Tag Archives: classroom discussion

Are You Good at Giving Compliments – Teacher’s Corner

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Teacher’s Corner
The prompts below can be used for writing about or discussing compliments.
  1. Answer the following questions (yes or no) and see how good your compliments are.
    • Do your compliments give the facts telling exactly what it is you like?
    • Do you truly believe what your compliment says?
    • Have you avoided using the words perfect, always, or never?
      (If you can say yes to all three questions, you are doing well. Keep it up.)
  2. Do you give good compliments to some people and not so good ones to others? Why do you think that is?
  3. Do you sometimes give compliments you don’t really believe? For example, “I like your new shoes.” when you really don’t like them at all.  Why do you do that?
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.