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Secrets to Having an Awesome First Day of School

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Tomorrow is the first day of school.   Your body is flooded with a mixture of equal parts nerves and excitement.   You scramble semi-productively around your home checking and double-checking that all the supplies you need is packed. You simultaneously review the physical checklist in front of you and the mental checklist running through your overworked brain. You envision your classroom, as you left it hours ago.   Everything seemed to be in the perfect spot earlier today.   You hope that is still the case. Your eyes nearly bulge out of your noggin when you read the time on the clock.   You drag yourself to bed.   You channel an optimistic mantra to overshadow the anxious thoughts residing in your mind.   You have a symphony of positive messages and negative messages colliding in your thoughts.   It is unclear which side is winning. You force yourself to take a deep breath and close your eyes, wondering, hoping, that you have everything prepared before you drift off to sle
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18 Fun Choice Activities to Boost Engagement in ELA Class

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Heads tilt and lean into palms.   Eyes repeatedly glance to the clock on the wall. Some pencils dance on notebooks.   Some pencils tap on desks.   Some pencils remain motionless. Sporadic yawns and intermittent exhales of breath serve as the background noise to the too-maintained lecturer voice. Occasional hands are raised by the few eager students in the classroom.   These new voices break up the monotony, though only for a few moments. Several students let out low-volume groans as homework is assigned that once again entails answering questions about today’s reading. Have you lived this painful scenario? Are you beginning to panic as you silently answer “yes”? There’s no shame in that. Many new teachers fall into this trap now and then of delivering a painfully boring lesson.   This does not mean that you have failed as an educator. There is good news.   That mind-numbing scenario can be prevented with choice activities.   These activities can be done in class and a
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Educational Benefits of Genius Hour

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Picture this: your child is excited to learn and is focused on completing a project. Does this seem impossible?   Are you saying, “No way, not my child”? Excitement-filled learning is possible.   Incorporating the activity called Genius Hour results in educational benefits, including having an excited learner. Genius Hour is an educational concept that fosters creativity and independent thinking.   A child selects his or her own topic to research for a project.   He or she then spends one hour each week working on this activity to become a “genius” in that content-area. According to an educational website called teachthought.com, Genius Hour is a form of learning that allows students to be “guided by their own interests, background knowledge, and curiosity.”   It is considered “‘open-ended’ learning characterized by student self-direction, passion-based learning, inquiry, and autonomy.” Working on a passion project is about breaking away from typical, curriculum-based content
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5 Extra Fabulous Must-Have Resources For Extra Help

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With schools back to in-person learning, you will absolutely have students come to your classroom after school for extra help.   Sure, sometimes the extra help is a requirement for certain students as per an administrator.   While other times, learners will seek your help on their own – major props to the students who self-advocate.   In either case, you must be prepared with resources to help your students succeed.   Note: this list is tailored to the subject of English language arts, though many of these items can be used in a variety of subjects.   Five must-have resources for an effective extra help session   Colored pencils/markers/highlighters Index Cards Worksheets Scrabble Mad Libs Colored pencils/markers/highlighters   Having writing instruments that can color-code content is helpful for all students.   These items can be especially useful to students who are finding certain course work to be a challenge.   Imagine that your student is str
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