made the expectations clear for every student. All you need to do most of the time is just to calmly remind students of what the expectations are.
2. Praise students who are on task. Be explicit and direct so that any student who is off task knows what is expected and, even more importantly, how to accomplish the expected behavior.
3. Put reminders on students’ desks. You could use one color of sticky note with a smiley face on it for students who are behaving well and another color with a frownie face for those students who are not on task. Another reminder that some teachers have found useful is to walk around placing stickers on the papers of students who are on task. If you announced that you only had five stickers and were going to give them to the first five on-task students that you see, then you can expect that your students will generally rush to earn them.
4. Count 1, 2, 3 and then wait for everyone to pay attention to your directions.  Calm wait time is crucial to getting every student to pay attention to your directions and then to attend to them. Instead of a flurry of directions, count slowly and wait expectantly.
5. Often students need redirection when their attention spans have reached their outer limits. Set a timer and give everyone a two minute wiggle break. When the timer buzzes, students can go back to work refreshed.
6. Ask students if they would like help from a classmate or if they would like to help a classmate. This will often give students confidence as well as a shift in the lesson delivery that just might be effective at keeping them focused.
7. Use your “teacher look” to remind students to keep working. Often just an inquisitive glance is all that it takes to remind a student to focus on learning instead of misbehavior.
8. Ask students to restate the directions. If you notice a student off task, first move near that student. Then quietly ask for a restatement of the directions. If you then see that there is a larger issue, you could remind the whole class of the directions. If the problem is confined to one student, then it is easy just to clarify the directions and move on.  
9. Ask students who are struggling with an assignment if they could use a little help. Often all it takes is a brief moment or two and students are able to go right back to work.
10. Proximity is effective. Move to stand near the students who are off task. While you are near, smilingly glance at misbehaving students. This will almost always serve to keep them settle to work and stay engaged in the lesson.

 

 

 

 

If Kids Planned the Lesson

If you were to plug “Great Lesson Plans,” into just about any search engine, all sorts of useful information for teachers immediately pops up. Instead of going online, though, how about thinking about a great lesson from a student’s viewpoint? One good way to find out what students really want is to simply ask them how they would like to learn the day’s material. Or, administer a quick survey (www.surveymonkey.com). Solicit advice via exit tickets or suggestions dropped into a suggestion box. All of these are good ways to find out what your students would like to do in class. 

               At this point in the school year, though, we probably know our students well enough to be able to predict what they would do if they were given the plan book for a day. Here are some of the essentials that many students would probably like to see included in a great lesson plan.

1. An opening exercise that allows them to chatter away while making the transition to the day’s lesson. The exercise should also be interesting while reminding them of what they already know. Something like a Round Robin exercise, for example.
2. Silly videos related to the topic are always a plus. Even better are student-made videos.
3. Games of just about any sort—low or high tech. Board games are always good no matter what. Student made board games are the best.  
4. Any game that requires players to roll dice is immediately a huge (and noisy) success.
5. The perfect student lesson plan will certainly include sharing, collaboration, or teamwork in every possible permutation.
6. Students like questions that they can answer. This sets the stage for activities where they quiz each other. They would also choose to hold competitions where they can answer as a team and not be put on the spot individually.
7. Beating the clock is always fun. So is setting a personal best goal and working towards it. Being able to work for a good short-term purpose is always a popular activity.
8. One unusual student preference is being able to shift partners during an activity or switching teams in the course of a lesson. Movement instead of remaining seated all class keeps everyone alert.
9. Music. Music. Music. Background music. Headphones. Music is always good.
10. A countdown to something is always fun. Not a frantic, frenzied race, but a countdown that focuses an activity—like an online countdown clock to an activity.
11. Students like learning something interesting or peculiar so that they have a good answer to, “What did you learn in school today?” They also like learning interesting and peculiar information just because it’s fun to think about. Weird facts are always fun to know.
12. Students enjoy an opportunity to write on something besides notebook paper. The more outrageous the surface the better.
13. If students were to design a lesson, there would be lots of gaudy coloring. Students would be writing on the board more, too.
14. If there is a lesson with a reading component, students would design it in such a way that classmates read it together—and not in that embarrassing popcorn style either. With friends or friendly teammates to share the reading load.
15. There would also be a component where students do something to help someone else. Whether it be playing an altruistic game such as Free Rice (www.freerice.com), or just helping out classmates, students like to feel that their contributions to the world matter.
16. Having several choices of meaningful and interesting activities to do in a reasonable amount of time would also be part of a kid-designed lesson plan. Having a free choice among the choices is even more interesting for some students.
17. Manipulatives, three-D graphic organizers, paper airplanes, and squishy toys are almost mandatory in student-designed lessons. Rubber bands and paper clips would also find a way to be included as well.
18. Finally, in the ideal lesson designed by students, the homework would be something that fits in with their out-of-school lives and interests and can be done simply—without fuss—and in just the right amount of time.