I recently submitted proposals to present the following sessions for this year's Summer Institute for Joplin teachers. These courses, if approved will be available for teachers to attend during the first week of August.
Positive Discipline and Instruction
Sometimes it comes down to the way a teacher reacts to needy students and students who make poor choices. Here are some strategies to help you manage those struggles you're having with unwanted behavior. Using techniques from Fred Jones (Tools for Teaching), we'll explore the steps to a positive approach to discipline and instruction - down to the most basic tools of breathing, turning, and pausing.
Stop Not Reinventing the Wheel It may not be a music, art, or performance class...but if music soothes the savage beast, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, why aren't you using visual images, moving pictures, and music to teach? From Air Supply to ZZ Top, from Beethoven to Coldplay, we're using music in different ways - for ambience, focus, reading, writing, and celebration. From sketches to Youtube videos, we're using art to teach comprehension, enhance reading fluency, to inspire writing. From beginning to end, this session is chockablock with ideas to add color and rhythm to your classroom. | Give and Take Do you need your students to show more respect and consideration to each other? Are you looking for ways to get more eye contact/ tracking from your students? Is it possible to explicitly teach manners and core behaviors in ways your students will understand and love? Beginning with simple improv/theater games, this session will give you practical ways to develop your classes into taking and giving attention with their peers in turn. They'll soon yield the floor and build on the comments of their peers naturally. Apply these techniques, and you'll soon discover new - and fun - ways to achieve a culture of positive relationships in your classroom. |
Using SeeSaw
Seesaw is an app and website that easily fits into your curricula. Whether you want your students to post regular entries to a safe blog of their own or keep an organized electronic portfolio. Seesaw allows your students to report their own learning through drawing, writing, recording their voices, and making their own videos. Make your own assignments on Seesaw and watch your students dig in. Teachers control every aspect of this program. Teachers can also communicate and engage parents directly from the account. In this presentation by a Seesaw ambassador, you will be introduced to a simple and impressive program.
