Before working in my current district, I taught in an inner-city school with a very transient population of learners. My class list in September always looked different from my class list in June. That was when I started to assign a number to each student. This system is often referred
Imagine this… Your class is filled with loud chatter, laughter, and perhaps even some singing. You do one little thing. Just one. And then everything changes. All you hear is silence. (And no, it is not screaming on the top of your lungs.) MAGIC. That is the only word that
Shhhh… It’s a secret. 😉 I actually take attendance on my own silently. As the students are getting settled, I go down my class list and visually verify that all of the children are accounted for and submit my attendance online. This allows me to quickly and accurately get the
Kindness is not part of our academic standards; however, it is so important to designate time to teach students about this concept. One way to do this is to teach students to become “bucket fillers.” The idea of bucket fillers is based on Dr. Donald O. Clifton’s metaphor of the
Is dismissal crazy in your classroom? I know dismissal was the craziest time of day in my classroom for a long time. Transitions are always challenging, but there was so much to do in those final minutes that it was always hard to make sure everyone had what they needed and were
