TL;DR: Everyone wants to be engaged. What are some hooks you use in lessons to capture kids’ attention? Use the ATLAS strategy to think about engagement—attention, transition, lesson, activity, and summation. Engagement Engagement! We can’t get away from it. This is only the 3rd post of my new series—Kids Do Better When…and I’m already talking about engagement again. Do you … Read More
What’s in Your Diet?
TL;DR: What type of media are you consuming? Reflect on what media makes you feel good when you engage with it. Consider adjusting the content you consume and start to spend less time on platforms that make you feel poorly and focus on what makes you feel good. What’s in Your Diet? If I were to ask you what’s in … Read More
The Gift of Cultivating Joy: It’s Like a Boomerang!
TL;DR: We CAN cultivate more joy in our lives. A CORE belief is that relationships are gifts to value and treasure. Uplifting others brings joy to ourselves and others. Learn how to notice, name, and nuture AND how words are gifts. Your joy can grow and thrive from others too. Learn how to throw your joy boomerang out and how … Read More
How Do You Differentiate Up?
TL;DR: When you differentiate, what are you doing for students who need more of a challenge? You must differentiate up as well. When we hear the term differentiate, we often think this means differentiating to support kids who are struggling. It might mean taking a complex task and chunking it into more easy-to-digest pieces. It could be scaffolding a lesson … Read More
The Secret of Building Resilient Kids: Growth Mindset
TL;DR: Learn to teach kids that failure is a process and never a final state. Mistakes are opportunities to learn, to fail forward, and keep growing. Use picture books to teach resilience and grit. Growth Mindset: No More Giving Up! So often, kids say, “I can’t” or “It’s too hard.” So how do we instill the notion that failure is … Read More