Education Station Newsletter
Vol. 1 #2 February, 2002
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Welcome to the Education Station monthly newsletter! Here we take a look at
great teacher tips, useful teaching links to great sites and helpful ideas and
activities for celebrating holidays, seasons and special days in your classroom.
Our great specials section will help you save money and we have also included
articles that look at the latest practices in education. We hope our newsletter
will help inspire you to be the best teacher you can be! This newsletter is
produced by the Education Station web site, which is located:
http://www.educationstation.ca
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In This Issue
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1. Quote of the Month
2. Teacher Tips
3. Great Links
4. Current Specials
5. Celebrate!
St. Patrick's Day
Arthur's 25th Birthday
Easter
6. What's New!
7. Article
Only the Brave
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1. Quote
" Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire."
--- William Yeats
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2. Teacher Tips
Music Box Class Management Idea
I have started doing something this year that is working. I brought a music
box to school, the kind you open the lid to play and close the lid to stop.
In the morning I wind it up tight and anytime during the day they get too
loud or talky or take too long to get ready for something I open the music
box and let it play until they get quiet or ready, then I close it. Atthe
end of the day we see if there is any music left. If there is I give them5
minutes fun time (added on to their recess the next day, quick sparkle game
or four corner (I set the timer for the 5 minutes and we stop when it goes
off). Since getting ready to leave is a problem I don't check to see if
there is anytime until we are completely ready to leave. So the 5 minute
fun has to be the next morning. It doesn't take very long before someone
says the music box is playing and they get quiet. Retta from teachers.net Mailring
Literary Lunch Bunch
Literary Lunch Bunches are fun, informal Literature Circles that kids attend
on a voluntary basis. The program is called Literary Lunch Bunch because you
hold the meetings during lunch, in your classroom or another quiet area (such
as outside at a picnic table). You can select a book that you like, or you can
ask the kids what they would like to read. Let the interest level and the abilities
of your students determine the reading pace. I generally divide a novel into
4 parts, and we take 2 weeks to read the book. We have 2 meetings a week, for
example on Tuesday and Friday. I have learned that if you take any longer to
read the book, kids lose interest and drop out. The only requirement for attending
the Lunch Bunch meetings is to read the assigned section and complete the Lunch
Bunch Bookmark. They use these bookmarks to jot down things they want to discuss
in the meeting. You don't have to require any type of assignment, but the meetings
are more exciting when kids have ta!
ken time to think about what they want to discuss. Students never receive any
type of grade for their participation in a Literary Lunch Bunch. If they haven't
done the reading or filled out the slip, they can't attend that day's meeting.
If they are prepared for the next meeting, they may join in again. Literary
Lunch Bunches are purely for the joy of reading! Idea from Laura Candler, Fayetteville,
NC
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3. Great Links
Looking for some new Art Lessons? Check out this site full of wonderful elementary
Art lessons.
http://homepage.mac.com/krohrer/iad/lessons/elem/elemlessons.html
The graphic organizers on this site will help you and your students organize
ideas and concepts.
http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-6293.html
If you teach beginning reading, you are going to love the 28 little books you
can download, print and assemble with your class from this site.
http://www.readinga-z.com/newfiles/preview.html
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4. Current Specials
The following products are on sale at Education Station for the week of Friday
Feb 15th
through Thursday Feb 21st.
http://www.educationstation.ca/index.php
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5. Celebrate!
Celebrate St. Patrick's Day
http://www.kidskonnect.com/StPats/StPatsHome.html
Celebrate Arthur's Birthday
Did you know that Arthur is celebrating his 25th birthday this year? Create
and Celebrate a great Arthur Book Study with some ideas from this site.
http://hometown.aol.com/teach1holloway/Arthur.html
Celebrate Easter
http://www.holidays.net/easter/
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6. What's New
Check out some of our great new products recently added to the site!
http://www.educationstation.ca/viewnew.php
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7. Article
Only The Brave
by Lisa Renard
Only the brave, says Pearl Buck, should teach. She is right. Teaching is not
for the faint of heart. It demands not only a love for subject matter, but also
a love for humanity. It demands a desire to help others be as successful as
they can be. It demands the desire to quite literally touch the future (thank
you, Christa McAuliffe, for that apt phrase).
The choices we make in the classroom - in terms of presenting lessons, in terms
of classroom management, in terms of student interaction - add up over time.
Our choices now will help create the future of these people. This is not an
exaggeration. It is a fact. The two most influential groups of people in the
life of any child are Parents and Teachers, in that order. (Don't believe me?
Check the research by folks such as Albert Bandura.)
People who hold the false assumption that teaching is easy work are fools. Teaching
is a precious responsibility. It requires an investment of time, effort, energy,
and emotion paralleled only by parenting itself. What other career promises
that you will influence the lives of 30-150 students a year, every year, for
as long as you teach? Over the span of a career, you will have influenced -
for better or worse - literally thousands of other lives.
Think that's enough to require courage? There's more. Teachers, like it or not,
are public figures in our communities. We are held up to a stricter standard,
a stronger code of conduct and morals, of intellect and ethics, of understanding
and ability. When you go to the grocery store and meet Timmy's mom, make no
mistake, you are a teacher first and a private citizen second. Timmy's mom will
note your attire and your manner. She will remember and circulate her observations
among the community. The interaction you have with her today will impact your
professional reputation tomorrow - good or bad.
When you accept the title of EDUCATOR, you accept an awe-inspiring set of responsibilities
and privileges. Only the brave, indeed.
Only the Brave Should Teach
Only the brave. Only the brave should teach.
Only those who love the young should teach.
Teaching is a vocation.
It is as sacred as the priesthood; as innate a
desire, as inescapable as the genius which
compels a great artist.
If he has not the concern for humanity,
the love of living creatures,
the vision of the priest and the artist,
he must not teach.
~Pearl Buck
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** If you find the Education Station newsletter to be a useful tool for your
classroom experiences, please forward it to a friend or two. Thanks! **
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