Been There, Done That...A Bad Teacher Habit

One of the hardest bad teacher habits to break is learning not to repeat yourself when you give whole group directions. Part of the reason that it is so hard to break this habit is that we want to help students. It's simply impossible to refuse a student's request for help. Another reason is that no one has taught students to listen carefully and so repeating the directions several times may help students stay on track.

It’s one thing to clarify information or explain directions; it’s another to have to repeat yourself for students who are not in the habit of listening attentively. Don’t assume that your students are good listeners. Many have never been taught how to listen attentively. It's up to you to help students learn when and how to focus their attention when their teacher is talking to them.

To begin to break this time-consuming and frustrating habit, involve your students in the project. Tell then that you are going to help them with their listening skills and explain how that you want them to listen attentively. No talking. Eyes on you. No rustling papers. Create the procedure that you want for your students to use as they listen to you and take the time to carefully teach it to your students.

Set the stage by moving to an area of the room where all students can see and hear you. Call for attention and wait patiently. Remind students that they will be working on their listening skills and that they are to listen carefully since you do not want to waste class time by having to repeat yourself.

Practice with your students if necessary. Make it a shared endeavor and a pleasant way to work out a classroom problem together. With a bit of effort, this can become a part of the culture of your classroom, and you will find yourself not having to repeat directions or other information endlessly.

Is Anybody Listening?

One of the easiest mistakes for any teacher--and especially a first-year teacher--to make is to talk when students are not listening. There are lots of reasons for this, but none of them are good ones. If you are talking and your students are not listening, then nothing productive is happening and you are sending a strong message that what you have to say is not important.

If you only make one small change this month, then make that small change be that you will help your students listen to you when you speak to them. If you want a class to listen to you, catch their attention and then slowly lower the volume of your voice. If you really want to make students pay attention, a dramatic stage whisper works wonders.

Don't Give Up on Challenging Students

At this time of year, it's easy to feel discouraged about the potential success of students who have been challenging since the term began. By this point, you have probably had numerous conferences with administrators, counselors, case managers, parents or guardians, your lunch table companions, and the students themselves. When nothing appears to change, it's only natural to feel discouraged. Weary. Worn out. Frustrated.

Don't give up. All of your students--and especially the challenging ones--deserve the best from you. They need to feel that they can succeed. More important, however, they need to feel that you still believe in them. 

Because challenging students often have years of failure behind them, they expect to be singled out—to be different.  When teachers appear to give up, then the negative self-image that challenging students carry with them is reinforced once again. 

Teacher commitment to the belief that all students are expected to succeed is the bedrock of successfully dealing with challenging students. After all, if their teachers don’t believe in their ability to succeed, who will?

Instead of giving in to your frustration and viewing your students with expectations of looming misbehavior, if you can calmly treat difficult students with the same expectations as other students, they will often rise to the occasion. The self-fulfilling prophecy of their teacher’s acceptance and expectations will make it possible for them to achieve academic and behavioral success.

Brighten Up Your Winter Classroom with Free Posters

Need a little bit of inspiration for your students? It's just a click or two away.

Although the very best décor in any classroom is student created work, you can also make your classroom a friendlier place for your students to work without having to spend any of your own paycheck.

At Print A Poster (https://print-a-poster.com), you can find lots of free posters to brighten your walls and inspire your students. There are lots of categories to choose from with a wide variety of choices in each category.

Busy Teacher (http://busyteacher.org/teaching_ideas_and_techniques/classroom-posters) offers over sixty free posters for teachers.

Fifty Things I Wish I Had Known When I Was a New Teacher

Some things never change. Even though I have posted this list before and shared about a zillion times when people email me requesting a copy, the advice in it still makes sense.

Being a first-year teacher is not easy. If you are a mentor or someone else who works with the new teachers in your school or your district, you may want to print this list and share. It never hurts to know that you are not alone with your worries when you are just starting out in a new career.

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 the same.
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.

How to Survive the Last Few Weeks of School

Here is a post that I did a very long time ago for a wonderful, but vanished site called theapple.com. Monster.com runs it now...still full of great advice on all sorts of topics for educators everywhere. Here is what I suggest to help all of us enjoy the last few weeks or days of school this year!

As the end of the school year approaches, students of all ages and ability levels become increasingly restless and distracted. Even the most studious scholars seem to lose interest in material that fascinated them just a few weeks ago. The result can be enormous frustration for the teachers of these fidgety and disengaged students.

Veteran teachers know about this unfortunate phenomenon and take measures to combat its negative effects. If you have noticed a recent change in your students and find yourself checking a calendar to count off just how many school days you have left until summer vacation, the list below just may help you resolve to end the school year with the best and most professional attitude possible.

The first part of this list suggests some attitudes that may remind you of coping skills you may have forgotten. The second part contains some useful strategies that you may have forgotten, but that can energize your teaching and make school more enjoyable and productive for your students and yourself.

60 Helpful Attitudes

1. Be moderate in your approach. You do not have to be the world’s best teacher all the time. You just have to be a very good one.

2. Spend your energy on large problems first and allot less of your energy for the small ones. Choose to deal with the problems that will give you the greatest benefit right away.

3. Problems can move you forward when you choose to work to solve them. Use your creative strengths to make your classroom well-disciplined and productive.

4. Make room for more emotional energy. Ask for help when you have a problem.

5. Learn to see problems as challenges that you can overcome.

6. Don’t underestimate your students. They are capable of much more than you think they are.

7. Avoid negative people. Better yet, try not to be one of those negative people you are supposed to avoid.

8. Being optimistic doesn’t mean that you don’t have problems. A positive attitude means that you are working on a solution.

9. Make sure you have something fun to look forward to. Reward yourself when you achieve a goal.

10. You don’t teach a class. You teach complex, living, breathing people.

11. Cherish your students. Even the worst-behaved ones have redeeming qualities.

12. Carpe Diem! When a teachable moment comes along, TEACH!

13. Don’t forget that small attitude changes often create bigger patterns of success. What small attitude change can you make today?

14. When a task seems impossible, remind yourself of the teachers who made a difference in your life. You can do the same for your students.

15. The fun you have goofing around during your planning period is equal to the misery you’ll experience trying to catch up later.

16. Be proactive! Plan what you are going to do if…

17. Discard something you’re doing that is not productive. Figure out how to do just one thing more efficiently.

18. Practice deep breathing. You’ll be glad you know how to calm yourself when a student is defiant, disrespectful, or just cranky.

19. Make it your goal that every student will leave your class with a positive attitude every day.

20. Use your strengths. Focus on your positive attributes to maximize the potential for success in your classroom.

21. Keep things in perspective. Ask yourself if the problems you have today will be important next year.

Try Some Strategies You May Have Forgotten

22. Talk less and listen more to your students.

23. Change the pace. Try three new activities this week.

24. Break large tasks into small, manageable ones.

25. Plan to ignore the small stuff.

26. Get to work a little early and stay a little late.

27. Stop trying to rely on your memory! You have too much to do to recall everything. Write it down in an organized fashion.

28. Be sure to plan for the last few minutes of class.

29. Empower your students by designing assignments that allow for limited student options. Give them innocuous choices such as the even or odd problems, essay topics, group tasks, or the best day to take a test.

30. You probably need to model more for your students. Most teachers do. And don’t forget to show them what you don’t want them to do, also.

31. Ask students to justify their answers on a test to encourage deeper thinking.

32. Let your students know what activities lie ahead of them so that they have something to look forward to. Try a little countdown to an exciting event to focus them on the positive.

33. Encourage independence! Tell your students that they must “See three before me” to find answers to questions.

34. At the end of a lesson, encourage reflection (and positive attitudes) by asking students to tell you what went well during class.

35. Build in wiggle breaks. Even seniors need a break now and then.

36. When students are engaged in learning new material, periodically ask them to stop and write about these three topics: what they think about the subject so far, what they understand about the subject, and any questions they still may have.

37. Don’t work against the nature of your students. Make the material compelling by incorporating their interests and goals. When you were a teenager, you thought the world revolved around you, too.

38. Stimulate student curiosity by making your lessons as suspenseful and novel as possible. Ask students to solve puzzles or create solutions to problems.

39. Put some color in your classroom world. Break out the crayons or highlighters to help students pay attention to what’s important in their notes.

40. Lower your voice. Your students will be more likely to lower theirs than if you shout.

41. Avoid problems when students finish work early by having other activities for them to complete. Students with nothing to do will amuse themselves by annoying nearby adults.

42. Increase the frequency of the positive recognition you give students.

43. Display student work. Rewarding students in this way is worth the time it takes to arrange it.

44. Put a list of terms or facts on the board and ask your students to determine what they have in common. If you include unlikely names or items, the class discussion could be lively.

45. At the end of a unit of study, give students a sheet with the alphabet in a column on the left. To review, they need to tell you one important fact from the lesson is related to a letter of the alphabet.

46. Show a movie. Be sure to teach good movie viewing behavior before you do. Better yet, have your students make a movie or slide show.

47. Avoid acting in anger no matter how frustrated you feel. Manage the discipline problems in your class with a problem-solving approach instead.

48. Set a concrete goal with your students: 100% on every quiz, everyone on time for a week, all homework complete… Use a bar graph to illustrate their progress.

49. Graphic organizers are wonderful ways to engage students. Busy students are happy students and happy students make happy teachers.

50. Use a variety of media to capture your audience—movies, art, wikis, songs, podcasts, television, interactive game sites, magazines, advertisements, cartoons, and slogans are just a few of the ways that you can capture attention.

51. When they ask, “Why do we have to do this?” be sure to have an excellent answer ready.

52. Use your student’s competitive instincts to your advantage. Create teams to compete against other teams. Best of all, challenge your students to compete against themselves by working to improve their own best performance.

53. Center instruction around essential questions.

54. Ask students to demonstrate the best way to do something.

55. Make abstract ideas concrete. Ask students to produce a final product as the result of their work. This makes their effort visible.

56. Assign a set of questions to a group of students. Each student selects one question and becomes the expert about it. They can share with the entire class or with teams.

57. Your part of the workload should not always be greater than your students’ part. Hold them accountable for setting goals, monitoring their own progress, and self-evaluation.

58. Ask your students to invent a game for a review activity.

59. Take photographs of your students. Be thrifty and print them on paper. Your students just want to see themselves on the classroom wall.

60. Schedule in some fun every day—for you and for your students. Smile together and misbehavior will decrease.

101 Ways to Avoid Falling into a Lesson Plan Rut

It is really easy to fall into a lesson planning rut this time of year. After all, you know your students and what generally works to help them learn. The downside of that, however, is that it is all too easy to become complacent and boring. Here is a brief list of some quick ideas that can help you as you plan the most dynamic lessons possible. If you need a fresh look at what you are asking students to do, you should be able to find something in this little list to adapt for your own students. 

                  1.        Write a paragraph.

                  2.        Electronic flashcards

                  3.        Write a paragraph to defend you position on a topic we studied today.

                  4.        Look over your notes from yesterday’s lesson. Circle the key words.

                  5.        List what you already know about…

                  6.        Listen to a recording and take notes.

                  7.        Watch a brief video clip and take notes.

                  8.        List five things that you can recall we did in class yesterday.

                  9.        Create a rhyme to help you recall some of the key facts from class.

                10.      Summarize what you have learned in the last five minutes.

                11.      Pick a partner and play a quick game of “hangman” with your vocabulary words from this unit of study.

                12.      List the key ideas in today’s lesson.

                13.      Make quick flash cards to review the vocabulary words we have studied this week.

                14.      List the steps in…

                15.      Predict what caused…

                16.      Open your book and read the first three paragraphs from yesterday’s lesson. What is something new that you learned today that you hadn’t realized yesterday?

                17.      List ten words associated with the lesson we are currently studying.

                18.      What is your objective for this class today?

                19.      Write out a study skill that you have recently mastered.

                20.      Time a classmate while that person intently reviews yesterday’s lesson. Switch roles and repeat.

                21.      Scan your text and find… (Provide your students with specific facts or information to seek. This is an excellent review technique.)

                22.      Predict what will happen next.

                23.      Here’s your word of the day: ___________. Copy and define it and then use it correctly in a sentence.

                24.      What is the most important quality for a good student to have?

                25.      Provide another example of your own for…

                26.      Supply the missing words in this cloze exercise. (Find a reading assignment that is appropriate for your group and then cloze it.)

                27.      Unscramble these vocabulary words.

                28.      Match the items in column A with the items in column B.

                29.      Find the similarities in these two photographs.

                30.      What do you need to accomplish this week? Make a “To Do” list for this week’s activities.

                31.      Write a set of instructions for…

                32.      Looking back over this week, what did you really learn?

                33.      List ten things you learned in class today.

                34.      Read this short newspaper article and respond to it in your journal.

                35.      Practice the process of elimination on these multiple-choice questions.

                36.      Complete these analogies that relate to the lesson we are going to study today.

                37.      Tell why a change in ___ occurred.

                38.      Brainstorm every possible solution you can think of for…

                39.      Design a ___ to___.

                40.      Judge the value of…

                41.      Make a proposal to…

                42.      Describe what would happen if…

                43.      Look over the first three paragraphs of your homework reading last night. Write a brief paraphrase of them.

                44.      List the factors you would change if…

                45.      Describe the turning point in…

                46.      What are the underlying principles of the lesson we are studying?

                47.      What is the correct procedure for …?

                48.      Justify the rule about. …

                49.      Defend your position on. …

                50.      Defend your teacher’s position on the topic of .…

                51.      How can you modify ___________ so that it is more efficient?

                52.      Proofread this paragraph and make as many corrections as you can.

                53.      What solutions do you have for the problem of ___________?

                54.      Demonstrate the proper way to ___________.

                55.      How does what you learned in this lesson really apply to your life?

                56.      Why is it necessary for successful people to use time wisely?

                57.      Pick a partner and show that person how to use one fact from the lesson that you learned in this class yesterday.

                58.      There are seven errors in the reading passage you were given as you came into the classroom. Can you find them all?

                59.      Take two of the vocabulary words you have been studying this week and use them both in the same sentence.

                60.      Write one of the key words from this lesson on a scrap of paper. Pass it to a classmate. Time that person as he/she has only one minute to tell you five important things about it.

                61.      Why is it useful to learn the information in the unit we are now studying?

                62.      Pick a partner and brainstorm a list of all the ways you can use the information that you have learned in this class in the last three days.

                63.      What did you learn in another class this week that you can use in this class today?

                64.      What have you learned in this class lately that you can apply to another class?

                65.      Take the items on the board and group them according to a criteria that you devise based on the information in yesterday’s lesson.

                66.      What are some of the assumptions you had about today’s class?

                67.      Play an online game to benefit those less fortunate.

                68.      Create an online survey about…

                69.      Using what we learned in class today as proof, justify the reason for …

                70.      Create a word search puzzle that you will share with a friend tomorrow. Use the key words from today’s lesson.

                71.      Use all of your vocabulary words to create a quick short story.

                72.      Create a fair test question about the information you have learned today.

                73.      Take a list of words and create relationships among them.

                74.      Ask a classmate a question about the current lesson that will absolutely stump that person.

                75.      Make a 3-D graphic organizer.

                76.      Combine ideas with another student and…

                77.      Skim their homework and make predictions.

                78.      Brainstorm the causes of …

                79.      Create an inventory of…

                80.      List as many ways as you can that you are like the people we have studied in today’s lesson.

                81.      Find the cause of a crime in the news.

                82.      Write a review of your favorite television show.

                83.      Categorize the facts that you learned in class today.

                84.      Go through your notes and label the main ideas.

                85.      Read ahead to see if your predictions are correct.

                86.      Free associate as many ideas as you can about…

                87.      Use these terms in sentences…

                88.      Research a social problem that concerns you.

                89.      Make a set of electronic flashcards.

                90.      Invent a dialogue between ___ and ___.

                91.      Tell how a celebrity would use what you have learned today.

                92.      Record data related to…

                93.      Review your notes with your study buddy.

                94.      Evaluate your progress to date on this unit of study.

                95.      Annotate the selection for…

                96.      Skim the next chapter for facts and take notes.

                97.      Make a flow chart.

                98.      Prepare a monologue.

                99.      Fill in the blanks while listening.

              100.    Create a motto that expresses what you learned this week.

              101.    Set up your own art gallery.