Teacher Tips

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Here are a couple of Teacher Tip examples that you might enjoy:

Energize Students with Innovative Play

From A Mindset for Learning by Kristine Mraz and Christine Hertz

The most powerful classroom cultures are the ones that have rich opportunities for playful engagement. Play has a wide range of definitions—rough and tumble, fantasy, construction play for starters—and all of them have a place in school. How might constructive play be practically implemented in classrooms?

Try this: Encourage children to create pretend worlds in the primary grades.

• Have children try inquiry-based play where they dramatize historical events, or use blocks to build, and better understand, Roman civilization in upper elementary classrooms.

• Foster an environment where play is a place safe for risks, for laughter, and for joy. These testing grounds of play help students become aware of their own ability to innovate.

There is wild and raucous recess play, but there is also sustained and involved intentional play. Recess play exercises bodies and energizes spirits. The other kind of play may seem quieter, but also works on mental dexterity, flexibility, and self-regulation.

Let Students Talk First

From After THE END, Second Edition by Barry Lane

Here’s a bit of advice for your writing conferences that is simple yet powerful: when you meet with a student, make sure the student speaks first. To get the conference started, students should arrive prepared with either a short paragraph about their writing or a list of questions. Of course, you could be the one to kick things off with “Tell me how your writing is going” or “What questions do you have for me about your writing?” But the student is the one to offer substantive details first. With this small adjustment to your writing conferences, you will make a huge difference in the amount of ownership that students feel over their writing.