M401 Fall 2014

This is a great project for students to do in the first week of school. It helps the teacher get to know the students and for the students to get to know each other.

This blog assembles a list of 14 great books to read aloud in the first week of school to set the tone for a positive and inclusive classroom.

This site lists poems to use at the beginning of the school year that would be appropriate for younger grades. I want to incorporate poetry in my classroom from the very beginning of the year, and this would be one way to start.

This article talks about some of the recent steps some states are taking to limit testing that is redundant and unproductive.

Parents are feeling the stress on their children from standardized testing and are protesting.

This article looks at math in the earliest years of education as an indicator of ongoing academic achievement. It is interesting to think about with so much focus on literacy during those years.

This site gives ideas and context for teaching about recent issues of racism and police brutality.

This article, from the perspective of one of Michael Brown's former educators, talks about the importance of teachers in communities that are in pain.

This article talks about discovering the underlying causes of behavior, since undesired behaviors communicate to teachers about what is going on with their students.

This article talks about implementing Positive Peer Review, where students support each other's good behaviors instead of just tattling.

This outlines the CHOICES management system, where letters are erased for undesirable behavior. It also gives long lists of texts to address the choices that we make.

This website focuses on supporting learners with learning disabilities and other individual needs. This article details a plan for preventing negative and reinforcing positive behaviors.

This website shows commonly used management strategies that are ineffective.

This website has a list of classroom management songs with links to lyrics and music.

This article outlines a recently proposed mandate about juvenile offenders and their right to education

The white house released a statement in support of computer science programs in all levels of education.

Nobel Peace winner Malala speaks about the importance of education in combating intolerance. A great article about why education is important, especially in developing countries.

This is a really interesting reference about standardized testing. It is very fact based and there is very little opinion. The different sections provide a history of standardized testing, a pros and cons list, different statistics related to testing in public schools, along with many other interesting resources. This is a really powerful resource that relates to a very prevalent issue in today's schools.

This is an interesting article about some of the biggest challenges we are facing with public education in this day and age. Some were obvious and others were things I had not thought of. This is a good article to read in order to educate yourself on the types of issues you will be dealing with in your future classroom.