I've (Sorta) Moved! Find My New Blog at Share My Lesson!

Hi Everyone,

After experimenting with various writing schedules, I've finally decided to focus my online writing at the wonderful Share My Lesson site sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers.

If you click on this link: https://sharemylesson.com/blog, you will be redirected to the site where you can find my blog posts as well as others by knowledgeable thought leaders in our profession. Just find the icon about my blog posts and click. Easy and simple. You do not have to belong to AFT to access all the resources offered to educators by Share My Lesson. Joining the group is free and an excellent way to access thousands of lesson plans, communicate with other educators online, and create your own professional development ideas through the wealth of webinars and other opportunities offered by Share My Lesson.

If you are just looking for my work (thanks!), here are some of the topics that you can read about there:

10/15/18: Be Proactive: Maintain Your Work-Life Balance

10/1/18: 11 Teacher Traits: Develop Your Front-of-the-Classroom Persona

9/14/18: What to Expect During the First Grading Period

9/3/18: Setting Your Own Professional Goals

8/20/18: Two Important Document Collections: Your Professional Portfolio and Your Teacher's Daily Binder

8/6/18: Create a Welcoming (and Functional) Classroom on a Budget

7/23 /18:  Developing a Professional Mindset

7/9/18: You've Just Been Hired? Congratulations! Here's What to Do Next

If you need some professional development credit, you can also consider participating in the webinars at Share My Lesson. Here is a link to my latest one: https://sharemylesson.com/teaching-resource/how-survive-and-thrive-new-teacher-302970

Ten Quick Review Ideas for the End of the School Year

By this time in the school year, many of us are out of fresh ideas when it comes to reviewing for exams or standardized tests. While you may already know some activities that will appeal to your students, you may want to break up the routine just a bit. Try some of these activities to increase retention and have fun at the same time. Ask students to:

1. Use individual whiteboards to write and then share responses to questions.
2. Have students make three dimensional graphic organizers with main ideas. See who can make the most complete graphic organizer within a set time limit.
3. Divide a paper into several blocks and write a review fact in one of the blocks. They then ball up the paper and toss it to a classmate who adds a different fact. This continues until all blocks are filled.
4.  Create flashcards and study them together. Quizlet.com is a great online site for this activity.
5. Write captions to photos, cartoons, and other illustrations about the topic.
6. Play board games based on the topic or create and play their own board games.
7. Tell classmate two facts. That classmate has to repeat them and add two more. Continue around the room
8. Hold a contest to see who can write the most about the topic within a time limit. Share with the class.
9. Create their own “legal cheat sheets” to use during a test.
10. Have students record a series of facts or other important information on their phones and listen to the facts over and over until they know them.

 

Thirteen Resolutions

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.”
~Abraham Lincoln

It’s a natural combination at this time of year—New Year’s resolutions and a reflective teaching practice. While Winter Break gives us a few days away from school, we have an opportunity to gain perspective. No matter how busy our holidays are, most of us can’t resist the impulse to think about school and our students and the work that we need to do as soon as our break ends.

            Now is a good time to use that impulse to create resolutions that can bring your dreams for a well-run classroom filled with successful, high-achieving students closer to reality. In honor of 2013, here are thirteen productive resolutions that you may want to consider adopting as part of your own teaching practice in the year ahead. Pick and choose what will work for you. If you would like to share your own resolutions, feel free to make comments. Learning from our colleagues is a great way to begin a new year.

Resolution 1: Respect your students. I know this seems simple, but too often we overlook what our students are capable of achieving because we are focused on what they don’t know or can’t do. Instead of seeing them as competent learners, we see them in terms of what they lack instead of what they are.

Resolution 2: Manage your stress. The last day of school is a long way away. Start employing as many simple strategies as you can to keep your work life and your personal life in balance. Using brief, purposeful actions to ward off the ill effects of chronic stress every day will make a huge difference in your fatigue levels.

Resolution 3: Plan as far ahead as you possibly can. For example, if you know that you are going to be giving a test in two weeks, you have time to create and photocopy it well in advance of the long line of frustrated teachers waiting their time at the copier on the day you want to give it. Knowing what your students are going to be doing for the rest of the year is a positive step that will make it easier for you to use class time wisely.

Resolution 4: Shake it up. No one says that lessons have to be dull to be effective. Use as many different strategies as you can to reach your students. Let them be creative and messy and loud if they are still learning at the same time. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Resolution 5: Explore different ways to increase your own productivity. If, for example, you have a tall stack of papers to grade, instead of plowing through it with a red pen, investigate other ways to use those papers to help your students learn. Ask your colleagues. Use your imagination. Again, don’t be afraid to experiment.

Resolution 6: Use the resources available to you. Create a PLN, open a Twitter account, explore Tumblr, check out the images on Pinterest, invite community members to speak to your students…the list is endless.

Resolution 7: See your students as partners in learning, not little vessels waiting to be filled with your expert knowledge. Involve them in planning, listen to their ideas, and ask important questions. Encourage your students to assume more responsibility for their own learning and then watch the positive results that can happen.

Resolution 8: Make every minute count. Use those tiny blocks of time that can go to waste in any classroom to keep students engaged and learning. Think door to door when it comes to instruction.

Resolution 9: Make a deliberate effort to try a new strategy or technique each week. Some will be fantastic, some will be okay, and some will stink, but you will expand your repertoire of teaching skills and that’s always a good thing.

Resolution 10: Use your students’ strengths. When you expand on what your students already do well, you will find it easier to remediate their weaknesses. Don’t just focus on the strengths of individual students; capitalize on the strengths of the entire class, too.

Resolution 11: Keep moving forward. At this time of year, it’s easy to get mired in the muck of undone tasks and a seemingly endless curriculum. Take a deep breath. Plan ahead. Look ahead. Bit by bit you can build your students’ skills and knowledge.

Resolution 12: Solve problems. If you wanted to, you could spend your entire planning period complaining about your students and trying to fix blame for what goes wrong in your class. Instead of wasting that time, look at the setbacks in your school day as problems that you need to solve. With this attitude, you can move forward.

Resolution 13: Be the role model your students want you to be. For some of your students, you are the only one who will take the time to show them how to be successful, how to read, how to write, how to speak well, how to behave. Whether you want to be or not, you are a role model and far, far more important than you can imagine. Rise to that challenge.

           

 

I Am the Best Teacher in the World...in the Summer

The school year has just ended for me. I always, always spend this time looking back over what I could have done better during the last year. Although I do spend time each school day reflecting about my teaching practices, I find myself better able to judge the way I designed and delivered lessons earlier in the term because some time has elapsed. That distance always allows me to see more clearly what I did, I should have done, and what I could do in the future to help my students succeed.

 After I have spent time looking back (and trying not to cringe at my mistakes), inevitably my thoughts turn to the new school year that will be here all too soon. I imagine the great lessons I will teach. My students will hang on my every word. They will all be so intrigued by the material that they will beg for enrichment work.

In my mind, I am the best teacher in the world when I can look ahead and see what’s possible. I will have learned from my mistakes and moved on to do a much better job—next year.

As my rich fantasy life as the best teacher in the world would indicate, I do believe that making a serious effort to maintain a reflective teaching practice is one of the best ways that teachers can improve their teaching skills.

Currently I am also working on the third edition of The First-Year Teachers' Survival Guide. In the opening section I have a piece about having a reflective practice that should help new teachers be successful. Here is a sneak preview…

Developing a Reflective Practice

“Highly effective teachers soon realize that no one is a natural teacher. Teaching is a deliberate act. No educator can just rush through the hurly burly of a school day with just cursory attention to what we are expected to accomplish and then expect to be successful at reaching our students.

            The deep thought required of educators is far more important than many teachers realize. Reflecting on our teaching should be part of every aspect of our professional lives. Such reflection needs to systematic, methodical, and purposeful.

            Veteran teachers have found many different ways to reflect on their practice. We can gather information about our performance from a variety of sources such as asking colleagues to observe us, surveying our students, joining staff discussion groups, or even videotaping ourselves. Examining the information that you gather in these ways will allow you to assess your strengths as well as your weaknesses. You will be able to discern trends and patterns in your teaching as you seek to improve your skills.

            One very common and useful method of maintaining a reflective teaching practice can also involve recording ideas and observations in a journal on a regular basis. Whether you choose to maintain a journal online, in a computer desktop folder, on paper, or even in an audio version, it is important to be diligent about recording regularly. The questions below can help you use the time that you want to reflect on your teaching practice as efficiently as possible.

1. Were my goals for this lesson reasonable and appropriate?
2. Were my students challenged to do their best?
3. Did students learn what they were supposed to master? How can I ensure that they always do this?
4. How would I change this lesson before teaching it again?
5. How engaged were my students in the lesson? How can I increase the level of engagement?
6. At what points in the lesson did I have to change strategies or activities? Why? How productive was this flexibility on my part?
7. How should I have changed the lesson?
8. How can I offer remediation or enrichment activities to the students who need them?
9. What data do I need to collect before teaching this lesson again ? How can I gather this information?
10. What data do I need to collect before moving on to the next unit of study? How can I gather this information?
11. What can I do to improve my skills at collaborating with colleagues?
12. What worked in today’s lesson? What did not work?
13. How do I want my students to interact with each other as a whole group?
14. What can I do to help my students collaborate with each other in small groups?
15. What is the most efficient way to ___?
16. How can I improve the way that I give directions?
17. How can I integrate technology into my lessons?
18. What problems did I have to manage today? How well did I manage those problems?
19. Where can I learn more about how to ___?
20. How can I improve the way to deliver instruction?
21. How well do I listen to my students? What can I do to make sure that I model good listening skills?
22. Which students were off task? What caused them to be off task?
23. When were my students on task? What can I do to guarantee that continues?
24. How did I show that I was enthusiastic about the subject matter?
25.  How effective were the motivation techniques that I used? How can I modify them for future lessons?
26. How can I foster an atmosphere of mutual respect and courtesy among my students?
27. How well do I manage my classroom? What can I improve?
28. What should I do to help my students learn to be self-disciplined learners?
29. How much progress am I making in improving my teaching knowledge or skills? What can I do to improve?
30. How can I use my strengths as a teacher to full advantage in my classroom?”

Problem 5: Are You Wasting Valuable Class Time?

Scenario: You have too much curriculum and too little useful class time with students. Not only are you required to cover enormous amounts of information, but you are expected to do so in ways that ensure that all students are engaged and able to master the material. You feel as if you just do not have enough time in each class to get ever thing done. To make matters worse, although other teachers complain about the lack of time, they seem to be covering the material with greater speed and more success.

Your Goals:

• To eliminate the ways that you personally waste class time

• To eliminate the ways that your students waste class time

• To figure out ways to cover material so that your students master it quickly

Some commonsense suggestions for using school time wisely:

1. Have all handouts and other learning materials prepared before class so that students do not have to miss instructional time waiting for materials.
2. Check to make sure that all equipment is in good working order before class.
3. Be flexible. Interruptions happen. Things do not always go as planned.
4. Don’t allow small misbehaviors to continue or escalate.
5. Raise your students’ awareness of how they use class time. Be open in discussing what went well and what did not in class.
6. Hold students accountable for how well they use the time that they are in class. Promote self-discipline and time management.
7. Establish and follow a routine for the start and ending of class so that students use every minute that they are with you.
8. Delegate as much as you can. Students are often eager to help and can be surprisingly good at managing classroom chores.
9. Don’t ever call roll out loud. Use a seating chart and look around the room as students are working.
10. Try to photocopy extra copies of handouts for those students who lost theirs or who left them at home.
11. Make sure students know the rationale for studying a particular topic. This will encourage them to stay on track.
12. Prevent as many interruptions as you can.
13. If a misbehaving student has caused a disruption, do your best to keep the disruption small so that valuable class time is protected.
14. Establish routines for predictable interruptions.
15. Know what to do in a fire drill. Students should be able to exit the building and return in a timely fashion and with a minimum loss of class time.
16. Give students a long-term project (sometimes called an anchor assignment) to work on if they finish an assignment early.
17. If you place students in study teams, often they will work more efficiently together than they would if they were working alone.
18. Set time limits for completing tasks within a class period. This will encourage students to work toward a goal.
19. Have students pick up handouts and other materials as they enter the room rather than waste time tediously passing back papers.
20. Give students checklists of assignments so that they can work on a series of assignments rather than having to check in with you after each step.
21. Ask students to stop every now and then and share questions or what they have learned with classmates.
22. Make sure that the activities you plan to cover the curriculum will meet the learning needs of your students.
23. Be sure that your students know that you are the person who will decide when class will end—not a bell. This will ensure that they work productively and not fall into disorder near the end of class.
24. Monitor constantly so that your students stay on task.
25. Don’t waste time assuming that you students will all learn at the same rate. Assess your students’ readiness levels and differentiate accordingly.
26. Stay on topic. Resist the temptation to be drawn off topic during a lesson.
27. Overplan. Overplan. Overplan.  Always have a backup plan.
28. Make learning to follow directions a focus point until your students have mastered this important skill. Students who know what to do and how to do it will not be as likely to waste time as those students who are not sure what to do.
29. Create and then enforce a reasonable policy concerning how your students may leave the room. Students who lollygag in the hallways during class are not learning anything.
30. Reduce the distractions that may be drawing your students’ attention away from a lesson.
31. If an upcoming event is causing distractions and subsequent misuse of class time, then make use of student interest in that event. Channel energy when you can instead of opposing students.
32. Pace lessons so that there is another assignment waiting for students who finish early.
33. Assign an appropriate amount of work. Students should not waste time practicing what they already have mastered.
34. Realize that students of all ages can have trouble changing from one activity to another. Plan effective transitions between assignments.
35. Teach to an objective. Focused instruction will be much more efficient than merely covering material.
36. Use formative assessments to determine your students’ readiness for a particular unit of study.
37. Use signal words to call students to order, direct their attention, or change tasks. This will save time by making sure that students know what to do.
38. Use exit tickets to ask students to reflect on how well they used their time in class. This will help raise their awareness of the importance of making every minute count.
39. Display inspirational posters and reminders to help students use time wisely.
40. Use the small blocks of time that are available to you and your students. Often the time at the beginning and ending of class is the most productive time for student retention of knowledge. Take advantage of this and pack those few minutes with interesting activities.

Problem 4: Your Handouts Could Be Snooze-Inducing, Ineffective, Time-Wasting Exercises in Futility

In recent years, handouts and worksheets have undergone much well-deserved criticism for their mind-numbing effects on classrooms filled with students who deserve more than a dull exercise in filling in blanks.
 
Even though there are some dreadful handouts out there, not every handout is bad. In fact, engaging, well-thought-out handouts are a useful way to practice, review, encourage critical thinking, enhance creativity, and help students assume responsibility for their own learning.
 
Designing handouts that will help your students learn instead of just scribbling wannabe answers as fast as possible takes a bit of effort and a little bit of time. The payoff in student engagement and learning is well worth the trouble, however.

·    Thoroughly proofread every handout you create for grammatical, factual, and typographical errors. If you want your students to take care with the neatness and accuracy of their work, then you need to model that behavior when you create handouts for them.

·    Keep the appearance of any worksheet uncluttered and readable. Use no more than three different fonts on a page. (Three fonts may even be a bit much for some students.)

·    Check to make sure that the font size is large enough for everyone to follow.

·    Take care that the page breaks don’t make it difficult for students to keep on track when answering a question that begins on one page and ends on another.

·    Pay attention to format and spacing. If students are expected to write on the handout, allow plenty of room and provide lines for them to do so.

·    Number each page so that students will be able to stay focused as they work through the handout.

·    Provide space for students to head their papers with their name, the date, and the class or subject. Many teachers neglect to do this and then complain when students forget to put their names on their papers.

·    Use text features such as clip art, text boxes, or underlining to emphasize important information.

·    Label each handout with a distinctive title or other type of label so that students can find it quickly when searching through their binders.

·    Make all directions easy to find. Use a bold font and place them right before the assignments they refer to.

·    All directions should be very, very easy to follow. Step-by-step directions written in clear, brief sentences are easier for students to read and understand than jumbled, complicated ones.

·    Some teachers have found that estimating the approximate length of time that each section should take to complete tends to make a longer handout less intimidating. Doing this together at the beginning of the assignment teaches students valuable time management skills and is a friendly and encouraging way for you and your students to collaborate.

·    Consider writing directions in the form of a checklist to accompany a handout if the handout is lengthy. You should still include directions for each part of the handout, but a separate checklist will make it even easier for students to know what to do and how to do it well.

·    Don’t neglect to provide examples or brief models with directions.

·    Allow students options when it would be appropriate. Even something as simple as asking students to choose between doing the even or the odd questions in a section of a handout would add interest and relieve potential tedium.

·    If you are going to grade an assignment, help students focus by including point values.

·    Build student confidence by adding encouraging notes, hints, reminders, and bits of advice. You could even ask for their advice as you go over the directions before students begin working.

·    To capture attention and build community, refer to their interests, past or upcoming class events, and use their names in positive ways (always only positive ways!) in examples or questions.

·    If you require students to maintain a notebook, make this task easier by punching holes in handouts before you pass them out.

·    Be careful not to waste paper. Maximize the way you prepare a page by using print preview, creating narrow margins where appropriate, and using both sides of the paper.

·    Vary the types of questions that you ask students to do. If you include open-ended, higher-level thinking skills in the various types of assignments that you ask students to complete while working on a handout, then you will find your students more likely to be engaged and learning.

·    Consider adding a question or two at the end of a handout asking students to reflect upon what they have learned and what they may still be confused about.

 

 

Standardized Test Madness Is Officially Here

Are you as stressed out about standardized tests as most of your colleagues appear to be? Few events in a teacher's professional life can arouse as much angst as knowing that your students will be taking a test that not only covers what they were supposed to learn, but also how well you taught them. Did you cover everything? Did you cover it in such a manner that every student mastered it? Few us us escape the stress of testing. To make it safely through this rough period with your career and your sanity intact, try some of these brief suggestions. Many teachers have found that adopting positive, proactive attitudes about testing make it easier to keep standardized tests in perspective and reduce harmful stress.

• Work hard to be a good teacher every day and you should feel confident that your students will perform well on standardized tests.

• Make test preparation part of the every day business of your class instead of a time-consuming event several weeks before the testing date.

• Instead of dwelling on the negative aspects of testing, determine how being held accountable for your students’ learning has improved your teaching.

• Accept responsibility for the part of the test that you can control and prepare your students for that, reminding yourself that you are also responsible for the entire instructional performance of your students and not just the test.

• Remind yourself that standardized tests do not drive your curriculum, state standards and guidelines do.

• Students will vary in the way that they respond to tests. Accept that some of your students will do well and others may not be as successful.

• Don’t go overboard in your attempts to scare students about tests. Help them deal with test anxiety and focus on achievement instead.

• Remind yourself that standardized tests are just part of what you accomplish each day. You are in the business of educating and inspiring students.

• Offer magic pencils with great erasers and the correct answers packed inside just waiting to be bubbled in.

Finding Meaning in What We Do

One of the hallmarks of a dedicated teacher is the almost unshakable belief that teachers can change the world. We want to believe that what we do is meaningful. That what do we does make a difference.

Some days, though, it’s easy to be so caught up in the papers to be graded, the assessments to be created, and the emails to be answered that we can lose sight of the meaningfulness of our work. And lately, the hateful tone of so many pundits who are not classroom teachers, but who are quick to tell us what we are doing wrong, wrong, wrong is discouraging and degrading. The result? Burnout.

Burnout is different from the insistent plea, “But I don’t want to go to school today!” that is the morning mantra for teachers everywhere. Burnout is a pervasive sense that there is not much point to what we do. Certainly, the negative aspects of our work outweigh the positives for teachers who are going through burnout.

One of the surest ways to combat the sense of despair that accompanies burnout is to reconsider what having a meaningful career looks like when you teach. What does it mean when we say we make a difference?

Teachers who stop kids from picking on each other, being rude, and making fun of classmates protect students who are powerless to defend themselves. We stop bullies from winning. We empower kids when we tell them to talk to an adult if they have a problem; and we empower them when we praise them for the right things. We empower them over and over when we use our adult power to stop bullies.

We make a difference when we show kids how to be lifelong learners. We make it okay to be curious. We take them to the library to check out books and show them how to read and write and think and work together. We make it cool to be a nerd in a tough world.

For all teachers, and especially those of us who teach the children of poverty, we find meaning in the way that we try to guide our students to a better life. Few veteran teachers have not known the despair that comes when we realize that even our most (seemingly) ordinary students can struggle with terrible home situations—an ill family member, an alcoholic parent, or a guardian who has been out of work for too long, just to name a few. For these kids, teachers are a touchstone of normalcy in a rotten world. We show our students how having an education can make a life far more comfortable and easy than a life of ignorance.

We offer comfort and guidance to those students whose lives are chaotic and dysfunctional for whatever reason. We can soothe the edges for those kids and guide them to cope, to make good choices, to succeed somewhere. We give them the encouragement that the rest of the world does not.

We show our students how to read, to write, to think, to have a life of the mind. Without us, many students would not possess any of these crucial skills. When we show students how to read and write, we give them safe passage in the big world.

Finally, perhaps the most important gift that we give students is the one that is most frequently reciprocated; we teach students to believe in themselves. Whenever you doubt that teaching is a meaningful profession, consider that you spend your days encouraging young people to take charge of their lives and to make gigantic leaps of faith—all dependent on the belief that we have instilled in them that the future is theirs for the taking.

HOW TO PRESERVE YOUR STUDENTS’ DIGNITY

Students are particularly sensitive people. They spend their lives in a push-me-pull-me world longing to be independent and part of the crowd at the same time. Whatever sets them apart from their peers in a negative way can be exquisitely painful.


With this extraordinary sensitivity in mind, it is easy to see how quickly an unintentionally demeaning word or deed can wound our students’ fragile pride. The dilemma for educators is that we have to correct our students’ behavior while protecting their self-image at the same time. While this is not always an easy task, it is one that is vital to the cooperative relationship that should exist between teacher and student. In the two lists below you will find advice on what you should be careful to do and what you should be careful not to do help preserve your students’ dignity.

To preserve a student’s dignity, be careful to

• Take the student’s concerns seriously

• Use a kind voice when talking with the student

• Be as patient and understanding as possible

• Listen carefully to your student

• Try to be as fair as possible when delivering a reprimand

• Ask sufficient questions to be sure that you have an understanding of the incident

• Work to resolve problems and not just punish the student

• Assure the student that you believe that the misbehavior will not happen again

• Make every effort to see the entire child and not be affected by brief moment of bad judgment

To preserve a student’s dignity, be careful not to

• Call a student a name, even in jest

• Compare one student to another

• Reprimand a student in front of the class if at all avoidable

• Allow a confrontation to build in front of others

• Ignore a student who needs your attention

• Raise your voice

• Be sarcastic or insulting in an attempt to have the student learn from a mistake

Three Classroom Problems...Three Solutions

One thing is certain: to be a good teacher, you have to be able to solve porblems quickly and with confidence. While most of us are very good at solving serious problems such as covering  massive amounts of curriculum and convincing a roomful of students that we really do have their best interests at heart, sometimes it's the small problems that can be energy zappers. Perhaps the suggestions offered here can help!

Problem 1: Heavy Backpacks Blocking the Aisles

Your school does not have a policy concerning student backpacks. Your students carry around all of their school belongings in backpacks that sometimes seem to weigh more than they do, and their backpacks block the aisles in your class.

SUGGESTIONS

This is a problem with two parts that you must handle separately. First, deal with the weight of the backpacks. Then, tackle the issue of the obstructions and disruptions in your class.

Backpack Weight

• This situation certainly requires collaboration with other teachers. When you speak with colleagues, suggest that you stagger homework deadlines so that students can leave some of their belongings in their locker, in the classroom, or at home.

• Talk to your students to let them know how concerned you are about their health and their stress level. Ask for their suggestions on how to solve the problem.

• Consider involving parents in finding solutions.

• Find out why students feel the need to carry so much. Do they need more time to go to their locker? Do they need advice on how to manage their materials?

Obstructions and Disruptions in Your Class

• When students have backpacks in class, expect them to place their backpack under their desk or as close to them as possible in order to leave a safe aisle.

• Take a team approach to keeping backpacks stowed safely. If they are involved in creating the solution, students will be able to police themselves and each other. Working together on the problem will increase the chances of successful resolution.

• See if you can provide a safe place for students to keep their backpacks other than near their desks.

• Teach students that it is disruptive to constantly search for materials in their backpack during class. Encourage them to keep their belongings as organized as possible in order to reduce search time.

Problem 2: Lost Papers

 

Problem: You hand back a set of homework papers and notice that some of your students do not have their papers. You tell them that you never received their work. They, in turn, assure you that they did the work, turned it in on time, and you must have lost it.

SUGGESTIONS

• Be very organized about how you manage student papers. By appearing very organized, you will prevent many false accusations because students will not think that they can take advantage of your disorganization.

• Grade papers and hand them back as quickly as you can. The longer you delay in returning papers, the harder it is to keep track of them.

• If you use an in-basket for students to hand in their work as they finish it, be sure to move their papers to a labeled folder before the next class can add theirs to the stack.

• If you are unable to check a set of papers within a day or two, at least check to make sure all students have turned in work. This will preclude any surprises for students who are expecting to receive graded papers.

• Do not be absolute in denying your guilt. Instead, try to solve the problem by first asking students with missing papers to check their own notebooks or lockers to see if they could have taken them from the room accidentally. If the papers do not turn up, then offer the students more time to redo the work and turn it in.

Problem 3: Students Without Supplies or Materials

 

Problem: Some of your students have problems keeping up with their materials. They come to class without pencils, pens, papers, or books. You find yourself growing increasingly frustrated as you wait for students to borrow the necessary tools to do their work, wasting valuable instructional time.

SUGGESTIONS

Off-task behavior and discipline problems are just two of the things that can go wrong when students come to class unprepared. Keeping extra supplies on hand will help you avoid many problems. You should implement a system that works for you and your students—one where students can settle quickly to work without fuss. You can do this without having to spend a fortune of your own.

Try to have extra textbooks on hand to lend to students if they forget theirs. When you lend a book to a student, make sure the student writes his or her name on the board or another safe place so you have a record of where the books are. You could also assign a responsible student to be in charge of issuing and collecting borrowed texts. Other teachers have found that expecting students to provide collateral is also effective.

If missing pens or pencils are a problem, set up a system where students can borrow from a shared bank of supplies. Here’s how:

Step 1: Select one or two students to be in charge of the supplies bank.

Step 2: Ask every student to donate a new pen or pencil.

Step 3: Mark the pens and pencils with a number.

Step 4: When students need to borrow a pen or pencil, the students who are

in charge of the bank can record the number and the name of the student who borrowed it.

Step 5: The students who distribute the supplies are also the ones who should remind the borrowers to return them at the end of class.