ENGAGING STUDENTS

Engaging students is crucial to learning and interactive whiteboards a valuable tool that will take lessons to the next level in literacy learning.  Explore with Literacy Smarts : simple classroom strategies for using interactive whiteboards to engage students, by Jennifer Harper and Brenda Stein Dzaldov.  Introduces simple activities and tasks that use interactive whiteboard technology in original ways to go beyond simple text and encourages connecting the classroom to the “real” world. 

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Three new volumes with brain-focused strategies for learning-and living for focused classrooms, mindful learning and resilient children from Scholastic.  The MindUp curriculum.  Grades Pre-K-2 ; Grades 3-5; Grades 6-8.  “This research-based curriculum features 15 lessons that use the latest information about the brain to dramatically improve behavior and learning for all students. Each lesson offers easy strategies for helping students focus their attention, improve their self-regulation skills, build resilience to stress, and develop a positive mind-set in both school and life”.

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Another addition Socially responsible literacy : teaching adolescents for purpose and power, by Paula Selvester and Deborah G Summers. A new vision moves teachers away from teaching reading for its own purpose to seeing reading as a way to motivate students to connect with their world.  Each chapter includes reflection questions that move the reader toward personal and professional development, along with classroom applications that provide specific strategies and ideas for engaging literacy projects.

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Calm, alert, and learning : classroom strategies for self-regulation by Stuart Shanker. Canada’s leading expert on self-regulation guides through an exploration of the five major domains of self-regulation-what they are, how they work, what they look like in the classroom, and what we can do to help students strengthen in a domain.

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