Building Classroom Community Through the Use of Puzzles
Classroom communities are important. When students feel like they are part of a community, they are much more likely to become active participants in the learning environment. Whenever we think about being a part of a family or community, we think about holidays spent around a kitchen table working on puzzles. The feeling of accomplishing a 1000 piece puzzle over the course of a weekend or holiday break is rewarding and satisfying.
Read on to find out how we use jigsaw puzzles in our classrooms to build a class community.
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Practicing Mindfulness in the Classroom
There have been several studies that show how beneficial it can be to practice mindfulness daily. The American Physiological Association lists some benefits as reduced stress levels, improving working memory, improved focus, less emotional reactivity to situations, and more cognitive flexibility . HELLO? Isn’t that like everything we try to improve in a classroom?
When it comes to the Common Core Standards, one of the areas we find that the most growth is needed is in the speaking and listening strand. One strategy that we have introduced into our curriculum over the past few years to help build those skills is adding podcasts into our classroom instruction. There are many benefits to adding podcasts into your classroom instruction. If you’ve ever wondered about how podcasts could benefit your instruction, read on dear TTD followers, we have got some ideas for you!
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Is Master Class Worth It?
Have you checked out the website Master Class (https://www.masterclass.com)? If not, you should! For a $15 a month subscription, you can have access to online classes taught by top experts in the field. They are adding new classes all the time. As an added side bonus, they are also beautifully filmed and curated.
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Educational App Spotlight: Showbie
We have a website we absolutely need to share with you all. This is NOT an advertisement, just two boss teachers writing a blog post about one of the absolutely most important websites that you need in your life. Here at the TTD we strive to be almost completely paperless. Read on to learn more about our favorite App, Showbie.
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Reading Graffiti Walls
Do you have a space in your classroom for your students that is just for them? We like to give our students some agency over what is displayed. That is why we love a reading graffiti wall.
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Summer Reading: For Pleasure and for Practice
We are dedicated readers here at The Teaching Distillery. During summer vacation, we can take full advantage of reading to our hearts’ content. We are currently rocking right into our fourth week of teaching for the school year, and now that we are back into the swing of things it’s time to reflect on Katy’s summer reading.
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Short Story Ideas for Secondary ELA Students
Analyzing short stories in class has so many benefits and covers a plethora of Common Core State Standards to boot. There are really no downsides to adding highly engaging and high quality short stories into your curriculum. Not only do they support literary response and analysis practice, they also help students learn how to analyze a short story in an essay format, both of which are highly tested skills on state exams. Aside from state testing and common core state standards, analyzing short stories is just good teaching. If you are searching for some highly engaging, crowd pleasing stories that won’t make you drop dead from boredom, look no further, teacher friends! The Teaching Distillery has got you covered.
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Organizing Your Classroom Library by Genre
You must be wondering how you’re going to organize all those new books now that you have them! Before delving deep into a Pinterest spiral, let us help you by sharing our tried and true method for organizing our classroom libraries.
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Essential Oils in the Classroom
Not all essential oils are created equal. When shopping for essential oils, try to steer clear of the ones found in aisles of big box stores or Amazon. Instead, look for oils with real concentrated plant extracts in them and very little else. If they are organic, even better. If you don’t want to go on a deep dive through the Google rabbit hole of essential oil shopping, we have done the leg work for you. Below is a list of some of our favorite essential oils, essential oil blends, and brands.
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Easy and Healthy Snack Ideas to Buy and Try for Busy Teachers
Read on to learn about our healthy, go-to snacks, that get us through the work day.
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Classroom Rules
Creating classroom rules is always a personal choice among teachers. Some teachers like their classroom rules to be designed by students. Other teachers like rules to be about classroom procedures and standards of behavior. Here are a list of ideas for you to consider:
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How to Build Your Classroom Library
Here at The Teaching Distillery, we have a few tricks up our sleeves to get your empty book shelves filled in no time.
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