Strategies and Tips to Improve a Classroom Climate
April 30, 2010 by admin
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The need for acceptance and respect is overlooked in many classrooms. It is sometimes difficult to accept the behavior of a given student, but the teacher should never communicate a lack of acceptance of the learner as an individual.
In fact, lack of respect by the teacher is often cited by learners as a reason for misbehavior. (Savage, 47) The best way to improve any classroom climate is to relate to students with dignity and maturity – that is, treat students with acceptance. Here are some ways to demonstrate acceptance in a classroom:
1. Make any statement that tells the student that s/he is a worthwhile person.
2. Being available, helpful, supportive and caring.
3. Asking the student for help.
4. Demonstrating understanding, caring and liking.
5. Taking the student seriously.
6. Sharing with the student.
7. Being fair, considerate and respectful.
8. Accepting students’ feelings.
9. Create opportunities for personal contact with students.
10. Model the desired behavior.
For today, take a look at the things you did and said in a particularly difficult lesson you recently experienced. Did you come across as one who is accepting of your students? Try and separate the student’s misbehavior from the person. Maybe you need to have a tutorial with this problematic student to settle some of the difference. But avoid any confrontations during in-class instruction – that will just negatively affect your classroom climate.
To deflect some of the tension that goes along with the problematic behavior of negative students, you might consider employing some of these techniques to help you create a more positive environment.
1. Allow students to participate in the rule setting. (You may wish to do this later if you feel you are too new to a class)
2. Allow the students to plan and set goals for learning.
3. Allow the students to use self-evaluation procedures.
4. Allow students to give input about assignments. (You could do this as an in-class writing assignment)
5. Allow students to select the books they want to read.
6. Allow students input into daily schedule.(You could do this as an in-class writing assignment)
Try it!
Classroom Essentials: Seven Necessities Every Teacher Must Have
April 25, 2010 by admin
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Every classroom is different, but in order to get the most out of each school year there are certain essentials every teacher needs.
Necessary Supplies
The key to an effective classroom is to have all the necessary teaching materials on hand when you need them. This includes extra supplies for students who may not come prepared for class. A basic supply cabinet should include: extra pencils, pens, markers, crayons, colored pencils, loose-leaf notebook paper, construction paper, scissors, glue, and folders. As time goes by, you can add to this inventory as you plan activities and learn the needs of your classroom. Stock up on these teaching materials at the beginning of the school year, replacing them as they run out. Plan to take a shopping trip again in early October when stores are ending their ‘back-to-school’ promotions and are willing to get rid of excess inventory at lower prices.
An Effective System of Organization
The classroom is chaotic enough without stray supplies, books, and projects cluttering usable space. Keep paperwork in its proper place with filing cabinets or temporary filing boxes. Plastic storage bins, totes, or tubs are great for keeping projects and unit supplies together for easy access. Be sure to label all file folders, boxes, and bins so that they can easily be found. You might find it a good idea to keep a box or folder to store each student’s projects as they’re completed throughout the year.
Important Information
Important classroom information should be collected, printed, and placed where it can easily be found. Remember the following:
1.Classroom rules should be constructed clearly and concisely so students can easily remember them, placed in the classroom where they can be seen, and filed for your records.
2.Introductory packets should be kept on file for students who transfer to your school in the middle of the year. Including information on classroom procedures, rules, schedule and assignments, as well as, a school handbook, will help your new student’s transition to your classroom.
3.Student bios should be created at the beginning of the school year. Gathering the names of their parents, a home address and telephone number, a list of the student’s interests, and other information they’d like you to know will help you get to know your class, as well as, equip you with contact information in the event of a problem or emergency.
Packets For Substitutes
Before summer break ends, prepare a substitute teacher packet for the eventuality that you will miss school. This binder should include information about your class schedule, seating charts, classroom rules and procedures, emergency safety plans, and other tips you feel are important to remember when teaching in your classroom. Additionally, include worksheets and a list of approved games that can take the place of the day’s lesson.
Materials For Recognition
Children respond well to praise. A great way to keep them motivated and focused in the classroom is to recognize their achievements. Whether you print them from online resource sites or purchase them through teacher supply stores, keep some awards and certificates on hand to give out when appropriate. Especially for younger children, reward stickers for homework or a job well done are an inexpensive and fun way of recognizing your student’s success in the classroom.
A Classroom Library
Create a special area in the classroom for bookshelves and comfy beanbags or chairs, collecting age appropriate books, newspapers, and magazines for an inspiring classroom library. For many children, reading is viewed as a chore. If you can create a sense of fun and excitement, your students may be encouraged to read in their spare time. Be sure to label all the materials in you ‘library’ so that they can be kept apart from those checked out at the school library. If you’re having a hard time filling up your shelves, ask for donations from students, check out your local library’s inventory ‘recycle’ days, or send home book orders. In many cases, your classroom will be awarded a certain number of free books with every student book order.
Personal Essentials
Most classrooms can survive without filing cabinets, substitute teacher packets, and the like, but they can’t survive without you. Teaching is hard work, but strive to bring the best of yourself everyday. An abundance of humor, patience, inspiration, flexibility, and passion will triumph the unexpected and make the yearlong journey more exciting for you, and for your students.
If you are interested in making your classroom run as smoothly as possible you may want to check out the classroom management products available at MPMSchoolSupplies.com. It’s an online teacher supplies store that carries everything from arts and crafts to circle time classroom rugs!
3 Tips for Effective Classroom Management
April 23, 2010 by admin
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What are you doing well in your classroom and where do you need to improve? These tips focus on a different aspect of teaching and classroom management. The purpose is to reinforce the good you are already doing while clarifying areas in your classroom management and instruction that may have interfered in your ability to teach successfully.
Tip 1 – Set the Tone of the Lesson
The important thing in classroom management is to feel the class and to conduct the lesson and manage the class accordingly. This is difficult for a new teacher who is mainly occupied with the lesson plan and to cover all the good activities prepared for. A lesson must have an opening with full attention on the teacher in order to show who sets the tone in the lesson. It is also necessary for the teacher to conclude the lesson.
As you begin your day, pay attention to the following issues:
Do you have problems feeling the class?
Are there times when more authoritative responses were needed?
Tip 2 – Plan a Tight Lesson
Before planning a lesson, it is necessary to know the class, their weaknesses and strengths and to have full control (also remote control) before engaging them in various activities. For new teachers, it is often difficult to estimate what activities will catch your students’ interest unless you know the class.
Once you know the class well, it is possible to move on to free, learner dependent activities. Free activities need to be very carefully planned. If you are planning a lesson based on the book, make sure your students have the book otherwise it may be a problem you will have to deal with. Planning a tight lesson, leaves fewer “lulls” that won’t lead to discipline problems.
Take a good look at a lesson you’ve just taught. Ask yourself the following questions:
1.Was the lesson successful? Why or why not?
2.Did the students learn what I wanted them to learn?
3.Did I do sufficient preparation for the lesson?
4.Do I need to reteach any aspect of the lesson?
Then plan a suitable follow-up to the lesson. For example, if the lesson was around the topic of advertisements, perhaps a suitable follow-up could be cutting out advertisements from newspapers. In doing so, ask yourself: “Will I teach the material in the same way next time?
Tip 3: Engage Students
In your lessons, you may have encountered discipline problems due to a lack of student participation. In classroom situations where students don’t participate, new teachers need to “read” the situation and if necessary, change the activity. It is not easy for an inexperienced teacher to do this however. You may have excellent ideas but you also need to fit them to class, and that takes experience in general and with a specific class.
If you have group tasks for example, keep the groups heterogenous and small.
If you have too many free activities, consider providing more hands-on tasks or a “Do Now” activity with a timer that will get the students focused and on-task.
Try it!
Make Your Teaching Sparkle. Teach for Success. Make a difference in the classroom.
To purchase your own ebook of classroom tested tips – “Tips and Tricks for Surviving and Thriving in the Classroom,” visit: www.MakeYourTeachingSparkle.com or click here.
New Teacher Tips for Teaching and Learning ANY Language with this Amazing Book
April 21, 2010 by admin
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Do you wish you could speak a foreign language as if it were your own? There is hope for those struggling to learn a new language and improve their accents.
“Language is Music,” a new book by Soviet-born Susanna Zaraysky, shows how she learned English, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Serbo-Croatian with perfect or almost perfect accents using music, TV, films, radio and free and low-cost resources.
The book is written in easy-to-understand English and makes learning foreign languages fun, easy and affordable. Zaraysky provides over 70 simple tips to use for things you already do, such as listening to music, watching TV, and surfing the Web. You can experience the joy of “fluency” in any language without having to study abroad or spend money on private tutors. The book lists 90 free or low-cost Internet resources that help you become a masterful speaker of any tongue.
The author has what you might call “an ear” for languages. She studied ten languages and used music to successfully learn seven languages. Born with a sight disability, she developed a hypersensitivity to sound and learned to listen to language as she would music, easily internalizing melodies and structures. Complimenting her grammar lessons, she made languages come alive by listening to music, radio programs and by watching television and movies in foreign languages. The media component of her language learning helped her feel the natural rhythm of the languages and develop fluency and excellent accents.
She attests that she is living proof that someone can be multi-lingual using the media, “Learning foreign languages is like learning to sing a song or play music. I am sharing my tools because I want more people to be multi-lingual and to help them realize how much fun it can be to learn a new tongue” explains Zaraysky.
So, if you are trying to learn a new language, just turn on your radio, relax and get in the groove of your new tongue. Paying attention to media in your target language introduces you to the phonetical and grammatical structure of your target language. After you get used to the melodies of your new languages, then you can insert the grammar and vocabulary. Listen first. Speak later. Most importantly, make it fun. Enjoy the learning process and you will learn much more.
My Top Tips on How to Learn a Foreign Language Using The Media
1. Listen Carefully
Learning a new language means you have to change your key and tune. Dancing the cha-cha to waltz music is like speaking a new language, while still using the rhythm of your mother tongue. Let yourself take in the sounds of the language as though you were listening to a new piece of music. Even if you are just a beginner and barely know any words, you can still learn by listening. Pay attention to how people speak. Does it seem like they are reading a phone number or rattling of a list of numbers? Are they angry? Happy? Sometimes, you have to shut off your brain and inclination to interpret to analyze. Listen to the words spoken and to your intuition.
2. Relax and Just Listen
Find music in your target language that you like. It does not matter if at first you do not understand the lyrics. You may start singing along without even knowing what you are singing. You are not only learning the rhythm of the language, you are learning new vocabulary.
Relax and close your eyes. Turn off the lights. Lie down or sit in a comfortable position. Do not try to understand the words, just listen. You might fall asleep or daydream. Give yourself the time to simply listen and not do anything else. Your mind needs to be calm in order to absorb the sounds. Your ears need no other distractions to let them properly hear all the high, medium and low frequencies of the language. Do this regularly.
3. As You Listen Write Down the Lyrics
Listen to music with the lights on, your eyes open and a pencil in hand. Write the lyrics of the songs while listening. You will have to pause the music and rewind or repeat many times to get the words down. Some words will be hard to write because they may be idioms or slang that you have not learned yet, but just write as much as you can understand.
Do not be frustrated with obscure words. Compare the lyrics you noted with the original song and see how well you were able to understand the song. Some CDs come with the lyrics inside the CD case. If you do not have them, look for them online on lyrics websites. Once you have your version of the lyrics and the original, you can see how much you were able to understand from listening to the song. Use your dictionary to translate the words you do not know.
4. Listen to the Radio in this New Language
When you start listening to radio broadcasts, the radio announcers may sound like they are emitting a stream or storm of sounds and not individual words. In time, you will hear familiar words repeated and will learn to distinguish them. You can actively listen to the radio attentively and take notes, listen to it in the background or just close your eyes to listen without straining yourself to understand.
5. Watch TV Daily!
Let’s say you are learning Spanish. You have found a local Spanish language TV station in your area or you are watching the national Univision news. Even without knowing all the words, you will be able to get the gist of some of the news reports. The images and video footage of events already tell you what the news announcers are talking about. Tune into how they are speaking and the words they are using to describe the images on screen.
Even if you cannot watch TV all the time, it is all right to do errands around the house as you listen to the TV in the background. Think of the TV as background music like you would hear in a cafê or restaurant. Even though it is not at the forefront of your consciousness, your brain is still processing it and getting used to the flow of the language.
So go forth, turn up the music and turn on the language-learning!
Language is Music is published as part of the Create Your World book series along with Travel Happy, Budget Low, a guidebook for traveling the world on a small budget. The books are available on Zaraysky’s website, Amazon and in bookstores.
Susanna Zaraysky grew up in California, lived in nine countries and has traveled to over 50. She is passionate about sharing her experience and belief that one’s economic status or past language experience does not matter. Anyone can train to become multi-lingual and enjoy the wonder of seeing and truly experiencing the magnificent world we live in.
Tips and Articles on How to Become a Good Teacher
April 9, 2010 by admin
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If you haven’t checked out some of my most popular articles from suite 101, I’ve provided them below. Maybe just what you’re looking for! Stay tuned – more to come!
How to Integrate English Language Learners (new!)
How New Teachers Can Manage a Classroom
Time Management Tips for Busy Teachers
Strategies for Teaching ELLs Effectively
Language Scaffolds for Young ESL Learners
Strategies for Differentiating Instruction for English language learners
Oral Diagnostic Assessments for English language learners
Adapting Educational Standards for English language learners
Organizational Tools for First Days of School
Modification Reading Strategies for New Teachers
How to Create Stress-Free Teaching Goals (perfect for setting new year’s goals)
Ideas for Taking Classroom Attendance
Successful K-12 Reflective Learning Experiences
Making Authentic Instruction Fun!
Advice and Ideas to Help You With Lesson Planning
Click here for all my articles.
Tips on How to Survive and Thrive During the Last Few Months of School
April 7, 2010 by admin
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With just a few months left until the end of the school year, you may already be wondering just how it is possible to get to the end without becoming batty. With spring and warmer weather still to come, students continue to have their own excuses for not putting 100% effort. And of course, there are more non-school related activities that may distract them. Perhaps you already for example, teach fewer students because of some of these “distractions.”
So how can you keep it together and still thrive in the classroom? This guide will show you how:
1.Look at each day as an opportunity to try new teaching ideas and activities. Not only will your students appreciate the change, but it can help prevent discipline problems as students begin to lose focus and concentration.
2.Now’s a good time to plan your vacation and your personal development for the summer. Register for those workshops you’ve been eyeing but didn’t have the time during the school year. This will energize you!
3. Think Outside of the Box. When planning interesting and motivating lessons, ask yourself: what resources are available to you? You may wish to use the computer room to supplement a reading lesson. Click here to read “5 Lesson Planning Tips on How to Use Technology Successfully in Your Classroom.” If you don’t have a computer room available at your disposal, plan games as part of authentic instruction. (Don’t overdo them, either!)
4. Praise, praise and praise! Use a lot of positive reinforcement to suit the ages of the students you teach. A little bit of praise will go a long long way.
5. Have a Plan to Prevent Your Rules From Coming Apart.
6. Keep a Reflective Teaching Journal. Writing about your teaching experiences helps you acquire objectivity and clarity especially on those difficult and unpredictable days. Five minutes is sometimes all you need!
7. Have Fun and Interesting Review Sessions. Have practice and review sessions of the material you’ve taught. There are so many many ways in which to do this but choose those activities that speak to your teaching style. For example, you could have a game or mini-competition. Show a film to reinforce important themes or concepts followed by a worksheet. Use songs to review grammar structures and vocabulary. Have a textbook treasure hunt. The list is endless.
8.Use the last few months of the school year to support a struggling student, reach out to another teacher or make a difference with a difficult class. We all want to feel we’ve made a difference in our teaching and end the school year on a good note.
9.Read a few stories from Erin Gruwell’s Teaching Hope. This book is chock full of teachers who faced adversity and strived to overcome them./ Not only will this renew your faith in your teaching and you will be that you have the POWER to make a heartfelt difference!
10.Overcome the teaching “blahs” by reading a few teaching blogs as well as the online version of Scholastic’s Instructor. Hundreds if not thousands of teachers are dealing with the same problems like you and can offer a new fresh way of coping with the last few months of the school year.
Need more help?
Click here to read more tips and tricks on how to survive and thrive in the classroom. This eBook will give you all the practical advice you need from a veteran teacher on how to maximize your productivity and enjoy each and every day in the classroom.
The Teacher’s Writer Life
April 4, 2010 by admin
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Last week, I accepted an online literature course for a major university. As some of you already know, I have been teaching online for quite some time but this was my first real opportunity to teach literature. I fell in love with teaching online when I first started and knew this would definitely be another wonderful way to meet my educational goals.
I’ve also did some serious thinking over spring break and decided that a few scheduling changes in my life were in order so I can keep up with various writing and teaching projects. You probably noticed that I didn’t get this ezine out on time. So for now, I’ll be sending out the New Teacher Resource center ezine only twice a month – on Wednesdays. I suspect this may change once school is over but I am still figuring it out. I’ll still be providing resources, tips and products to help advance your teaching careers and you’ll still receive your free gift in one of these issues. You can also continue to read updates and articles on my blogsite, The New Teacher Resource Center as I will continue to provide ESL teaching and coaching support.
On a less formal note, I am writing to you from New York City where I grew up. It’s a perfect sunny day today after some days of rain. On Tuesday, we saw the absolutely gorgeous Macy’s flower show at Herald Square. I uploaded one of my favorite pictures above. Then we headed to the American Museum of Natural History. Of course it was jam packed with people, but my five year old loved the animal exhibits, (especially the American eagles!) and the ocean exhibit with a real life size blue whale hanging from the walls. (my childhood favorite)
In this room, I delighted in reading the information about sharks and other forms of sea life. Now that I’m wearing more research and writing hats so everything I read was fascinating!
As a children’s writer for the non-fiction markets, I’m always researching new ideas and sending out new ideas for book proposals. I used Nancy Sander’s winning formula for “Creating a Perfect Pitch” which resulted in a successful response from a major editor. As a result, I am working on a book proposal on Jewish and Israeli folktales for Libraries Unlimited. And I listened to Pat McCarthy’s Digging for Gold: Researching Non-fiction to help me decide which sources are primary and secondary. You can purchase these teleclasses at www.getrealresources.com. And when you become a member of the Children’s Writers’ Coaching Club, you have FREE access to 4 informative teleclasses a month!
Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the resources I’ve brought to you in this ezine. Please let me know if there is anything I can help you with so you can achieve success in the classroom in the most productive way!
Happy spring, Passover and Easter!
