Laying the foundation from the start

Laying a strong foundation for your classroom culture, whether you're a homeroom teacher, a specialist, or an interventionist, is a significant task.  No matter how long you've been teaching, you definitely map out those first few weeks of school to cover your expectations, procedures, and the ethos.  All your read alouds, morning meetings, and activities revolve around building this important foundation so that the school year can run more smoothly.

1. Simple guidelines with specific acceptable behaviors

For my students in grades 3-5, I begin with the foundational classroom culture statement: I want everyone to grow and succeed.  Which means we need to agree on certain expectations so that all learners have the opportunity to reach their goals.  This leads to the presentation of 4 simple guidelines: 

• Be respectful to the teachers, your classmates, and the school.
• Be responsible for your learning and your decisions.
• Use kind and polite words and actions.
• Make safe choices.

Learners with Dyslexia & their Mental Health

I *love* that during that Dyslexia Awareness Month, reading teachers and organizations highlight important teaching tips, statistics, and research regarding this language-based specific learning disability and its impact on learners.  Many of us who work with struggling readers also notice the need to address their social-emotional needs as part of our instructional strategy.  So then I wondered:  what does the research say about the mental health of learners with dyslexia?

New Year's Resolutions: Definition + Example -- Create!

How do you get your students excited and hopeful for the New Year?  By giving them something to look forward to.  And there's nothing better than being able to picture a better version of yourself in the future!

It seems to be a natural rhythm of life that when we begin a new year, we want to grow, become better, or improve from previous years.  And we pass this onto our children.  So how do we deconstruct the New Year's Resolution for our students?

Integrating Growth Mindset Throughout Our Instructional Day

Growth mindset is one of my favorite things that has come out in recent years, along with the science of reading.   I have a firm belief that if we use best teaching practices and support our students' development of grit and fortitude, they will become very resilient readers.

As teachers, we traditionally talk about it in the beginning of the school year or in January for New Year's Resolutions.  We create goals, we post them, and maybe at the end of the year, we'll evaluate our progression towards achieving them.  That's a good start . . . but our students need more.

In order to really develop a growth mindset, it needs to be ingrained in all our directions, instruction, conversations, and activities.  And it can be done without heaping more work our over-burdened selves.