Easy Adaptable Books

Patrick at Teaching All Students has a great description about how to make an easy adaptable book for your students. Check it out.

My Dining Room.....

Does this look familiar to anyone? I bet I'm not the only one!

This is what my dining room has looked like for the past two weeks. A few things have contributed to this disaster. I boxed up materials I would need for ESY for myself and let 2 other friends borrow materials for their ESY classes, too. I'm moving to a new elementary school in the fall and although ESY has ended, now I need to wait a little bit longer to give the custodians a chance to do their "deep clean" on my new room.

Thank goodness I have an understanding husband and a table in our breakast nook!

How to Become More Tech Savvy this Summer

I found this article through one of the CEC SmartBriefs. I thought it was worth sharing.

How to Become More Tech Savvy This Summer

Stuart Brown: Play is More Than Fun

Another excellent video from TED focusing on play. This is a talk from Stuart Brown explaining his evidence of play in animals and people. He contends that play is a biological process that is necessary (just as sleep is a biological process that is necessary.) Check it out.

Tim Brown: Creativity and Play

I found this video on the TED site. I thought it was going to be geared towards education and discovery learning. Turns out it's about play as an important part of thinking as an adult. Tim Brown does a wonderful job connecting some of the elements of play and how they translate in the business and design world. If you've ever wanted a talk that validated play as an authentic learning and thinking experience, this is one to watch.

Tips for Addressing Challenging Behavior

The University of Minnesota has a website that has great Tip Sheets for addressing challenging behavior in the classroom.

I particularly like the ones on "choice making" and "requesting a break." These are two very powerful strategies that can be embedded into almost any learning task.