M401 Fall 2014

This website provides a number of lessons to do with your class for the first week. It is important to get off to a good start with students and this website provides ways to do so.

A list of great activities and ice breakers to do on the first day of school. Some activities even include ideas for English Language Learners who may not be able to follow the normal back to school activities.

This article talks about ways to respond to your students in the first weeks to make the rest of the school year go more smoothly. Its important to adapt every year to your new classroom.

A lot of these things seem pretty obvious, but what I like is that the list is relatively all-encompassing which makes this a pretty handy reference for those of us who may be likely to forget something obvious like a seating chart (aka me) or are looking for a little extra motivation as the first week of school gets closer.

This website provides resources for the first week of school. It gives plenty of ideas to consider.

I found this article extremely interesting because it is taking place at Ball State, a school known for their education programs. Numbers of education majors are decreasing and students are saying it may have something to do with the public opinion of teachers and schools. I can relate to this - I have felt that some of my friends do not always appreciate my major so it is not surprising to me that this is keeping some students away from this profession, just disappointing.

This article takes a look at potential changes that will be happening to NCLB in the upcoming months. NCLB has both support and criticism so it is interesting where the program might be heading and how that will effect us as teachers.

This article talks about the importance of brain breaks in order to keep students' attention throughout the day. I have been in classrooms where teachers constantly do brain breaks, and others where they do not implement them. It is crazy to me how much more stir crazy the students without brain breaks get by the end of the day! I know I will definitely be using brain breaks in my future classroom constantly.

I thought this was an interesting article about an argument going on right now on if students should be allowed to skip school for religious classes and who that hurts in the classroom. I understand skipping for holidays, but classes? I am not sure about this one, I feel like the religious organizations should be offering these classes outside of school time because they know that the younger students are in school at certain points of the day.

I think that this is awesome! Whenever I am talking to kids who are worked up, I always noticing that they are working themselves up even more as they talk. I think this is a great tool to actually get them to cool down and relax by making them count the breaths that they are taking.

I think that when people think of behavior management, they always think of how to handle kids who are not behaving. But sometimes I feel like this just becomes negative, like yelling and punishing the students. This site has great positive suggestions on how to handle classroom management.

There are some excellent tips and tricks for how to regain control of a classroom that has gone wild. There are different activities that you can do with the class so that you do not feel like you are constantly yelling at them to be quiet.

There were some great ideas listed on this blog, but the one that I liked best was the classroom cool down spot. Even though the student needs to be separated, it is not seen as a bad thing like a time out. And students actually have something to do when they are here instead of just sitting in a corner by themselves.

I have looked through this blog post so many times, because I envy how organized this teacher. The blog post offers so many great tips and tricks on how to make a fun and exciting classroom that benefits student learning.

I thought this was a great resource for cheaply organizing and decorating the classroom. There is so much to be done for the classroom, and I think that this is a great resource for how to save some money where you can!

This is a great resource for creating a teacher binder for lesson plans, daily organization, and student information. I really liked the idea of using binders for many different things, and could definitely use this binder as the everyday binder for quick references.

This is a teacher's blog all about different management techniques she uses in her classroom. The ideas are adorable, especially if you are interested in teaching the younger grades. It is a great teacher blog in general for other resources as well.

This is a list of different words that you can use on your resume as an educator. Although you can't see the whole thing without paying, it is possible to make out some of the words. These would be great to look at and see if there is anywhere in your resume where you can sub in these words for one of the ones that you have.

This is a guide to creating your teacher portfolio for interviews. Teacher portfolios are what I felt least familiar with when talking about what we need for interviews, so this is a very beneficial resource for me of knowing what it should look like and what should go in it.

This is a blogpost about one teacher's job search. She gives some amazing advice both for the interview and the preparation you should be taking before you step into the interview room. Her blog in general is also very cool for lesson ideas - just a side note!

I thought this went along with what the principal and teachers were telling us seminar. There were some great examples of how to stand out during the job search with some cool things to do with letters of interest/portfolios/etc.