Teaching Tips
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Students Need to Feel Useful and Important
Giving students jobs and responsibilities in the classroom is a great idea. It’s something that many early years educators already do. “Asking preschoolers for help not only promotes kindness, empathy, and a sense of purpose, it also underscores a sense of responsibility and investment in the family, the community, and the world. When they are […]
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Teachers Need to Lead By Example
Preshool Clues: Raising Smart, Inspired, and Engaged Kids in a Screen-Filled World by Angela C. Santomero For the past month, my Teaching Tip Tuesday posts have been directly inspired by the wisdom in this book. First, we looked at how we can use scaffolding to help our students reach new heights. Then, we looked at […]
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Helping Kids Craft Positive Inner Monologues
Some people think optimism is an inherent trait. There are optimists in this world and there are pessimists. But what if you could teach optimism? Wouldn’t that be a great trait to instill in our students and young ones. Angela C. Santomero beleives we can do just that. “The skills needed to learn optimism are similar […]
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4 Reasons to Use Enriching Vocabulary in Your Daily Communication with Children
When I first had my daughter, I was determined not to use baby talk around her. I never really saw the benefit of doing so. I thought that I would speak in regular words and sentences and make it appropriate for her age. It is something I have always down. As I read, Preschool Clues […]
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The 4 Easy Steps to Resolve Conflict (That Every Teacher and Parent Should Know)
In her book, Preschool Clues, Angela C. Santomero has some great ideas for parents and educators. “To me, the smartest kids are the ones who can survey a situation, have a point of view, express that point of view, and attempt to make steps to improve the situation.” This is something we can teach. And […]
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Helping Kids Swing to New Heights
Scaffolding is a tool that great educators use instinctively. I don’t like the metaphor behind the term, however. We need a better visual image and story to help illustrate exactly what it means. Angela C. Santomero provides one for us in her brilliant book, Preschool Clues . . . “Imagine a preschooler is playing on the […]
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The Magic in the Pause (Lessons from Blue’s Clues)
When Blue’s Clues premiered in 1995, it was truly unique and revolutionized preschool television with the use of something called the four-beat Pause. It worked this way, Steve, the host of the show, would break the fourth wall and ask the viewer a question. He would then pause and give the chance for the viewer […]
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Beats N’ Rhymes: A PA Day Experience (Friday)
Beats N’ Rhymes is a unique P.A. Day Experience that will be held at the Boys & Girls Club of London this Friday. It’s an introduction to the world of creating your own beats from scratch. You’ll learn the basics of music production, sampling sounds, and sequencing your own composition. You will also learn how to […]
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The Night Before the First Day of School
Here’s an excerpt from “Poet X” by Elizabeth Acevedo. I thought it was fitting to share on this, the last day of summer vacation. It is written from the perspective of a teenage girl. I will be blogging about this verse novel soon. It was a great read! Let’s stick with the night-before-school theme and check […]
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Build Vocabulary by Reading an Article a Day
I love when I get great teaching ideas from whatever is I am reading in my spare time. This one comes courtesy of Alan Gelb from his book, The Seven Steps to Confident Writing. I think I will make this a daily homework assignment next year. I very rarely assign homework. I think that if […]