Being a teacher means trying to help every child be successful in the classroom. However, ask yourself this question: What can teachers do to get the most out of their students? There are a lot of answers to this question such as differentiate instruction, use collaboration, conference with the student, make learning real and meaningful. However, also ask yourself this question: What is the most challenging part to getting the most out of each child? Lack of student motivation, learning differences, lack of time to individualize, among others, are all things that tend to get in the way of mining the most out of the magnificent minds of their students.

According to Dr. Ed Hallowell a noted child psychiatrist who wrote the book, “Shine” and many others, all children can be successful and teachers will mine the most out of their students if the following steps are carried out in their classroom.
1. Connect- Make sure your classroom is inviting and that students feel safe and loved.
2. Play- Not in the sense of recess, but help students get engaged with ideas. Help students use their imagination, experiment and wonder about what if… with the ideas and concepts they are learning.
3. Work/practice- Students need to work and practice with the skills they are learning. Working helps students “get into an assignment and, fueled by that feeling, to work harder he or she makes progress and gains a sense of well being and accomplishment, which enables them to do their best.”
4. Progress- Assess and look for progress in your children. For instance look for improvement in their writing. Discuss with students where they are improving and where they still need to work harder. You can’t improve if you don’t know what you did right or wrong.
5. Recognition – instead of looking at what a child can’t do, concentrate on the progress they are making and recognize any improvement you see. Rewarding your students for their progress fuels the student’s desire to excel because they want the praise and recognition for an assignment or task well done.

According to Dr. Hallowell’s research which he backed with brain science and performance research, teachers who take the time to make sure their classroom, their curriculum and their interaction with children follow the steps above will inspire students to reach their peak performance.

How does a teacher do this? Take the time to talk in your classroom. Let the children own their learning and make the learning meaningful. Good examples of how to do this are using project based learning, using STEM based science programs, a strong advisory program, using other assessment besides multiple-choice tests. Use technology and web 2.0 tools to help you make the learning more engaging. For example use one of Lodge McCammon’s kinesthetic lessons (found in Discovery Streaming) where the kids sing, dance and collaborate to make a music video. Then post the videos on your school website to recognize their progress and celebrate their work. Enroll your class in a worldwide project that helps them realize the relevance of what they are learning and the importance of producing a good product since it will have a worldwide audience.

Any project or idea will work as long as a teacher keeps the five steps to success in mind. As Dr. Hallowell explains “emotion is the on or off switch for learning”, so making sure you connect, play, work, make progress and recognize will help all teachers mine the most from the magnificent minds of our students.

FETC is one of our favorite conferences of the year.  And this year is no different.  To get this year’s conference jump-started with fantastic friends, great prizes, and an energetic learning experience the DEN is excited to bring back Dr. Lodge McCammon to share his latest work on “flipping the classroom.”  Joining Dr. Lodge will be Ms. Katie Gimbar, Algebra Teacher at Durant Road Middle School in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Katie will demonstrate the impact that “flipping” has made on her 8th grade classroom.

Date: Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Time: 8:00am – 2:30pm

Location: Orange County Convention Center, F220

http://links.discoveryeducation.com/DENFETC2012register

Want to share this with others in your area? Here’s a flyer you can use!

Mr Fezziwig's Ball. Prod. Corbis. Corbis, 2006. Discovery Education. Web. 14 December 2011. <http://www.discoveryeducation.com/>.

One of my favorite traditions during the holidays is revisiting “A Christmas Carol” written by Charles Dickens. The story is timeless and good for all age levels. Because you can find it printed online, it makes a great resource to use with Lesson Writer. If you haven’t used Lesson Writer before, you really must try it. You can find it at www.lessonwriter.com. Fortunately, someone has already developed lessons using Lesson Writer and “A Christmas Carol” at http://sites.lessonwriter.com/christmascarol/.
With the recent emphasis on informational articles used for testing, Lesson Writer provides a way for teachers to choose material that is relevant while meeting their students’ interests and abilities. Lesson writer is a web-based resource that allows teachers to copy any online content and create lessons and even make accommodations. But wait, the site actually creates most of the lesson for you. “No Way!” I hear you say. Oh, yes it does! It takes the copied material and picks out: vocabulary from the article, pronunciation, grammar support to aide in understanding, and word roots and stems. It allows the teacher to create comprehension questions using Bloom’s prompts to create higher order thinking skills. These questions can be created as short answer, extended answer, multiple choice, or just a note. The site allows you to preview all of it. You can pick and choose what you want included from all that is generated for you. But, I saved the best for last! It also provides ten graphic organizers you can include in the lesson. Some of these include: the KWL Chart, Inference Graphic Organizer, Character Study, Cause and Effect, Predictions, Summarizing, and Venn Diagrams. A quick start guide to differentiation groups and classes can be found here http://www.lessonwriter.com/QuickStartClassesAndGroups.pdf.

With Discovery Education, you can take these lessons and expand them even further. You can let the students listen to the audio version of the story available through Discovery Streaming. Because Discovery has informational articles such as “Christmas,” another lesson can be created through Lesson Writer. For a wonderful group of resources check out the Christmas theme resources found in Discovery at http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=e6b8dee6-927d-45c3-825b-5b7fa0f74042.
Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Recently, my school came together as a community to think about this question. It is an important question because it will determine if our school will meet the needs of our students in the 21st century. One way our school plans on maximizing its impact on students is to create PLNs, personal learning networks, where teachers help each other investigate new ways to create curriculum and organize instruction. In our PLNs, our teachers along with administrators, will learn creative ways to combine technology and great teaching strategies to engage students in project based learning, and teach other how to use collaborative structures to keep students engaged and curious enough to strive to learn or explore topics and projects on their own in and out of the classroom.

With that in mind our school is taking time to consider what teacher and student tools we are using as a community to promote creativity. In order to promote creativity as a school, we first chose to examine how the learner is changing in the 21st century, and then used this knowledge to change our teaching so that it will enhance this new style of learning and at the same time promote creativity in our school.

While working with my school PLN group, I came across a video conversation with Discovery Education’s own, Hall Davidson, speaking about what makes a creative school. The video intrigues me because Hall’s answer is that in a creative school, the learner is someone who learns by creating and interacting with video, experimentation, and collaboration to construct or enhance their own understanding. This implies that the teachers will have to flip in the 21st century, not just the classroom to enhance student learning and creativity. Technology and collaboration will be the tools the students use to learn new concepts. Teachers have to use technology to help students be engaged, but students need to be creative in the way they think of using the technology, art and print media to represent their thoughts. The teacher and students roles are flipped from the traditional teacher/ student model. Now the classroom is a place where teacher and student help each other make connections and teachers mentor and help students think through issues, solve problems and use creativity to understand what they are learning.

This idea has great impact on a teacher’s view of delivering the curriculum content and also on how teachers will organize the students’ learning time. Teachers and students will need to use  creativity to improve instruction and learning. For example, teachers will need to be creative in how they structure their lessons to encourage thoughtful collaboration among students. The students will use technology, as the video implies, to create content that helps the student to better understand what they are learning.  Interacting with media in a creative way will help students develop new ideas and form new curriculum connections. It is the creative interaction of students and teachers that will lead to enhanced learning.
How can administrators and teachers foster creativity? One way to enhance creativity is to encourage the use of tools like Discovery Education, or other teacher tested web 2.0 tools, that give students the tool set they need to employ their own creativity to interact and create new ideas with the core curriculum.  Another way creativity can be fostered is by giving teachers time to collaborate with other teachers, for example encouraging teachers to attend a DEN event or DEN webinars. If you think about it, being a member of DEN enables you to be involved in an international personal learning network. Creativity is the key to keeping teaching and learning relevant. Discovery and DEN are one of the tools our school utilizes to creatively increase teacher-to-teacher collaboration and student learning. Creativity is powerful. How will your school creatively engage students and teachers?

Christopher Columbus

Columbus Day will be celebrated October 10, 2011.  I like to begin my lesson on that day reading sections from a letter that Columbus wrote without letting the class know who it is from or that it is Columbus Day.  The letter is a primary document found at http://www.ushistory.org/documents/columbus.htm.  The letter tells of the natives he encounters in Hispaniola.  He talks about the beauty of the land and the gold that is there.  He tells how innocent are the natives he encounters, and how he has to forbid his men trading useless items such as broken dishes for a great deal of gold.  He also discusses how he hasn’t seen any monsters, but has seen people who eat human flesh.  The students become actively engaged with this letter and the discussion and are pleasantly surprised to find it is a letter from Columbus.  We then discuss the value and purpose of primary documents.  There are many ways you can build your lesson from here.  If you go into your Discovery account, everyone has one, right?  Anyway, search “Columbus” and at the top of the results screen, you will see a link – “Columbus Day” with the explanation “Featuring resources selected and created by Discovery Education’s curriculum experts, this theme page offers teacher’s guides, video clips, and more.”  Discovery has provided a wealth of resources right there for you to use.  There are video clips, images, and lesson plans for every grade level.  There are even some audio clips.  Elementary students could illustrate what they hear and import it, along with images from Discovery, into Photo Story, a free download from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11132, adding the audio for a great presentation.

For more presentations and ideas, go to http://holidays.pppst.com/columbusday.html and celebrate Columbus Day with lots of new discoveries.

Discovery Stars and DEN members interested in becoming a Star were shining at the Teacher Training Center in Fleming Island, Florida, Tuesday, August 16.  Over thirty DEN members from three counties met with Kyle Schutt, Manager for Discovery Educator Network, along with Leadership Council Members Trudi Lawson, Janet Hallstrom, Cheryl Woolwine, and Carol Papuga.

Cheryl, Florida LC Chair and Kyle led the group in a discussion of what Discovery has to offer and the advantages of being a STAR.  The DEN members present were complimentary of Discovery as it supports the network of teachers helping and teaching each other.  Kyle was able to connect to a webinar at the end of the meeting for all who were interested.  It was obvious that these teachers were excited about becoming further involved with Discovery, and I personally know of five that have now applied for STAR status.

Everyone knows a single star is bright, but the larger a group of stars is, the brighter is the night.  Let’s recruit more stars so our light shines brighter than ever and we can illuminate the night for others.

Go to http://community.discoveryeducation.com and click on “Become a STAR Discovery Educator” in the upper right-hand corner if you are interested in learning more.

• Written by Janet Hallstrom

By Amy Espinola