Student engagement is key to building a safe, positive school culture that increases achievement, fosters creativity and community, and decreases boredom, alienation, and drop-out rates (Marks, 2000). Lifting up student voices and involvement in your classroom is an important factor in building positive classroom culture. In the 2016 article “Giving Students a Voice,” published by the…
We can’t believe the school year is ending, but here are some awesome story highlights by student request. Not all these stories were published this past year, but these were stories that students this year mentioned as their favorites…Enjoy! Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet The story of “Romeo and Juliet” is a fictional Shakespearean tragedy about…
Do you have news overload? Do you need to take a break? Here are interesting stories that you can listen to with students that don’t contain current events. Find stories that feature kindness, giving, equity, social good in communities, and more. Kids are doing great things. Listen to how these students became environmental activists after…
What do we want our students to learn? Of course we want them to gain mastery in grade-level content and skills. We may also want them to acquire skills to manage their emotions, set goals, feel empathy, maintain good relationships and make good decisions. Integrating content learning with social and emotional learning is a process…
Using a story can engage students in current, local topics that relate to content you are teaching. These stories can be used throughout instruction to engage students, to practice listening, to extend learning, to reinforce content and concepts, to support research, or as a review of content. They can also clarify concepts, preview a unit,…
