Waking the Brain with Morning Stretches You might remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about my take away from the Kagan training that I attended and how I was planning to Refocus Our Classroom. One of the big ideas that I touched on was waking up the brain through big muscle movement. So this month for the Bright Ideas link up I am sharing how it is going. The short version is that it is amazing! The long version isn't all that long, so I will share it with you. Each morning, after our class meeting, we do a series of stretches. To perform this stretch you simply start by reaching your right hand across the midline of your body as far left as you can while simultaneously stepping your right foot back. Then you repeat with the left side and say, "Cookies!" The first time we did this I chose milk and cookies, but now each time we name two items to say. I have found that by doing this each morning it helps all of us to wake up and be in a better mood to start our learning!
6 Targets To Teach The Way The Brain Learns ShareTwittPin Teach The Way The Brain Learns by Ramona Persaud When you’re standing in front of a classroom of students who’re not quite sure they even want to be in your class, much less pay attention to what’s being said, things like neuroscience, research studies, and teaching the way the brain learns are an abstraction. Yet, brain-targeted teaching can engage and excite students because it taps into factors that stimulate the brain, grab the attention, and set the stage for learning. Dr. Krug continues, “Learning only occurs when the student can connect new information to old information. Mettler also points out the importance of recognizing it as a non-linear process, “The components are all interrelated.” Brain Target 1: Establish the emotional climate for learning Neuroscience: The brain feels before it thinks. Usable classroom translation: stress impedes learning. Brain Target 2: Creating the Physical Learning Environment Neuroscience: The brain craves novelty.
5 Tips for keeping kids active throughout the day | Teacher's Notebook Blog It doesn’t take many weeks into the school year before you start noticing a change in your students. Gone is the excitement generated at the beginning of the school year when learning is fresh. Now, students are struggling to stay on task. To boost engagement, give your learners ways to stay active throughout the day. According to the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, being more physically active offers many benefits to classroom children. Take brain breaks Every 30 minutes or so, aim for movement in your classroom. Ditch the chair The traditional classroom chair may be doing more harm than good for your students. Incorporate music and storytelling Add music to your classroom, and give kids permission to take “dance breaks” when certain songs play. Storytelling is another way to get kids moving. Active review games Are you reviewing concepts or math facts with your kids regularly? Consider “Pop Goes the Answer.” Send them outside About the author:
20 Strategies for Motivating Reluctant Learners Kathy Perez has decades of experience as a classroom educator, with training in special education and teaching English language learners. She also has a dynamic style. Sitting through her workshop presentation was like being a student in her classroom. Perez says when students are engaged, predicting answers, talking with one another and sharing with the class in ways that follow safe routines and practices, they not only achieve more but they also act out less. “If we don’t have their attention, what’s the point?” She’s a big proponent of brain breaks and getting kids moving around frequently during the day. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. NED’s GREAT EIGHT I feel OKIt mattersIt’s activeIt stretches meI have a coachI have to use itI think back on itI plan my next steps 9. Build a safe environmentRecognize diversity in the classroomAssessment must be formative, authentic and ongoingInstructional strategies should be a palette of opportunitiesNew models 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
Energizing Brain Breaks: Toe Tapping Energizing Brain Break Toe Tapping 1. Stand Up.2. Face your partner.3. Both you and your partner put out your right leg and tap your right feet together 1 time and say "1" out loud.4. Tap your left feet together 3 times and say "3" out loud.5. WHAT ARE ENERGIZING BRAIN BREAKS?
Successful Classroom Management :: Teacher Training Resources 20 Three-Minute Brain Breaks Wednesday's guest post about why kids need to move from pediatric occupational therapist Loren Shlaes was so popular that I decided to follow it up with a list of Brain Breaks you can use with your students. These are great to use anytime your students are feeling restless and are struggling to pay attention. Most of these will only take a few minutes, and then you can get back to the lesson with your students ready to focus on the lesson at hand.5-4-3-2-1. In this simple game, students stand up and the teacher (or leader) has them do five different movements in descending order. For example the teacher would say: "Do fivejumping jacks, spin around four times, hop on one foot threetimes, walk all the way around the classroom two times, give your neighbor one high-five (pausing in between each task for students to do it).Trading Places Have students stand behind their pushed-in chairs. Please note that I did not come up with all of these out of my own head.
20 Tips to Help De-escalate Interactions With Anxious or Defiant Students | MindShift | KQED News Anxiety is a huge barrier to learning and very difficult for educators to identify. “When anxiety is fueling the behavior, it’s the most confusing and complicated to figure out,” Minahan said. That’s because a student isn’t always anxious; it tends to come and go based on events in their lives, so their difficulties aren’t consistent. When we are anxious our working memory tanks, making it very difficult to recall any salient information. Researchers surveyed a group of first graders none of whom had any reading or math disabilities. “Anxiety is a learning disability; it inhibits your ability to learn,” Minahan said. Anxiety isn’t about ability, it’s about interference, which means that traditional rewards and consequences don’t often work with this group of learners. “Rewards and consequences are super helpful to increase motivation for something I’m able to do,” Minahan said. A common teacher response to low-level negative attention seeking is to ignore the student.
Icebreakers that Rock We’re coming up fast on the beginning of another school year. That means a new batch of students to get to know, students who need to be made comfortable in your classroom, and who need to get to know each other. It’s essential to start building relationships with your students right from the start. And how to accomplish this? Icebreakers. I planned to create a nice big post with dozens of icebreaker ideas you could choose from. They require students to take massive social risks with people they barely know. So I have scrapped my plan to curate good icebreakers from the Internet. In my own classrooms, with middle school, high school, and college students, I have played all three of these games with great success. Each of these will likely sound familiar to you, although the names may not be exactly what you’ve known them as. Blobs and Lines Here are some sample prompts you can use for this game: Concentric Circles Do you play any sports? This or That Sample questions for This or That:
Are Your Students Engaged? Don’t Be So Sure By David Price It might be time we re-thought student engagement. Are we measuring the right things? Are we taking disengagement seriously enough? January is a time for resolutions. Perhaps educators, in 2014, need to resolve to better understand student engagement, challenge the myths around it, and make it a higher priority in their relationships with students. Let’s deal with the issue of the importance of engagement first. But for these findings to translate into actions, we have to re-think what we mean by engagement. Myth #1: “I can see when my students are engaged.” Don’t be so sure. “But why didn’t any of your teachers spot this?” He replied, “I learned how to fall asleep with my eyes open.” Students are learning to modify their behavior in class so that they appear to be engaged while, in reality, they’ve intellectually checked-out. Myth #2 : “They must be engaged — look at their test scores!” Myth #3 : “They must be engaged — they’re having fun.”
Open Space Technology: Decision by Inclusion The first time I heard of Open Space Technology was in 2013 at the initial meeting of the Teacher Resistance and Action Network, a group of teachers and education practitioners who had gathered under the guidance of Dr. Thomas Poetter of Miami University to discuss how to teach responsibly in the age of high-stakes testing. My friend and mentor, Kevin Lydy, had invited me to attend what was billed as a non-conference. It was a life-changing experience, not only because of the great conversations that I had with fellow educators, but also because I learned about a technique that I'd never heard of before: Open Space Technology. Some Edutopia readers may be familiar with Edcamps, which are, in fact, based on (and utilize) OST. This led him to ask the question: "Is it possible to combine the level of synergy and excitement present in a good coffee break with the substantive activity and results characteristic of a good meeting?" How OST Works Why Use OST?