Students who regularly complete and turn in homework assignments perform significantly better in school than those of similar ability who do not do homework (Olympia et al., 1994). Homework is valuable because it gives students a chance to practice, extend, and entrench the academic skills taught in school. Parents can be instrumental in encouraging and motivating their children to complete homework. This homework contract intervention (adapted from Miller & Kelly, 1994) uses goal-setting, a written contract, and rewards to boost student completion (and accuracy) of homework. Students also learn the valuable skills of breaking down academic assignments into smaller, more manageable subtasks and setting priorities for work completion.

A webinar by the amazing A.J. Juliana on how to do passion learning with students virtually.

This information could also be applied to student book clubs.
A great read full of great ideas!

Teachers skilled in classroom management are able to respond appropriately to just about any behavior that a student brings through the classroom door. While having a toolkit of specific behavioral strategies is important, the real secret of educators who maintain smoothly running classrooms with minimal behavioral disruptions is that they are able to view problem student behaviors through the lens of these seven 'big ideas' in behavior management.

-PD
-Playlists
-Writing Prompts
-Maker and Design Ideas
-Best Practices
& More!

"All types of educators are bound to find something of use on KQED Education. Browse the classroom resources for access to high-quality videos, lesson plans, media creation ideas, and other standards-aligned content. Or read stories written and shared by other educators, and get inspiration and ideas for your classroom. Activities focus on creative use and analysis of media. For example, one teacher-created post describes how she used memes to teach media literacy. Another wrote about having students share their culture through media creation. While the site contains a mix of structured plans and ideas, it's easy to find activities that inspire forward-thinking instruction and encourage the development of a 21st century learning environment.

Check out the free professional development (PD) offerings as well: Teachers can earn certification as a PBS Media Literacy Educator by completing eight of the available modules. The site's pages are densely populated with activities, links to more KQED resources, and partner sites, but if you're willing to spend some time looking around, you'll find lots of high-quality materials." (Common Sense Media Review)

In this 5-minute video a junior high school teacher discusses “Kick Me” a vocabulary lesson where students locate missing words to complete their analogies taped on their classmates’ backs. Students are given 10 to 15 minutes to find the answers so they move efficiently to complete the project.

While the long-term negative impact of poor readers can be enormous, the good news is that schools can train their own students to deliver effective tutoring in reading to younger peers. Kids as Reading Helpers: A Peer Tutor Training Manual is a complete package for training peer reading tutors. Peer tutoring answers the nagging problem of delivering effective reading support to the many struggling young readers in our schools. Furthermore, peer tutoring programs can improve the reading skills of tutors as well as tutees (Ehly, 1986) and - in some studies-have been shown to build tutor's social skills as well (Garcia-Vazquez & Ehly, 1995). Young children tend to find the opportunity to read aloud to an older peer tutor to be quite reinforcing, adding a motivational component to this intervention.

"Bring science, technology and innovation experts into the learning environment to spark curiosity and strengthen STEM connections to post-secondary pathways and career opportunities."

Opportunities include:

Career exploration
STEM Club (Gr. 4-6)
STEM Storytime (K-3) many opportunities
Design & Build Series (K-12) many opportunities
Indigenous STEM Speaker Series
Live professional learning
On-demand professional learning webinars

"Learn new skills, discover classroom activities and earn badges and certificates!"

This amazing resource has content and courses and a variety of learning paths for teachers. There are great lessons you can learn with your kids, or you can go here to develop the skills you need to infuse technology into your classroom successfully.

Intro courses include Minecraft, blended learning, personalized learning, and student voice. Also available are learning to use applications such as Forms, OneNote, etc.

This will also connect you to Skype in the Classroom to literally make the world your classroom!

In the first session of the Mind the Gaps series, intervention expert Mike Mattos will discuss the three essential academic outcomes of an effective multitiered system of support and four critical actions that leaders should take to embed these supports in the school’s master schedule.

Given months of remote or distance learning, this webinar will challenge participants to consider how to begin to prepare now for the critical targeted instruction that takes into consideration the impact of the recent disruption in face-to-face learning.

Assessment sits at the center of instructional decisions and multitiered systems of support that ensure student success. This webinar, featuring assessment expert Nicole Dimich, will provide guidance in how to design meaningful assessments and set up information that empowers teachers to be instructionally agile and students to be invested in their learning.

"The purpose of this support material is to assist educators in using collaborative inquiry to engage in conversations and develop actions to deepen their own, their students’ and communities’ understanding of residential school experiences and related issues that affect the process of reconciliation in Saskatchewan.
These materials may be used in a variety of contexts such as staff meetings, professional learning groups, workshops, school councils and community gatherings. The sample conversation questions and actions may also be useful for individual teacher reflection and planning."

Conversation 1 - What is Reconciliation

Conversation 2 - What do we know about SK residential schools?

Conversation 3 - How can we incorporate culturally-responsive practices in our classrooms to honour the Truth and Reconciliation recommendations and calls to action?

Conversation 4 - How can we move forward...?

Additional Supports

Other Projects in SK

High-probability requests are one feasible classroom technique that can be effective in motivating students to engage in assigned classwork (Lee, 2006). The teacher first identifies an academic activity in which the student historically shows a low probability of completing because of non-compliance. The teacher then embeds within that low-probability activity an introductory series of simple, brief 'high-probability' requests or tasks that this same student has an established track record of completing (Belfiore, Basile, & Lee, 2008).

Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student lacks essential skills required to do the task. Areas of deficit might include basic academic skills, cognitive strategies, and academic-enabler skills. Here are teacher behaviors to help fix this motivation problem.

Although the student has the required skills to complete the assigned work, he or she perceives the ‘effort’ needed to do so to be so great that the student loses motivation. Learn teacher behaviors to fix this motivation problem.

The student is distracted or off-task because classroom instruction and learning activities are not sufficiently reinforcing to hold his or her attention. Learn teacher behaviors to help fix this motivation problem.

The student requires praise, access to rewards, or other reinforcers in the short term as a temporary ‘pay-off’ to encourage her or him to apply greater effort. Learn teacher behaviors to help fix this student motivation problem.

The student has a low sense of self-efficacy in a subject area, activity, or academic task and that lack of confidence reduces the student’s motivation to apply his or her best effort. NOTE: Self-efficacy is the student’s view of his or her own abilities specific to a particular academic area (e.g., mathematics) and should not be confused with self-esteem, which represents the student’s global view of his or her self-worth. Learn teacher behavior to help fix this student motivation problem.

The student appears indifferent or even hostile toward the instructor and thus may lack motivation to follow teacher requests or to produce work. Learn teacher behaviors to help with this student motivation problem.

The Writing Alignment PLC has created a short video sharing the "Narrative Writing Lessons and Resources" resource that they created this year! The video explains their PLC goal and then takes viewers through the resource bank to view the lesson descriptions, as well as the elements of the resource itself. A must see video for ELA teachers grades 1-12!