• Back-to-School: Tips for Motivating Students
• Bringing the Election into your Classroom
• Professional Development: Grow With Us
• Using Ignite! Curriculum with Interactive Whiteboards
• Summer Quest Wrap Up
• Check out the Ignite! Blog

Back-to-School: Tips on getting kids motivated and back in the swing of things at the start of the school year.

Perhaps you spent your summer at the beach, or gardening, or playing softball. Perhaps you spent your summer collecting lesson plans, or pursuing grad school, or selling real estate. And now summer is past, fall is here, and you are returning to school. As with all things, first impressions in school mean the most and putting your best foot forward at the return of school may set the tone for the rest of the year. Here are five tips to start the school year off right!

1. School is relevant! Look at recent events that your students may have encountered in their summer away from school and tie them back to your discipline. For example, Russia recently invaded Georgia. Social studies teachers can challenge students to find Russia and Georgia on the map or explain their complicated historical relationship; math teachers could create population (4,630,841 : 142,008,838) or geographic area ratios (69,700 km² : 17,075,400 km², simplified to 697 km² : 170,754 km²) between the two nations or chart significant events in Georgia's history, explaining B.C. years as negative numbers and a timeline as a kind of number line; and science teachers could look at the climate in Georgia or its natural resources. Remind them that lessons they learn in school are widely applicable beyond school!
2. Design a welcoming space. If you are allowed to, paint your classroom in warm, soft colors or even have the students themselves paint murals of their own design. Put up interesting, pertinent posters. Arrange the seats in a comfortable manner for you and your students: will rows or small groups work best for your philosophy? Bring pillows or bean bags to throw into a corner!
3. Give students the focus they need. Clearly identify your classroom and yourself from outside the room to put students in the frame of mind to let them know what the rules are how and how things will be run before they even step into the door. Make sure they know whether they can choose their own seat or if they have assigned seats. Tell them how and how often they'll be graded.
4. Get buy-in. Find out what they want to learn. What are their expectations from the class? From you? From each other? From themselves? What behavior will they not tolerate of themselves, of each other, and of you? In response, tell them what your expectations are for those same questions. Then promise to hold each other accountable to those expectations. Write these expectations down, have everyone sign them, and publicly display your new classroom constitution.
5. Inclusion activities. Students should feel encouraged to speak in class and take risks and a safe, collaborative classroom environment can foster that. More than just fun ice-breakers, inclusion activities allow students to learn more about one another, feel comfortable, share, and create bonds. As a first day "know-your-neighbor" activity, have students write their names in bubble letters on a folded sheet of paper that will support itself on the desk like a tent. In each bubble letter in their name, have them draw or write things that reveal aspects of themselves: their favorite sport, hobbies, pets, aspirations, etc. Then, have them explain the bubble names to one another in their small groups and let those name placards rest on their desks to allow other classmates to meet them. Hint: This activity can also be used to teach content: you can write a term like "equivalent fractions" and populate the bubble letters with equivalent fractions, the phrase "Bill of Rights" and populate the bubble letters with those rights or visual mnemonics for those rights, or an element like argon and populate the bubble letters with facts about argon, such as the number of electrons, protons, and neutrons it has in its atoms; its place in the periodic table of elements; and common uses.

For more ideas on preparing students for their return to school, please check out Harry and Rosemary Wong's August 2000 entry of "Effective Teaching..." entitled There is Only One First Day of School at http://teachers.net/wong/AUG00/. Good luck and have a successful year!

Bringing the Election into your Classroom

By: Jeff Knight, Head Writer 

As a new school year swings into motion, the news is dominated by the upcoming presidential elections. Teachers in all subject areas will find interesting connections between the election and the core curriculum knowledge and skills their students need to learn.

In Math, teachers may want to focus on the electoral college, and how it possible for a candidate to win the popular vote and yet lose in the electoral vote. Following national or state polls, discussing how samples are generated, and the margin of error for different polls are all great ways to leverage electoral excitement in a mathematical way. Closer to home, mock elections are a great way to get students thinking about the applicability of math to democracy.

Science is relevant to several important policy issues, including energy policy, off shore drilling, global warming, protecting endangered species, and investment in the space program. The role of science in society, and the intersection of scientific understanding with public policy, makes for great examples of why and how science matters.

Social Studies teachers—whether in American History, World Cultures, or World History—have lots of connections as well, from how American policies affect the rest of the world to the historic nature of Obama's candidacy (as the first African-American candidate of a major party), to how John McCain's compelling personal story as a prisoner of war in Vietnam reminds us of the broad cultural context of that era.

Elections..they're not just for government class anymore!

Ignite! Professional Development. Grow With Us.

Ignite! Learning is very excited to announce new Professional Development offerings that offer strategies for daily instruction, and reflect educators' on-going need for staying up-to-date on the most current educational trends.

Ignite! realizes the time challenges placed on educators today so we are pleased to offer flexible delivery options tailored to meet your specific needs with a range of sessions available. You choose the topic and we'll conduct the session, it's that easy!

In keeping with our instructional design, the sessions have a collaborative focus and foster group interaction. Each in-person session is led by one of our Ignite! Educational Gurus. With over 50 years of educational experience combined, our Gurus are sure to offer an exciting and meaningful experience!

Tools for Success: Each Ignite! curriculum comes with a pre-loaded video detailing Ignite! implementation best practices and can be viewed at your own pace! In addition, a short video shows how the Ignite! curriculum utilizes knowledge structures to build deeper connections across concepts.

Webinar: Maximize the use of the Ignite! curriculum by signing up for a free webinar! These one hour sessions help educators fully integrate the curriculum into the classroom, ensuring success for teachers and students. Webinar sessions can be done in groups or individually, and each session is conducted by one of our curriculum experts.

In-Person Professional Development: Ignite! Learning offers various courses which can be conducted in as little as 4 hours or combined to create customized full day sessions. Educators choose which topics are most relevant to their training needs and design both a productive and meaningful experience to produce immediate results in the classroom. Visit our website for a complete list of topics and descriptions and schedule your professional development today!

http://www.ignitelearning.com/community/professional-development.html

Using Ignite! Curriculum with Interactive Whiteboards

Use the Ignite! curriculum with your interactive whiteboard and engage your students at a whole new level! The combination of Ignite! curriculum and interactive whiteboards provides teachers with an additional level of interactivity in the classroom to foster student participation and deeper retention of concepts. Teachers may pause media pieces to take advantage of a teachable moment, have students participate in interactive media pieces, connect concepts across curriculum areas, and draw parallels to students' everyday lives.

Math Example: use the interactive whiteboard to drag and drop equivalent fractions or correctly order decimal numbers on a number line.

Science Example: in a media piece about understanding the rock cycle, students use the interactive whiteboard to activate "hot spots" on a flow chart of the rock cycle to delve deeper into geological information, such as how weathering of igneous rocks can eventually form new layers of sedimentary rock.

Social Studies Example: in a media piece about interpreting maps, students use the interactive whiteboard to activate "hot spots" on a map to delve deeper into geographical information such as the population of Egypt compared to the population of Australia.

Visit our website for more interactive lesson examples, www.ignitelearning.com/interactive.

For all subjects, students may also use drawing tools to complete graphs and charts to further illustrate their understanding of material. Visit our website to learn more about our recent SMART accreditation!

Summer Quest Wrap Up.

We launched our Summer Quest in June to help prevent "summer learning loss" and provide students with fun, engaging activities to complete throughout the summer to help them stay busy and keep their minds active across the subject areas. Students from across the country registered and completed cross-curricular activities related to the zoo, roller coasters, and world travel.

Congratulations to the winning student and teacher from Pasadena ISD, in Pasadena Texas. The winning student will receive a $100 gift card to Target! The winning teacher, Chrissy Dollens, will receive the Ignite! curriculum for her classroom!

Check out our Ignite! Blog.

Visit the Ignite! Blog and become part of a community connected by an interest in the needs of educators and students! Read our thoughts about education, community outreach, and much more! Contributors include our Principal Instructional Designer, Mike Whalen, and Content Development Expert, Jeff Knight. Visit the Ignite! Blog today to register and contribute your own thoughts!

http://blogs.ignitelearning.com/

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