Education Station | Teaching Supplies and Teacher Resources

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Education Station Newsletter
Vol. 1 #1 January, 2002
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Happy New Year! Welcome to the First issue of 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!
100th day of school
2002 Olympics
Happy Valentine's Day
6. What's New!
7. Article
The Power of Classroom morning meeting

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Quote

The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.
.... William Arthur Ward

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2. Teacher Tips

After Christmas Tree

Start a bird unit after Christmas with an after-Christmas tree.
Have a student donate an "un-dressed" Christmas tree (borrow a stand too)
and have the class decorate it with strings of popcorn and cranberries,
peanut-butter, bird-seed pinecones and other bird-friendly decorations.
Set the tree outside your class window and create your own observation area.
Have children keep a bird journal that includes drawings,
observations, graphs and other related information.
- Linda Holliman

Reward Your Students

Remember to "Catch Your Students Being Good" Positive reinforcement goes
a long way to curb discipline issues and improve self-esteem.
Here is a list of Reward ideas.

http://www.track0.com/canteach/elementary/classman2.html
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3. Great Links

Make free certificates for your students with the following links

http://www.certificatecreator.com/
http://www.schoolexpress.com/awards/name.asp

Tons of themes here developed for use in daycare centers, preschool and
kindergarten classrooms. Songs, fingerplays, crafts, cooking,
circle time ideas and much more.

http://www.educationstation.ca/links/link.php?url=http://www.nuttinbutkids.com

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4. Current Specials

This week the following products are on sale at Education Station.

http://www.educationstation.ca/index.php

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5. Celebrate!

Celebrate the 100th day of school
http://www.educationstation.ca/links/link.php?url=http://www.yesiteach.org/hundred.htm

Celebrate the 2002 Winter Olympics
http://www.educationstation.ca/links/link.php?url=http://kathyschrock.net/olympics.htm

Celebrate Valentine's Day
http://www.educationstation.ca/links/link.php?url=http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/9087/valentine/index.html

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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

"Like Being at the Breakfast Table"
The Power of Classroom Morning Meeting

By Elizabeth Bondy and Sharon Ketts

With 12 years of elementary teaching experience, four years of teaching music,
two grown children of her own, and a master's degree, Sharon was confident
about her teaching skills. Nevertheless, she was astounded when the news broke
that her students had scored higher on all sub-tests of the
Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) than students in three other
third-grade classrooms in her school. Of course she was thrilled,
but how could she explain their performance? The class seemed no different
from other classes she had taught. They were a racially and ethnically
heterogeneous group; 84 percent of the children were eligible for free or
reduced price lunches, and a majority read at or below grade level. What
made this year different for Sharon and her students?

The Structure of Morning Meeting

Each morning, in preparation for the Morning Meeting circle, Sharon would
use colorful markers to compose a message on a chart near the classroom door.
Typically, the message welcomed the students to the classroom, alerted them to
an activity they would be doing that day, and posed a question or challenge.
The children would read the chart as they first entered the classroom.

The first component of the Morning Meeting is the Greeting. A variety of
greeting activities are used over time to help each student gain a sense of
belonging. In addition, the greeting provides the opportunity for students to
practice both the verbal and non-verbal communication skills that are central
to relationship building and participating on group activities in and out of
school.

Sharon's students loved to greet one another in different languages. Over the
year, they learned many ways to say "hello." They were quick to pick up both
the inflection and pronunciation of foreign words and enjoyed each other's
efforts to repeat the harder greetings (e.g. in Russian and Polish.) They also
enjoyed making up their own greetings that involved using a physical skill,
usually balance. They could perform these greetings easily, but Sharon would
groan in anticipation of falling on her face.

The second component of the Morning Meeting is Sharing. Not to be confused
with traditional notions of Show-and-Tell, Sharing is designed to simulate
face-to-face conversation. The sharer presents a brief statement to introduce
his or her news. For example, the sharer might say, "My hermit crab died last
weekend." The sharer concludes with the invitation, "I'm ready for questions
and comments." The listeners would take turns making comments or asking questions
to demonstrate their interest in, and concern for, the sharer and the subject.
Sharing gave Sharon's students opportunities to develop and practice skills of
listening, presenting to a group, taking turns, formulating relevant questions,
and taking different perspectives. The students learned about one another's lives
as they expanded their vocabulary and knowledge of the world.

The third component of Morning Meeting is the Group Activity. Often referred
to by students as the "game," the Group Activity is a brief, fast-paced activity
involving all members of the Morning Meeting circle. Sometimes clearly linked
to relevant academic skills, sometimes focusing on general skills such as
observing or remembering, and sometimes designed simply for fun, group activities
promote cooperation and group identity. Ideas for Group Activity come from such sources
as summer camp, Boy and Girl Scouts, athletic teams, and other social groups that use
games to create a sense of community among members.

A favourite Group Activity in Sharon's class was "Victims and Sleuths"
(originally called "Murder and renamed by the students.) In this activity,
the teacher secretly designates one or more of the students as a "murderer."
All of the students scan the circle, making eye contact with one another. The
"murderer" winks at his or her victim, who then must fall over. At any time
during the scanning, a student may guess the identity of the murderer. If the
student guesses correctly, the murderer is "done for"; if the guess is incorrect,
the accuser is "done for." The game continues until the last "murderer" is caught.
The students love to be creative and dramatic in their death scenes, and they develop
new vocabulary to avoid using violent terms, eventually coming up with "perpetrator"
rather than "murderer." The activity also promoted conflict resolution skills among the
children as they tried to solve the problem of honesty in the game that is, falling over
when winked at and refraining from pretending to be the perpetrator!

The final component of Morning Meeting is News and Announcements, when the
students refocus on the chart that they first read when they entered the
classroom. The chart is read in any number of ways, including choral reading,
echo reading, teaching reading, and individual student reading of assigned
sentences. After discussing the content of the chart, the class does some
related, short activities. News and Announcements provides a transition from M
orning Meeting to the rest of the school day. Often, the teaching uses this
time to develop and reinforce skills the students have been studying. For
example, when Sharon's students were working on punctuation, Sharon deliberately
included several mistakes on the chart. At the bottom of the chart, each student
recorded the number of mistakes he or she found, and then signed her or her name.
During News and Announcements, students approached the chart and corrected the
errors. Such chart-based academic activities, while brief, can be interactive,
meaningful and substantive.

To read the full article, click on the link
http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/cl_feature_topic_3.htm