Ready to Teach

Secondary language arts teachers (grades 7 through 10) looking for something online for students - I invite you to download the Greek Morphemes Lesson One from the Ready to Teach website morphemes page at https://readytoteach.com/morphemes/ . Click on the "sample Greek Instruction" link to download the PPT file. Click through it, and if you like it, place it on your class website. If you wish, email me for a PDF of the Student Book Lesson One pages (4th edition coming in 2020) and you may share those with students or use them as a template to give directions to your students.. This is a free offer of a resource that is immediately available. Just trying to help a bit.

Ready To Teach ⋆ Classroom Resources for Teachers

Increasing your physical presence among your students can prevent problems and improve both behavior and academics. Learn more at “Word of Wisdom #2” blog at readytoteach.com/2018/03/physical-proximity.

If you’ve told your students 999 times to put their names on their papers, check out the blog entry “Word of Wisdom #5” at the link above before going to 1,000.

So true! Read more at https://readytoteach.com/2018/03/physical-proximity

Read more on the blog post 📖

https://readytoteach.com/2018/03/teacher-sharing-teacher-stealing/
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May ends, and the school year is completed (or almost). Of course, every teacher knows that summer “vacation” is a myth. Yes, we may take a couple of weeks to breathe deeply, sleep late, and stay in pajamas until noon. BUT we know that summer is not the mythological three months of freedom some would say.

At end of a school year, as a nonparent, I’d take a three-day get-away at a local state park (with lodge and pool) to inhale nature, read something poolside not related to education, and exhale academia. That done, I returned to clean out closets, mow grass, and luxuriate in sleeping past 6:00 a.m. And then, after a few weeks, it was time to begin thinking about the next school year. When I assumed parental responsibilities, I’d forgo the state park trips for multiple trips to city parks until summer camps kicked in, clean out closets, mow grass (the kids were at camp), and forget about academia. And then, after a few weeks, it was time to begin thinking about the next school year.
As the summer begins, I encourage you to reflect on your successes this past year. For more than nine months you’ve sown seeds into students’ minds and character development. You’ll likely never see the crop that results, but you have sown the seeds, and with that, the possibility of great growth. I suggest that you can “sow a better garden” next year if you start preparing your seed bed now.

Before you begin your next school year, I encourage you to plan now for that all-important first week of school. What you do in that first week of school sets the trajectory for the whole year – and makes a huge difference in student behavior and academic achievement. How to make this good beginning? The best way I know is with the Getting Off to a Good Start Program that is research-based, teacher-tested, and includes key evidence-based practices for successful teaching. The program pulls together everything I know after a half century in education – from teaching, researching, and talking with over 2,000 teachers across the U.S. – and presents it in a book and eight videos that can make a major positive difference in your life and your students’ lives in the coming year.
I encourage you to check out the readytoteach website at https://readytoteach.com/. You’ll find the book plus video at https://readytoteach.com/product/getting-off-to-a-good-start-the-first-three-days-of-school-with-video-access/.
Please check it out. You can do the whole program over the course of a week – it takes on average a total of 7 to 10 hours of time. Oh, how I wish I’d had access to these resources when I was a teacher!

Planning for the 2019-20 school year? Our evidence-based program teaches teachers how to develop a set of effective classroom management techniques that prepare both teachers and their students for a good start in a new school year. Browse a sample of the go-at-your-own-pace screencast videos resulting from Dr. Alene Harris’ passion to help teachers at ReadyToTeach.com.

Ever wish you could be in two places at the same time?

Actually, in the classroom, YOU CAN! But you have to break a teaching habit that you’ve observed in every class as a student and up to this point most likely have done and do in every class as a teacher: you stand near the student with whom you are talking.

Human beings love attention – preferably positive, but then again, negative attention is better than no attention (more about that in another post). So how do we “attend” to our students in the classroom? Two ways: PHYSICALLY AND VERBALLY.

Ever notice the student with whom you are talking and the ones by whom you are standing are really well behaved? Indeed, if we want to redirect a student’s attention to us, we may call on them or move to be nearer to them. It works for all ages of students in classrooms – and I’ve used these two techniques many times with teachers and administrators in workshops. Both standing near and talking with a person focuses that person’s attention.

In the classroom we tend to look at and talk with the same student – one who is near us. In other words, verbal and physical attention both go to the same student. But what if we divided that attention to influence behavior in two different areas of the room? What if we stood by students in one area of the room and looked at and spoke with students in a different area? Then our attention – and behavioral influence – would be in two places at once.

Consider the elementary and secondary classrooms in the diagrams included in this post – the teacher’s proximal attention is engaging the yellow-code students near him towards the front, while his verbal attention with a student in the back corner is engaging the student called on, those seated near that student, and any students in an imaginary straight line from the teacher to the student on whom he called. This the teacher’s influence is in two places at the same time.

But this is hard to do – at least I found it so. It took great intentional effort in my classroom – and it still takes it today in workshops with teachers. Old habits are hard to break. BUT it can be done. And as a teacher your influence CAN be in two places at the same time.