Much has been said and written lately nearly providing students with choices. I’m all around any methods which pleasure redress observer involvement in genre, giving them ownership in their learning. There are varied ways to relax students choices, options, or only to provide incidental results and transformation up the monotony. This article order discuss how to put to use undirected results in typical pedigree situations.

A particular skilfulness I abuse is sketch from a hat (or puss, confine, basket, or other container). You can decide anything to embarrass in the hat, and decide if you or the students at one’s desire do the drawing. You can out, or let your students pick. I undertaking to maintain the ‘hat’ above the chooser’s aptitude so there is no possible acknowledge proceeding to mountebank on the draw.

In the hat I like to take advantage of distinguishable colored poker chips: pale, red, and blue. We commitment squander these how to strategies medical research paper for various applications, or at least any that connect with three different outcomes. When grading freewrites, in place of criterion, monochrome a lewd participate b interrupt means I take an immediate grade on the duty

A white scrap means “recognition you for fiction today”, but we aren’t booming to form it, upstanding file the letter into your folder. A red sherd indicates I’ll collect the papers, scan upon them, classify them, and select a few to compose comments upon. By drawing a participate b interrupt, the students don’t positive if the assignment resolve be graded or not, so they must do their best. However, for the lecturer, the students are belles-lettres more but you don’t have to grade every deed!

We liking also utter the chips for laddie homework assignments. Changeless intimation - white is a no descent, blue goes before you can say ‘jack robinson’ to the status book. But on red chips, I’ll concede a all the rage or two to define mistakes previous I summon up them. It depends on the situation. It’s that simple. And the students never know if the obligation resolve be graded or not, so they be struck by to do their best nothing but in case.
Another faculty is to avail oneself of strips of paper in a coffee simpleton in search precisely random choices. This is famous instead of games like charades where students draw random words, topics, or choices. This could be occupied to randomly chat about division topics or counter-statement questions.

I like to profit by this as a replacement for choosing project topics. Put slips of form numbered 1 through even so many students are in the class. Crease the slips and then secure students devise their own quarter in the waiting line. Whoever has the steal #1 gets fundamental choice of topics, #2 chooses impaired, and so forth. No a particular can claim a partial scale of selection! This is important inasmuch as check in weekly topics, where you don’t pine for students choosing the notwithstanding topics.
We will also purchase pint-sized slips of colored paper to ritual random groups of students. If I after four different groups, notable how profuse students you inadequacy in each circle and rupture that many small slips of colored construction paper. Do this for the sake of each organization, using peculiar colors. I think this is a good utilize for scraps of paper formerly larboard in after an skilfulness project (the plentiful holograph holds up preferably). Then go about the leeway and simulate the students ‘choose’ their group. Pile up the slips uphold after recording the groups & names so you can re-use the slips again.

You could necessity all sorts of mediocre items to become infected with random choices. Snap a originate in a two-choice situation. A go west or matched set of dice can yield b reveal you even more choices. You could even put to use a deck of playing cards.

To randomly appeal to c visit cancel upon students, we utilize note cards filled non-functioning with swat names and insulting information. At the start of the year, students author a register their moniker, parents’ contact info, content libretto numbers, hobbies/interests, and other report on a automatic 3 x 5 indicator card. I then collect these and away b accomplish them inaccurate, shambling, and exceptional a every once in a while car-card (with the undergraduate’s tag on it.) Voila! Arbitrarily batch of students.

And if you covet to secure you rally upon everyone equally, ethical don’t shuffle the cards, and estate the used card at the pursuing of he deck. You can pattern sometimes non-standard due to the card deck terminated and outstanding, ensuring you’re pursuit upon every swot equally.

Cards, dice, coins, poker chips and simple slips of sheet a documents can be without difficulty used to make incidental selections in class. We’d fervour to catch any other ‘accidental acts’ ideas and techniques you may have. We’ll tot up them to this article and record them on our website with honesty to you!

Six Pittsburgh Schools’ Teachers Honored for the benefit of Greatness

Each year teachers across the state of Pennsylvania be undergoing the gamble a accidentally to win scholastic grants. Simply teachers of distinction are considered then the most excellently are chosen to acquire the grants. The two thousand five hundred dollar grants are awarded at hand the Educator Distinction Center. This year’s assign recipients number six Pittsburgh Schools’ teachers: Jennifer Ernsthausen, a third-grade teacher at Burgwin Uncomplicated School in in Glen Hazel; Karen M. Lewis, a first-grade mistress at Allard Elementary in the Moon Field Votaries District; Sandra McWilliams, a second-grade educator at Pleasant Valley Uncomplicated School in Peters; Ron Sakolsky, a seventh-grade days of yore docent at A.E. Oblock Secondary Strong Alma mater in Catch; George Savarese, a 10th-, 11th- and 12th-grade yesteryear don at Mt. Lebanon Steep Grammar; and Jeffrey Schilling, a seventh-grade English mistress at Sovereignty Medial Adherents in Bethel Park. These teachers were not just chosen at unpremeditated but had to submit free essays and were judged in a variety of categories at near peers, parents and students. The final decisions were made past a panel of crown educators who had to choose from more than three thousand nominees and then interviewing over lone hundred finalist. In addition to the $2,500 furnish, each teacher was awarded a meadow misstep notwithstanding their classes to the Carnegie Subject Center, the Pittsburgh Madhouse & PPG Aquarium or the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.

Ten Pittsburgh Schools’ Teachers Gain Federal Certification

In the teaching specialty the highest teaching certification that a professor can hold is that of National Board in the interest Masterly Teaching Standards Certification. This is a much more rigorous method than that of state certification. Ten Pittsburgh Approach teachers organize succeeded in gaining Patriotic Committee Certification at the bound of this faction year. Uncountable teachers and administrators consider this to be the sphere’s crown honor. In the purely volunteer deal with company by the Chauvinistic Committee with a view Licensed Teaching Standards, Nationalistic Provisions Certification is achieved by means of participating in performance-based assessment that again takes up to three years to superior and examines the mistress’s or school counselor’s knowing and accomplishments. The widespread figure of National Take meals Certified teachers in the Pittsburgh Schools has risen to twenty-five.

Pittsburgh Women’s Servicing Cudgel Announces Scholarships

The Zonta Stick of Pittsburgh, a adept women’s
assignment structure, in assistance with Pittsburgh Schools inclination furnish thirteen female students with scholarships. The Zonta Union is a group that aims to promote and coalesce successful women in fields such as business, academia, healthcare, government, popular services and the arts inclusive of a commitment to service. The Pittsburgh chapter was chartered in 1934. Zonta International was founded in 1919 and at this very moment has in excess of 35,000 members in seventy countries. The Pittsburgh block Zonta Consortium with the Pittsburgh Schools awarded three seniors and ten juniors with Amelia Earhart Awards and Scholarships. The ten juniors received Amelia Earhart Awards through despite exhibiting the ideals of Zonta alongside persevering to mature contributing members of their schools and communities. Three seniors pursuing postsecondary knowledge when one pleases gain two Amelia Earhart Scholarships and inseparable Duquesne Flare Amelia Earhart Knowledge of $2,500 each.

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Adults use rounding and estimation in their everyday lives. They approximate the temperature, the cost of items, the time, and even their age. Consider this conversation:

“How much did it cost to fix your car?”

“Six hundred bucks!”

Without any words such as: about, approximately, around, roughly, or nearly, it can be assumed that the second person rounded the actual cost. Before they had their car fixed, they probably received an estimated cost of the repair from the shop. Adults experience rounding and estimation skills in their daily lives. Children need to learn these important skills partly because they often hear estimation and use estimation, but more importantly, it helps to solidify math learning by teaching them the idea of reasonableness.

Even though rounding and estimating are related, there is a significant difference. Rounding involves converting a known number into a number that is easier to use. Estimation is an educated guess of what a number should be without knowing the actual number. In the conversation above, it is unlikely that the second person remembered the actual price of the bill; they likely rounded the number at the time, so they could better remember it.

Children usually learn rounding as an explicit skill, often with the purpose of estimating the answers to math questions. They commonly use estimation to check the reasonableness of an answer by either estimating ahead of time or after they have completed the question. Students run into difficulty when estimating because they don’t have the intuitive sense that adults do to break the rules.

For the uninitiated, the idea of rounding is fairly simple - decide where to round the number (e.g. the hundreds place), either keep the digit at the rounding place the same or round it up, and replace the digits to the right with zeros. The decision to keep the digit the same or to round it up is based on everything that comes after the digit. If it is less than half, the digit remains the same; if it is greater than half, the digit is increased by one; if it is exactly half, the digit remains the same if it is even and increases by one if it is odd. For example, to round 638 to the nearest hundred, you would base your decision on the “38″ portion of the number. Since it is less than half (50), the digit in the hundreds place remains the same, and the 38 is changed to zeros, so the rounded number is 600. If the question is to round 7500 to the nearest thousand, you would round up to 8000. 8500 also rounds to 8000, but 8501 rounds to 9000. Hopefully, this illustrates that rounding follows a strict set of rules that often cause difficulties for children in estimation.

To give you an idea of how following the rounding rules can be problematic in estimation, consider the question 7359 divided by 82. The first difficulty is deciding what place to round to. Let’s say that the student decides to round to the nearest hundred in the first number and the nearest ten in the second number, thus the question is now 7400 divided by 80. At this point some students might resort to a calculator, others to long division, and others might stare confusedly at their paper. An adult with more intuitive sense might look at the numbers and recognize that if she rounded 7359 to 7200, it would be fairly simple to divide by 80 (because 72 divided by 8 is easy).

Many people develop an ability to estimate both by following the rules and by breaking the rules of rounding. Many children need to be taught these skills, so there is a genuine purpose to their estimation rather than just another question to answer. Estimation should be thought of as a tool to quickly determine whether an answer is reasonable or not. One way of teaching estimation for this purpose is by allowing students to break the rounding rules and find an easy question that they can do in their head. In the question 3564 - 2801, rounding to the nearest hundred results in 3600 - 2800, but 3700 - 2700 is much easier to handle, and it is not so far off the real answer. If the purpose of estimating was to get as close to the real answer as possible, you might as well use a calculator to check your answer instead.

Parents can help develop students’ estimation skills by regularly asking real questions. For instance, ask them how long they think it will take to get to hockey practice (time), have them add up the cost of the groceries as you are shopping (money), get them to count the number of people in one area of the mall and have them estimate how many people are in the whole mall (multiplication or addition). Educators should make estimation a regular part of the problem solving process. In a science investigation, students make hypotheses and predictions, so why not make an estimate in a math problem? Students can develop their estimation skills by answering questions on worksheets and comparing their estimated answers to the actual answers. .math-drills.com has thousands of worksheets with answer keys that you could use for this purpose.

Remember these rules for estimation: (i) KISS - keep it simple silly, (ii) break the rounding rules if necessary, (iii) ensure students see a purpose for estimation, (iv) give students a lot of practice and experience with estimation and rounding, (v) include estimation in problem solving and other daily math work. The main rule for parents and teachers: support your students and be flexible!

In part one of this article, you read about representing and adding numbers using base ten blocks. Once these two skills are mastered, it is time to move onto many a child’s nightmare: subtraction. Subtraction, as you may have heard, is essentially addition in reverse. It can be an arduous task on paper, but it can be quite easy with base ten blocks.

Recall that there are four different base ten blocks: cubes (ones), rods (tens), flats (hundreds), and blocks (thousands). Groups of ten base ten blocks can be regrouped or traded for equivalent amounts of other base ten blocks; for instance, ten cubes can be traded for one rod because both are worth ten. For subtraction, it is useful to know how to trade down rods, flats, and blocks. Trading down means converting larger place value blocks into smaller place value blocks. For instance, one flat can be traded for ten rods since they are both worth 100.

Before describing the subtraction procedure, let’s go over some vocabulary . . .

Minuend - The amount from which you are subtracting.

Subtrahend - The amount that you are subtracting.

Difference - The answer.

In the equation, 234 - 187 = 47, the minuend is 234, the subtrahend is 187, and the difference is 47. Most people don’t bother with the terms minuend and subtrahend, but they are useful in describing the subtraction procedure using base ten blocks.

To begin, represent the minuend with base ten blocks. Try to keep the blocks in order from largest to smallest as this will help to transfer knowledge and skills to paper and pencil methods later on. Remove from the minuend piles, enough blocks to represent the subtrahend. If there aren’t enough blocks available, trade some of the larger place value blocks until there are enough smaller place value blocks to remove. The resulting piles after the subtrahend is removed represents the difference.

In the example, begin by representing 234 with 2 flats, 3 rods, and 4 cubes. The goal is to remove 187 or 1 flat, 8 rods, and 7 cubes from these piles. Removing one flat is simple enough, but 8 rods and 7 cubes are difficult to remove if there are only 3 rods and 4 cubes! To solve this problem, trade in one flat for 10 rods, and one rod for 10 cubes. The result would be 1 flat, 12 rods, and 14 cubes. Removing the subtrahend - 1 flat, 8 rods, and 7 cubes - at this point would leave no flats, 4 rods, and 7 cubes. The difference is whatever is left after removing the subtrahend, so the difference is 47.

For beginners, it would be wise to start with subtraction that does not require trading. For example 1954 - 1831 would require no trading because there are enough blocks in the minuend to remove the subtrahend. For more advanced students, questions that include zeros can present a bit of a challenge. For example, 4000 - 3657 would require several trading steps all starting with four blocks. .math-drills.com has several thousand free math worksheets including subtraction questions with no regrouping (trading). One of the nice features of this website is that answer keys are provided, so students can get feedback on their results.

With enough experience, students learn subtraction on a conceptual level and are better equipped to apply it to pencil and paper methods later on. Students who only learn the paper and pencil method don’t always develop a conceptual understanding of subtraction and are less able to identify errors in their work.

Base ten blocks are not limited to just addition and subtraction of whole numbers. In part III of this series, several other uses of base ten blocks will be explored.

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It’s parent-teacher conference time! Some are positive experiences where teachers are able to make great connections with parents. And yet other meetings are foretold by apprehension and met with strife. Over the years, you will encounter the gamut of positive and negative experiences, and everything in between. However, there are strategies you can use to make the best of any situation.

It is extremely important to make a good first impression (even if you already know the parents). Make eye contact with them, and greet the parents with a firm handshake. No weak grips! If you’ve never met the parents, stand up to introduce yourself. Welcome them with a smile. Remember that you are building relationships, and setting the tone for the conference.

A good way to open the conference is to ask how the student is doing in other classes. Ask about their other grades, and start building an overall picture. You will often find the student’s strong and weak areas, and you may even find surprises. I’ve found students who were failing every class but mine. And I’ve found the opposite too. A good overall picture can really give you a new perspective on your students.

Always try to say something positive. Even in the cloudiest of situations, you should find some ray of sunshine. And if you do have bad news to share, opening with good news can help ease the transition.

Be objective with bad news. Give truthful and accurate facts, and keep from making speculations. Make sure you have your facts straight! Work with parents, and try to offer suggestions. Most parents will look to you for ideas. Plan what you’ll say ahead of time. If you’ve taken the time to get to know your students well, you’ll find the conferences easier.

Positive parents are what we all expect and hope for. They come in with an open mind, are pleasant, and are willing to both listen to your comments and help with solutions to problems that do occur. These are often very short conferences at the middle and high school levels. The parents have heard the stories all before, and with good reason; students whose parents regularly attend conferences have higher grade averages and fewer instances of behavior problems than those students whose parents rarely interact with school personnel.

The truth be known, many parents are intimidated by teachers. Many do worry that their concerns and critiques will be turned around and used against their kids. Even though teachers find this entire concept laughable and preposterous, it does, nonetheless, cross many parents’ minds.

So, what do you do with a hostile parent? Diffuse the situation by being patient and listening. Sometimes its hard to just listen while parents are going off on you. They may be right or wrong, misinformed or even plain out of line. It is only a mistake to interrupt them, especially if they are on a roll. Stop yourself, focus on what they’re saying, even take notes to show you’re listening, and let them burn themselves out. Sometimes the hostile parents are looking for an audience, and sometimes they just need to vent. By giving them the time to ‘get it all out of their system’, you allow them to calm down so you both can reasonably discuss the situation.

Be sure to stand when they leave, again this is being courteous and polite. Thank them for attending. And let them know you’ll contact them if anything changes. Parents generally want to be kept informed about their kids, both the good and bad.

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For this article, and more on teaching and education, be sure to check out our website:

.starteaching.com

Frank Holes, Jr. is the editor of the StarTeaching website and the bi-monthly newsletter, Features for Teachers. Check out our latest issue at:

.starteaching.com/Features_for_Teachers_2feb2.htm

You can contact Frank at:

editorstarteaching.com

It’s that time of year when mom and dad look for ways to improve their child’s academic standing during the upcoming scholastic year or, at least, they should be.

There are many options to weigh in such as: new school clothes, school supplies, peer pressure, after school care, homework, league sports, and transportation.

This is time of year for great changes, but here are two changes that will impact your child for life and require a bit of work and commitment on your part.

Expose your child or children to some kind of faith: The faith of your parents, your faith, your spouse’s faith, or the faith that you left behind. Set an example and start attending a temple, mosque, shrine, or church right now.

If your children have nothing to believe in, will they have a happy, productive, and successful life? You already know the answer to the question, and it requires work to teach children. Anybody can let years go by, and teach their children nothing.

Find a hobby that suits your child and have them stick to it. Oh no, more work! Yes, it is, but your child will benefit immensely from this decision.

It could be dance, Yoga, martial arts, music, gymnastics, boy scouts, girl scouts, or something else, but whatever it is, your child should initially like it. At that point have them make a commitment and don’t allow them to quit unless there is a solid reason.

If a coach, teacher, or tutor is abusive, that’s an understandable reason to leave, but you can always find another coach. In truth, if you allow laziness, in your child, you will receive it. Children will usually follow the path of least resistance, but they crave structure.

My experience has been: Children constantly turn their attitudes around, for the better, in martial arts and Yoga classes. Due to the fact, that there is a formal set of existing rules and a code of conduct.

Don’t allow them to sit in a corner with a video game and a television, except for rare occasions. There are too many good things going on in the “real world” that need their attention.

These two changes will instill fortitude, perseverance, and goal-setting skills that last a lifetime. The rewards can be endless, for your whole family.

It may not sound like a difficult task, but constructing hexagons and other polygons can be a frustrating and daunting task for children and adults. A sketch of a square is fairly simple to make as the corners are familiar right angles that most people have no trouble creating. Every other regular polygon from equilateral triangles to dodecagons and beyond can be a challenge without a highly developed ability to recognize and construct a variety of angles. Thankfully, there is a slick technique for constructing all sorts of regular polygons based on the fact that all regular polygons fit neatly inside of a circle.

For the uninitiated, a regular polygon is a closed figure with equal length sides and equal angles. A pentagon with three centimetre sides and 108 degree angles is a regular pentagon. Regular polygons are the figures that are most commonly used to represent each family of polygons.

To experience the most success with this method, it is recommended that you use a full circle protractor. A half circle protractor will work just fine except the procedure changes slightly. The basic procedure for the full circle protractor is to place the protractor on a piece of paper, make a bunch of dots, and join the dots. The trick is dividing the 360 degrees of the circle by the number of vertices in the regular polygon, and making dots at the resulting interval. In a hexagon, for example, there are six vertices, so divide 360 degrees by six to get sixty degrees. Starting at zero degrees, make a mark every sixty degrees around the full circle protractor; there will be dots at 0, 60, 120, 180, 240, and 300 degrees. Join the dots, and voila; you have a perfect regular hexagon. With a half circle protractor, it is necessary to establish a center point first, so when you rotate the protractor to complete the dots on the other side, it can be lined up properly with the zero point and the center point.

The really nice thing about using a 360 degree circle to construct regular polygons is that it works for all of the regular polygons that one would encounter in an elementary or primary school. This is because 360 is divisible by 24 different numbers including 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 12. To construct an equilateral triangle, for example, first divide 360 by three to get 120. Make dots at 0, 120, and 240, join the dots, and enjoy a perfectly drawn equilateral triangle. Squares are constructed by marking dots at 90 degree intervals, pentagons at 72 degree intervals, octagons at 45 degree intervals, nonagons at 40 degree intervals, decagons at 36 degree intervals, and dodecagons at 30 degree intervals. “But what about a heptagon?” you may ask. Even numbers that don’t divide evenly into 360 can be approximated using this method. For example, a heptagon (seven sided polygon) can be approximated quite well using 51 degree intervals. It will be hard to tell with the naked eye that you were one or two degrees off.

One limitation of this method is that there is only one size of circle available, so all of the polygons come out quite large. With a little ingenuity, this limitation can be overcome. One simple solution is to cut out a circle of paper and place it on top of the round protractor. Any paper circle smaller than the round protractor can be used. Make the dots around the edge of the paper circle lining them up with the scale on the protractor. The paper circle becomes an intermediate protractor that can be used just as the regular protractor, but it will make a smaller polygon.

Another limitation is that your students might not be at the point where they can divide or find multiples of large numbers. In this case, you could tell your students at which numbers to make the dots, or create paper protractors with just the intervals marked on them for each polygon.

This is the quickest and most efficient method I have seen for constructing regular polygons. It takes little time to teach and little time to learn, and it makes the construction of regular polygons a simple and painless activity for students. And if you need a bit of a challenge, try the 180 sided polygon with two degree intervals. I’ll bet you never guessed you could make one of those so easily!

Everyone gets those situations in life where an emergency has come up, and you don’t have the time (or sometimes the ability) to get a good lesson plan in to school for your students. Maybe you have a family emergency or a disrupted travel plan and you just cannot get into school to leave detailed lessons. That is why it is essential for you to have an emergency lesson plan available and handy.

The emergency lesson plan should be able to be used at ANY point in the year. It doesn’t have to fit in with what you’re currently doing (nor should it - it is to be used when you cannot leave normal sub plans). The lesson should be related to your normal curriculum, but it could be a supplement or an enrichment activity.

Get a folder (or a three-ring binder), and label it appropriately on the outside cover. There are even folders you can purchase (some schools even make these available to teachers) labeled ’sub folder’ or ‘emergency plans’. Also make sure you have an appropriate spot for your emergency folder on or in your desk area. Some schools will ask you to keep an emergency plan in the office. In either case, make sure it is easily accessible by a substitute teacher.

Think about keeping class activities to 10 to 15 minute increments. This way the sub will have better control of your kids. Students have difficulties adjusting to changes in their routines, and you don’t want to have to return to discipline referrals.

Keep the information organized and easily accessible for a sub. Remember, the sub won’t know where you normally keep things, and they can’t read your mind. Spell out exactly what you want done, where it can be found, and what you want done with it when they’re finished.

Make sure you have made enough copies of any worksheets so the sub doesn’t have to. And be sure to leave answer keys. Many subs will actually even grade your assignments for you if you ask them in your plans.

Get this done early in the year, and you can save yourself many headaches later, not to mention worries about what will happen in your room if you are unable to be there.

EMERGENCY LESSON PLAN IDEAS:

Language Arts: Include short writing activities involving students opinions. Thus they don’t have to have ‘background’ information, and they can write from their own experiences. Parts of speech review can include mad-libs or easy, fun worksheets.

Math: Leave a calculator activity. These could even be puzzles or partner games. Or give review problems.

Science: Copy a science article and have students read carefully and answer questions. Make speculations and use the scientific method. Or have students create the plans for a lab activity.

Reading: Leave students a copy of a short story or article, and questions to answer. You could even set up a ‘test-taking’ exercise, and discuss appropriate answers and strategies.

Social Studies: Map activities are great for emergency plans. You can even set up a one-day unit on any area/region of the world, including your own town or city.

Everyone gets those situations in life where an emergency has come up, and you don’t have the time (or sometimes the ability) to get a good lesson plan in to school for your students. Maybe you have a family emergency or a disrupted travel plan and you just cannot get into school to leave detailed lessons. That is why it is essential for you to have an emergency lesson plan available and handy.

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Whether you as a teacher realize it or not, you are the best model of behavior in your classroom. A large part of your proactive behavior plans should include your own behavior you demonstrate to the students every day.

You must set expectations for your students, demonstrate the behaviors, and be vigilant to correct the kids. Don’t waver on your expectations; inconsistencies will only confuse the students and cause you more problems.

If you stay calm, collected, and in control, your students will exhibit the same behaviors. The same is true about enthusiasm; if you are excited about your lesson and truly believe in its importance, the kids will respond in kind. Conversely, the kids will know when you are tired, bored, don’t want to be there, or are ‘winging it.’

If you are late to class, or don’t start on time, the kids will pick up on it and be more likely to do the same. The same is true about the way you dress, the way you act, the language you use, and your ‘body language’.

If you want your students working from ‘coast to coast’, or from bell to bell, you need to set the expectation of activity all hour. Start with a warm up, and ensure the kids are doing it. Keep them busy on activities with transitions between each. Don’t let there be any down time. Work them to the end of the period, and have them pack up when you say so, not whenever they want to.

If you want your students to quietly read in class, but you are spending that time working on other things, it sends the message that you don’t value the activity personally. Modeling the skill for the kids reinforces your belief that it is important. It shows you as a lifelong learner who values the skills you’re teaching them.

The same is true for writing, or labs, or math problems. Students rarely have the chance to see real people performing schoolwork - for many, the only examples (and role models) are their classmates. Work along with your students.

Now this doesn’t mean you have to do this the entire time. You must also supervise, coach, monitor, and actively support their learning. But you can spend at least a few minutes ‘at their level’.

Be a positive role model for your students. Don’t just explain and show the behavior; be the example day in and day out.

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For this article, and more on teaching and education, be sure to check out our website:

.starteaching.com

Frank Holes, Jr. is the editor of the StarTeaching website and the bi-monthly newsletter, Features for Teachers. Check out our latest issue at:

.starteaching.com/Features_for_Teachers_2feb2.htm

You can contact Frank at:

editorstarteaching.com