I decided to ask some of my middle school friends about what goes on in their schools.  I checked in with friends in Arizona, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.   All had pretty similar responses….. in their school, there is not much formal training happening, although they are aware of small group get-togethers, which target a handful of students with a specific purpose.  In some schools, they might call it a “lunch bunch”, a group that meets at lunchtime to discuss and support students dealing with a specific issue, e.g bullying.  Although these kinds of groups certainly have merit, there is a downside for some participants.  Some kids may worry about how they are perceived by other students.  Generally speaking, there is no time that is more socially challenging for our students than middle school.  Some students may not want to participate in a lunch group that sets them apart from the rest.  Unfortunately, other students may tease kids who are part of a separate group.  So, with the good, comes the potential for bad.

Continuing on my quest, I found that there are schools out there that utilize a formal social skills intervention program on a school-wide basis, but this is typically found in urban settings with many “at risk” students.  The programs are funded by outside sources, and do take time to implement.  Most schools may not have the money or time to invest in a formal social skills curriculum or project.  So, back to the drawing board I go……until…….

In a rare moment of lazy magazine perusing on the couch one day, I stumbled across an advertisement.  The line that caught my eye was, “We have failed our children if we do not teach peace”.  What?  Could this be?  Somebody with enough money to buy a full-page ad feels the same way I do?  This is the moment I learned about “Peacefirst”, an organization that has developed an entire curriculum to help teach children the skills necessary for “peacemaking”.  When I looked more closely at the program, I realized that this is the “stuff” I’ve been seeking……foundational peacemaking skills are social skills!  As I went deeper into the website, I discovered the Digital Activity Center, which shares lessons and activities with any teacher or individual who wants to access the ideas.  Although I didn’t read every lesson, I saw enough to know that the lessons target students of varied age levels, and many of them can be used up through middle school.  Most seem like fun activities that wouldn’t take up a lot of instructional time.  The beauty of it is that all students in a class would get to participate and therefore, nobody is singled out.

I decided that what I had stumbled across was worth sharing with other educators.   Yes, these ideas will take time to implement in the classroom, but it may be one of the best investments of time.  Please take a look at the website one day, and consider adding this resource to your “bag of tricks”.    If you happen to try any of the suggested activities, please comment on this post, and let us know how it goes!      www.peacefirst.org

The post Training Beyond What You Learned In Kindergarten appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

     Several years ago, I was involved in the integration of students with autism into a classroom of typically developing four year olds.  Although we adapted activities and attempted to facilitate interactions when opportunities arose, the students never seemed to initiate interactions on their own.  The naturally occurring opportunities seemed to occur with less frequency, and we found that the typical preschoolers needed as much support in the interactions as did the students with autism.  At that point, we stepped back and looked at how we were attempting to teach the skills needed for these interactions, and decided to directly intervene in a more structured and systematic way.

We realized a few things about teaching the social skills we wanted to improve in the classroom:

-          First, we needed to motivate students to use certain “target” skills, as the interactions in and of themselves were not necessarily reinforcing enough.  We developed a classroom reward system, whereby the students would be able to earn a classroom “Friendship Party” once enough bees were earned to fill the honeypot that we posted on the wall. The honeypot poster was labeled “Bee A Friend”.

-          We needed to identify the specific skills we were looking to increase, and we developed lessons for each skill.  We spent time once per week teaching and practicing a new skill.  The rest of the week was devoted to teachers catching and rewarding students demonstrating the skill on their own in the classroom.  When this occurred, the student was able to put a bee in the honeypot, while the staff publicly praised the student and described why they had earned a bee for the class.

-          As new skills were taught, it was important for us to review the previously taught skills, and be sure to continue to reward any of the “target” skills.  For this particular classroom, we were teaching students to ask for a turn nicely, to appropriately reject a peer (without screeching, whining, or being “mean”), to invite somebody to come play, and to help each other.

-          We realized that we needed to do a lot of rewarding up front, but start to reward students more intermittently as they got used to the new system.  It was also important to spread the rewards around, and not always be so quick to call attention to the students who caught on very quickly.  It was important to catch those who were most in need of social development, even if some of the initial skills were prompted.

-          Finally, it was important that the students realized that they were working together to achieve a reward for the whole class.  Students were not in competition with each other, they were a team.  The Friendship Party was for the whole class, regardless of how many times any given student contributed to the effort.  (It was up to the staff to be sure everyone contributed on some level, however, even if prompted.)

The students really seemed to enjoy this system, the lessons, and the rewards.  Most importantly, we did see students start to gain more independence with handling social situations that were sometimes difficult.  Such a reward system could be easily adapted for a variety of age levels and targeted social skills.  The main things to keep in mind for implementation include:

-Identify the skills you want to improve, as well as a theme that would appeal to the students.

-Communicate clearly to students and provide instruction/practice opportunities.

-Reward heavily in the beginning, and fade to a more intermittent schedule as students buy into the system and begin using skills more naturally on their own.

As always, I welcome readers to share thoughts and ideas on this topic.  I’d especially enjoy hearing from teachers of older students, as I recognize these systems may have limitations for the middle and high school set, when socialization takes a tremendous number of twists and turns!

The post Bee A Friend Through Teaching Social Skills by Kerry at Afidence appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

As we’ve entered a time when we hear far too many stories about teen crime, gang activity, bullying, teen suicide, childhood depression (and the list goes on…….) should it become the responsibility of the schools to step in and help children develop the social skills necessary to succeed in life?  There is a lot of information out there about the need to directly intervene in a systematic way, providing opportunities for all students to develop socially.  Many schools have adopted Positive Behavior Support systems to encourage and reward students for appropriate behavior in school, which often ties into demonstration of appropriate social skills.   I’m not certain that incentive, without instruction and practice, is effective enough to reach our most socially challenged kids.  It seems to me that I am not alone in that belief.

I’ve included just a few links which also discuss the need to teach social skills in school.  There are suggestions about which skills are most important and why they are necessary for the successful growth and development of our students.  In future articles, I would like to share some ideas about teaching social skills at various age levels, and systems to reward pro-social behaviors.  I invite our readers to please, please, please share information about social skills curriculums you may be using in your school/classroom and/or the things you do in your classroom to reward students’ positive social behaviors.  We, as teachers and parents, have a lot on our plates.  Having more tools in our bag of tricks only makes our job easier!

Some suggested links, which readers may feel welcome to add to by commenting on this article:

www.nea.org/tools/16763.htm

www.nasponline.org/resources/factsheets/socialskills_fs.aspx

www.cdl.org/resource-library/articles/social_skills.php

www.playworks.org/blog/why-we-must-teach-social-skills-school-and-how-play-can-help

The post Should We Teach Social Skills in School? appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

1.  Wiki is not a scholarly source.  It’s a great tool to find out what your co-worker meant when she called your project a “boondoggle”, but it doesn’t really count as research for one simple reason. Most pages are unverified, meaning that the content has not been evaluated or approved by experts on the topic.  However, Wiki is a great stopping off point for finding scholarly work, as often great internet articles are cited within a Wiki post.   Use it to leap-frog to some great research.
2. It’s OK to look at a book (or ebook). Sometimes the depth of information required for your project means reading more than a four paragraph article on the subject.  Lots of libraries have great resource books online.
3. Use the librarian, at your school, the public library, anywhere you can find one.  They KNOW how to research quicker and better than you. Most of them have advanced degrees in library science (that’s librarian code for majoring in research skills).   Many libraries will generate a research guide for you from an e-mail or phone call.  Check it out!
4. Brainstorm your ideas, but then organize your thoughts.   There are some great creative platforms which allow you to capture all your thoughts while typing at your computer (think MS Office OneNote).  But don’t just print this off and hand it in without providing some well thought out structure.  After you’ve had the creative fuzzy thinking time, go have a bowl of cereal and come back to organize your thoughts.   Order makes your paper so much easier to read.
5. Write like an English teacher.  Can’t proofread to save your life?  Grammar is your mortal enemy?   No worries, the internet is here to help you.   Check out these sites for writing skills, proofreading, and even a citation generator, which covers all major citation forms.

Grammarly:    Immediate grammar check of any text . (I got a 76/100 on this blog post) http://www.grammarly.com/?gclid=CLn-lf-z6LECFYdAMgodhnkA-g

Purdue University’s OWL project: Grammar help, online citation and lots of tutorials   http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Son of Citation Machine:   Generate citations quickly- all major formats, free.      http://citationmachine.net/index2.php

Hope these ideas help you get the semester going just write, I mean right.

Happy writing!

The post Research and Writing Tips to Start the Semester Off Write, whoops… Right! by Elizabeth at Afidence appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

For some of you, you may already be getting classrooms ready for the new year, while the rest of us are squeezing out the last days and weeks before heading back to reality.  The start of a new year is always exciting, as we face a fresh crop of students, along with new challenges and the prospect of presenting some creative ideas and  lessons to an eager audience.  During the first week, a lot of time will be spent teaching your routines and expectations to students, and this will set the tone for how the classroom functions across the year.  I thought this an appropriate time to give a few ideas on “crowd control”, as classroom management skills are essential for creating the optimal learning environment.

The idea to write on this topic came to me several months ago, while I was attending a program-wide workshop on collaborative teaming.  In one session of this workshop, the presenter would speak, give us instructions for completing an activity within smaller groups, and then pull us all back together for whole group discussion.  This session was attended by approximately 120-140 people, many of whom chose to sit with friends, or co-workers they haven’t seen in a while.  This session was after lunch, a time when peoples’ attention spans start to give way, and socializing starts to creep into small group “discussions”.  I am telling you this to give you a mindset for just how noisy it was in this room when the workshop presenter made her first attempt to get this large chatty group back on task for whole group sharing.  She started at the front center of the room and started walking towards the back.  At a normal conversational volume, she said, “If you can hear me now, clap once.”  Some of us clapped.  She kept walking and said, “If you can hear me now, clap twice.”  More of us clapped. She continued walking and said, “If you can hear me now, clap three times.”  The entire room clapped and then remained completely silent, knowing that she meant business about getting our attention.  I was so impressed!  What was more impressive was that the next time she went through her quiet-down routine, she didn’t even have to get to three.  I’ve attended many of these things over my career, and never once saw someone command a room the way she did.  I was thinking, “Wow, I’m going to stick that one in the bag of tricks!”

I’m sure many, if not most, teachers already have their own attention-getting signals or strategies and aren’t stuck on “Okay now guys, quiet down”, which is rarely completely and quickly effective.  As we ask students to do more work in small groups, pair-shares, and cooperative learning situations, I thought it would be helpful to give some other simple ideas.  These are some I’ve tried or have seen used with Kindergarten students, which may be effective for all elementary grade levels:

-          Lights Out:  Students are taught that when the lights go out, they are to stop what they’re doing, put hands up in the air, get completely quiet, and look to the teacher for instructions.  This remained effective all year long!  If you have a lot to say, do allow the little darlings to put their hands back down.  :)

-          Clap Response:  (To the tune of “Shave and a Haircut”) Teacher: clap, clap, clap, clap, clap       Students: clap, clap    Students are taught that after their response, they are to remain quiet and ready to listen.

-          Countdown from 5:  Teacher says “5” with enough volume to be heard over noisy classroom banter, while holding up a hand and then counting down fingers in silence.  Students are taught that they must be quiet and ready to listen by the time the last finger goes down.

-          Children, Children:  This one’s a little silly, but could be fun and effective if it fits your personality….Teacher (using an exaggerated southern drawl) says, “Children, children, can you all hear me?”  The students are taught to respond, “Yes, Mama”, and learn that the expectation is that they should be “all ears” for Mama.  You know you don’t want to make Mama mad!

One thing to keep in mind is that these strategies only become effective through reinforcement and consequences, as children are learning to use them.  Make sure to praise students heavily in the beginning for carrying out the routine as you’ve explained.  Practice a lot during that first week!  Then consider a consequence for those that just can’t seem to carry out your expectations after they’ve had numerous opportunities to learn.

As always, I invite our readers to share their own tricks and tips on the subject.  I’d especially appreciate hearing from middle and high school teachers, as many of my suggestions are most appropriate for elementary students.

Hope your school year gets off to a fabulous start!

The post Now That I Have Your Attention…by Kerry for Afidence appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

A couple of months ago, I addressed the need to directly teach study skills in the classroom, so that students could develop skills necessary for success in school, and in higher education settings in particular.  With improved study skills comes a greater retention of material and improved learning that lasts…..beyond the quiz or test.  As we get ready to launch another school year, I am hopeful that teachers will be looking for new ideas to help develop this very important facet of learning.  Many teachers have their so-called “bag of tricks”…..and we need to remember that this bag has no boundaries.  There’s always room for fresh ideas, so I’ve included some links below to help teachers (and parents!) identify some new ways to help students develop better study habits and skills.  As always, I invite you to share any great ideas you’ve tried, articles that have inspired you regarding this topic, or other links with interesting suggestions.

http://www.how-to-study.com/study-skills/en/index.asp

http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev064.shtml

http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/1857-how-to-teach-study-skills

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/study-skills/skill-builder/6393.html

The post Education: Helping Students Improve Study Skills by Kerry appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

Accordingly, my thoughts have turned to the outcomes.   Students are asked in this class to write some opinionated research papers.   As I’ve taught this, I have noticed that few are really willing to take the risk to express a full-blown personal opinion.   They will parrot the opinions of scholars in the field, of judges and courts, but rarely will they disagree with what appears to be conventional wisdom.    They are not risk takers.

I came across this article from Dr.  E. Shelley Reid at George Mason University:  Teaching Risk Taking in the College Classroom  http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/teaching-risk-taking-in-the-college-classroom/

Dr. Reid talks about engaging students to take risks in the classroom.  I want to try some of these techniques.  Check it out and see what will work for your classroom environment.   The general idea is this:  Students learn better when actively taking risks with the ideas and concepts they are learning.   As instructors, we need to ask for academic risk-taking behavior – things like asking questions, dwelling in uncertainty, and advancing untried hypotheses.

For my students, methods like inching out on a limb are the best way to do this.  This method involves starting with a commonly held belief and slowly asking questions probing the details of that belief.  I use this often with ethical scenarios where the students all immediately line up on one side of an issue, declaring it all good, or all bad.  I will begin to ask questions that just slightly change the facts of the case.  I continue doing that until I reach a tipping point where some students suddenly switch their opinions.   Then we discuss as a class why the change of opinion.  We look for ideas and principles that caused the shift.

Dr. Reid in the above article makes some great suggestions.  Sometimes the risk tolerance of a group of students in low, so we have to create things like soft openings, peer to peer exploration of issues,  low thresholds for performance evaluation.   I’m thinking about how to incorporate these into my own classes.

So this month, here’s my experimental low threshold.  Most of my students are very grade focused.  This really limits their ability to take risks.  I’m thinking of adding extra credit points on a few essays for “opinionatedness” .  Nothing taken away, only added points.  Maybe this will stimulate the thinking and analysis I’m seeking from this class.   I’ll let you know how that works out.

If you have some additional ideas to create a “risk-taking” atmosphere in your classroom, please let me know.  I’d like to get other’s thoughts and ideas.  In conjunction with this, I will be blogging occasionally on how these additional ideas I’ve mentioned have worked for my classes.

The post The Value of Teaching Risk Taking appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

 For many students, maintaining learned skills from one school year to the next can be a bit of a challenge.  For some students with special needs, this challenge may be significantly magnified.  Although there may be summer programs for some students with disabilities, programs are not available for all, and parents are left holding the bag, so to speak.  Summer is a good time to get caught up on weak skills, and maintain newly learned skills.  Now, for those parents that have trouble just getting their kid(s) through homework during the school year, the thought of a daily school work battle in the summertime is daunting.  I’ve included some tips and ideas below for educators and parents, which may be appropriate for all children, regardless of ability.

    Before you get started, there are a few things to remember about “work” in the summer…..nobody wants to do it!  Therefore, you’ll need to make it as painless as possible for everyone involved.  Probably the most important part is to make it part of the daily schedule.  For many of us, summer is a time to relax and rejoice in the lack of a schedule, but if you don’t commit to a making learning part of the day, the time may just slip away from you.  Another important thing would be to keep sessions short and sweet, even if it means coming back later to work on something else.  Try to use the things your child wants to do to naturally reward completion of work in the summer (e.g. “Hey, let’s finish up that last chapter, and then we can have fun at the pool”.)  And finally, the best way to make work painless…try to find ways to make it fun.  This will take some creativity and thought, but it doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming.  Some ideas:

-Create games that involve a motor component.  This gets your child up and moving, and away from the table or desk.  For memorization of things like spelling or math facts, this works great. For example, there’s a little game called “Stair Hopper” for memorization of times tables.  The child would hop on the first step and recite the first fact, then hop on the second step and recite the next fact, and so on.  If an error is made, the child has to hop all the way down and start over.  The challenge is to make it to the top, where a little treat or surprise may be waiting. (This could be as simple as a little note that says, “Free Time”.)   Spelling practice with sidewalk chalk in the driveway can be fun, especially if you get to erase it with the hose when you get 10 words correct….and you accidentally start a water fight.  These are just a couple of examples, and the point is to inject fun into a memorization challenge.

-Tie your vacation plans into practice with skills.  Perhaps you’re going somewhere historical, geologically noteworthy, or just plain fun.  Try to develop some skills practice that ties into your trip.  Whether you want to practice math problems, increase vocabulary, do some reading for comprehension, or develop research skills, tying it to something real and meaningful for your student will help increase motivation.

-Tap into summer movies.  Summer is often a time for some great movie releases.  Find something that sparks your student’s interest and run with that theme.  In a manner similar to tying to your vacation plans, you can use the theme of the movie as the basis for your skills practice.

-Use that screen time.  Although some of us like to keep our kids away from too much “screen time” in the summer, in some houses, it’s inevitably a factor.  Kids have much more free time, and may default to the electronics.  If you have computer software, games, or websites that tap into the skills practice your child needs, this may be a great way to get in some extra exposure.  Again, using what your child wants to do in order to reward the “gotta do” may be helpful here.  (School work first, then XBox, keeping in mind that 15 minutes of math practice does not warrant 3 hours of gaming!)

-Practice skills for independence.  Since summer is often more relaxed, it’s a good time to increase your child’s independence with some skills.  For the younger child, it may be a self-care skill such as fastening fasteners or tying shoes…something we may not take time to teach during the hustle-bustle of a busy school day.  For the older child, summer is a great time to teach skills like doing laundry and cooking simple things, or completing a new chore around the house.  They may grumble, but most kids enjoy knowing that you think they’re ready for increased responsibility.

As always, I just like to toss ideas out there to get some wheels turning and some thoughts flowing.  I invite our readers to please share any tips, ideas, or ways you’ve tried to keep students practicing skills and learning through the good ole summertime.

The post Maintaining Skills in the Summer for Kids by Kerry appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

The past is gone–let loose. The future is not determined–so dream and hope. Now is where you are and can make the difference–be in Your now!

The post Afidence Training and Event Ideas for Cincinnati and Dayton — June 2012 appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.

I love this idea because it is such a sneaky way to continue the education process through the summer, and to motivate them to learn in particular areas that may not have happened during the school year.  This year, for example, my list contains some long-term projects, things that can’t be done in one sitting.  Because at school, and later at work, the ability to work on a “big” project successfully and methodically is a skill I want my kids to have.

So here’s how it works.  Think of the things you would like your kids to accomplish in the coming year. What are their next steps in sports, education, life skills? Where do they excel or need a little extra help?   Divide this list into Physical, Mental, Spiritual, Social and Life Skills.

For each child the lists might be different.   I have one child who plays the trombone, and part of his list is to learn some new songs, and to practice lots of minutes.  My other child plays basketball and this year should work on free throws, so I am offering significant points for 10 free throws in a row.

I buy fun educational computer games like Algebra World and Typing Tutor to make the learning they do in the summer fun.  My son has a book called, “Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction”.   These are fun little catapults and crossbows to build out of office supplies.  I put this challenge on the list because the weapons all use physics and some mechanical engineering in their creation and use.   So bottom line, they are still learning and they are having fun at the same time.

We always work on some goofy things as well as the practical.  One year I asked them to cook an egg on the sidewalk.  They came up with some sort of solar cooker and got the points (and a great egg!!)   Besides this, I think everyone should have one or two “stupid human tricks” available to impress their friends, so I have put spinning a basketball on one finger and folding an origami flower on the list.  (the flower is a real hit with the junior high girls!)

This is also an opportunity to foster some spiritual things.  This year I will award prizes for coming up with 500 things for which they are grateful.  (I think every adult living in America should do this once in their lives. It would change this country completely.)

I look forward to this activity every year because it’s a chance to sit down actually think about our children’s futures.  My husband and I get the chance to purposefully decide what things we want to foster in them.  What character needs shaping this year, and how can we motivate something short-term that then becomes a long-term habit?   It’s a great opportunity to catch up on any learning skills that are behind, and to speed ahead in areas of interest.

Every completed task earns a prize and prizes are the motivator for my kids.  A camera tri-pod, a cell phone enhancement package and various computer components (which they will gleefully install themselves) are the top awards this year.  Maybe your children are motivated more by days out on adventures, or by one-on one time.  One of my friends offered a day at the American Girl Doll store in Chicago as a prize.  She said it was worth every penny for the progress she saw in her daughter that summer.  If you find out what they actually want, the motivation just flows.

So keep the learning going, take the Summer Challenge with me.

The post Education, Motivation, Summer? They can go together if you take the Summer Challenge. appeared first on Afidence IT Consulting & Support.