Week 11: Homework

In This week's class, we looked at what homework is and why we assign it for young learners.  I shared some helpful hints about writing letters to parents and preparing calendars that communicate with parents about homework.  I hope you all had fun!

Next week is our last week of class.  We will share our scrapbooks and have a nice "goodbye" class.  Here is a sheet of points squares for everyone to put in their scrapbooks to show me which assignments you were doing!  I'm looking forward to seeing all of your work!

Week 10: Parent Communication

This week, we looked at a few different ways that we can communicate with the parents of the children that we teach.  We all know about making phone calls and writing emails, but hopefully the methods presented in class are something new and useful for all of you.  If you would like to make examples for your own classes and put them in your scrapbooks with descriptions, go ahead!  I'd like to see how other teachers use these ideas.

As promised, here are the files for my Happy-Grams!!!

Week 9: When Students Break the Rules

Even though we all prepare clear expectations and make simple rules that students understand, eventually those rules will be broken.  Children learn about boundaries by testing them and when those boundaries are crossed we need to know some good ways to react.  If possible, using logical consequences is a good way to discourage problematic behavior while teaching the reasons that such behaviors are unacceptable.  Just remember the "Three R's":

Related: Teaches cause and effect
Respectful: Is not too mean and does not embarrass the child
Reasonable: It is possible for both teacher and student to follow through with the consequence

If your consequence has all three of those, it's probably a logical one!

Here is more information about this if you would like to read about it!
Punishment vs. Logical Consequences
Types of Logical Consequences

Week 8: Rewarding Good Behavior

This week's class was about showing our students how much we appreciate them, but also about helping them to appreciate themselves.  When we use reward systems, it's important to first be sure that we actually need a reward system.  If you don't need it, don't do it!  However, if your students need a little "push" to help motivate them in class, rewarding the behaviors you want to see could help.

We discussed some different types of rewards in class and then made our own reward systems out of things that we had lying around the center room.  I was very impressed with the ideas that all of you came up with!  I'll be interested to see the creative things some people share in their scrapbooks.