Category Archives: Classroom Strategies

Peer Tutoring: Taking Advantage of Our Resources

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Written by Nicole Lehman

The following is a brief summary of Nicole’s Graduate Studies Capstone project, “Developing a Peer Tutoring Program for Minnesota Valley Lutheran High School.” There will be a link at the end of the article if you would like to read her entire paper.

The Problem
“I don’t get it.” “This is too hard.” “It doesn’t make sense.” “Can you help me with . . .?” How often do you hear these or some variety of these statements each week? How often do these questions come 30 seconds before class starts/ends or before you need to get to your extra-curricular? I think we can all agree that we love when our students ask for help and wish we had more time in our day to actually sit down and give them the help they need.

The Solution
Since we don’t have access to Hermione Granger’s Time-Turner necklace, which would give us more time to get stuff done, one solution to this problem is peer tutoring.

We all have students in our schools who excel in one or more subject areas and have the ability to explain/teach what they know to others. The problem is, we don’t always know who they are, and sometimes they themselves don’t realize that they have this gift. Continue reading →

Want to Teach Reading and Math? Try Singing!

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Written by Elizabeth Poncelet

This was the title of a session that I attended at the Minnesota Educators Association Conference (MEA) in October of 2019. As an elementary music specialist, I was hooked. I knew that music supported literacy and math; I simply needed the data to back it up. So this was the start of my research project, Music: The Link to Literacy.

Correlation Between Music and Literacy
Previous research has indicated that there is a correlation between music training and reading, specifically pre-reading abilities (Corrigall & Trainor, 2011). According to Hall and Robinson (2019), music and reading share three primary learning processes: auditory processing—which is the ability to hear and manage sound; symbolic representation processing—which is the use of symbols to communicate a message; and coding processing—which is the ability to use encoding and decoding processes to make meaning. With their individual studies, Moreno, Friesen, and Bialystok (2011) and Swierk (2018) supported this belief that music training for children improved rhyme awareness, the ability to understand that a symbol can be a representation of a concept, and memory processes. Continue reading →

Supporting the Social and Emotional Needs of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Written by Dr. Rachel Youngblom

It is likely that you know, have taught, or have interacted with a child who has a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Furthermore, it is possible that you may not even have been aware of the child’s diagnosis, based on the severity of his or her symptoms, let alone the social and emotional challenges that a child with autism experiences daily. While teachers should not attempt to make a diagnosis, they will likely encounter students, whether diagnosed or not, who have difficulty making friends due to their social, emotional, and communicative challenges.

Teaching Children Social Skills
A child with Autism Spectrum Disorder demonstrates social difficulties in various ways, such as deficits in social and emotional reciprocity (e.g., conversational turn-taking, sharing of interests and emotions), and difficulties understanding and using nonverbal communicative behavior (e.g., eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, body language) and developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships (e.g., understanding of friendships, “stranger danger”) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Continue reading →

Voice, Choice, Pace, and Place: Tools to Support Blended Learning

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Written by Jason Schmidt

The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in our familiarity and comfort with the tools of online learning. As schools return to face-to-face learning, educators would do well to use this as an opportunity to take the good things we learned during the pandemic and apply them to our current situations. We’re especially interested in ways we can empower students with voice, choice, pace, and place.

Station-Rotation Model: Perhaps one of the simplest ways to incorporate blended learning into a classroom is using the Station-Rotation Model. In this model, the instructor creates blocks of instructional time with a variety of tasks to complete. Continue reading →

Creating Powerful, Memorable Lessons in Your Classroom

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Warning: This post contains description of a violent scene.

Written by Andy Van Weele

According to Socrates, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” My hope is that every educator finds that fire within them—to find the passion to create powerful and memorable lessons that will, in turn, light the fire inside their students—engage them and inspire them to want more. Continue reading →

Trauma: What You Need to Know as an Educator

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Written by Alysa Balfour

My personal understanding of trauma and how it manifests itself dramatically changed in 2016 when my husband and I became foster parents. While I knew the extensive trauma my sons had endured, their teachers, our family and friends, and other acquaintances did not. It was heartbreaking to see my son reduced to a label of troublemaker when he was in fact a little boy who had experienced devastating trauma. Unless you have training or a personal experience with trauma, it may be tempting to label students rather than seeking to understand their actions.

We must redefine our understanding of trauma.
Many misunderstand trauma. We picture car accidents, explosive acts of violence, war-torn areas, or other disasters on a personal or large scale. While these are all traumatic experiences, trauma more likely will be experienced in a way that is almost imperceptible to someone viewing the situation from the outside. Emotional, physical, and sexual abuses, extreme poverty, neglect, food scarcity, and toxic household situations are all ways that students in our schools may be experiencing trauma. Continue reading →

Supporting Communication Development for Children with Autism

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Written by Dr. Carrie Pfeifer

God has created us to interact with each other using the gift of receptive and expressive language. The communication areas of the brain are seen in the Broca’s and Wernicke centers. The Broca center in infants activates when language is spoken to them (Imuda et al. 2006). When a child begins to use language, the Wernicke center of the brain is activated, even in children who are communicating with a non-oral language such as American Sign Language (Campbell et al., p. 3, 2008).

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V), one of the criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts (Autism Diagnosis Criteria). These deficits are seen in non-verbal and verbal communication. Students with deficits in communication may encounter barriers across school, home, community and work that can lead to problem behaviors (Perner and Delano, p. 45. 2013). Therefore, it is vital to understand the early signs of language deficits in children with ASD so that interventions can be implemented for these children as early as possible. Continue reading →

Grading Is Broken, and It Needs Fixing

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Written by Dr. Ryan Rathje

Why do the vast majority of classrooms use traditional point/percentage/letter grading systems?

Do these systems effectively communicate the progress of student learning?
No.

Do these systems give the student feedback on how to improve?
No.

Do these systems output data that are valid or reliable?
No.

Do these systems support a growth mindset in students?
No.

Do these systems align with what we believe about student growth and development?
No.

Do these systems help students who need the most help?
No.

Are letter grades, points, and percentages necessary for someone to learn?
No.

Do these systems align with common sense?
No.

Are parents aware of how faulty the traditional system is?
Absolutely not.

Is there any justifiable rationale for these systems to continue?
No. Continue reading →

Hitting Reset on Classroom Management

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Written by Professor Benjamin Clemons

The past year and a half has brought countless changes to education. We have had to reformulate and reexamine all aspects of teaching, including classroom management. As we, Lord willing, begin to transition back to “normal” face-to-face instruction, we have a golden opportunity to restart better by evaluating the routines and procedures that constitute much of the school day.

We will essentially be reteaching how to go to school. Do we want to return to what we were doing before, or is this an opportunity to rethink how we manage our classrooms? Continue reading →

Moments of Learning in Mathematics

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Written by Dr. James Carlovsky

Important moments of learning do occur in a classroom. For many classroom teachers, these moments can be difficult to describe. “Skilled teachers often recognize when important mathematical moments occur during a lesson” (Leatham et al., 2015, p. 88). This article intends to shed light on these important moments of learning on behalf of the classroom students and their teachers.

Pedagogical Moves
So, what does a teacher do? These classroom student moments of learning often can lead to a classroom teacher action, also known as a pedagogical move (Jacobs et al., 2010). These moments of learning may lead a classroom teacher to ask a specific question, to revise a portion of a lesson, to refine what a classroom student has expressed, or even to test a classroom student in a formal or informal way (Lesh et al., 2003) So, what do teachers do in the process of student learning? Sherin suggested that “emphasis on understanding the ideas that students offer is one of the hallmarks of mathematics education”(2001, p. 84). A teacher should keep a focus on the student and their thought process. Continue reading →