What’s the Morning Plan – Teacher’s Corner

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Teacher’s Corner
The prompts below can be used for writing about or discussing fears or nervousness about school starting.
  • Have a clear plan for how mornings will go in your classroom.  Explain the plan to the students. Make a poster that describes the plan.  Use pictures for young children. For older children, involve them in making or adjusting the plan.
  • Agree ahead of time about what  will happen if the plan is not followed. Individual consequences? Whole-class consequences?
  • Take questions from the students to test their understanding. Explain how the items on the plan will help each of them and their fellow students.
  • Have the students write their suggestions for changes and turn them in to you.  Let them know you will give their ideas consideration and when you will report back on both their suggestions and how the plan is working overall.
Teachers, you can use this blog in classrooms. Here are two ideas about how.
  1. For middle or high school parenting or child development courses:
    • Use the blog for discussion topics
    • Require students to research the topics and agree or disagree with what the blog is suggesting.
  2. For all courses, especially English Language Arts:
  • Use the blog for writing prompts for paragraphs, theme papers, journal entries, class starters, etc. Have students read the blog and respond to:
  • Do you agree with what is being said about kids? Do kids really act, think or feel that way?
  • Do you agree with what is being said about parents, grandparents, teachers and child caregivers? Do or should they act, think or feel that way?
  • What would be your advice on this topic?
  • What was left out of this article?
  • If you were a parent, would you use any of this information? How?
Why can this blog be a useful teaching tool?
  • Students that see connections between their coursework and their lives do better in school.
  • Most students will either be parents one day or have children in their lives that they care about, so the topical information can help them build their knowledge about children and parenting and develop a positive image of the type of parenting they want to do.
  • The new core literacy standards adopted by most states call for frequent writing in all courses.
  • Newly developed end-of-course assessments to be used by many states will require that students demonstrate that they can think critically. These prompts help students practice critical thinking.
  • Newly developed end-of-course assessments to be used by many states will require that students demonstrate that they can analyze what they read. These prompts help students practice analysis.