We all care about our student’s emotional lives and we do things in the background to help them out–create a welcoming atmosphere, develop positive relationships with them, and help them develop positive relationships with each other. Marc Brackett’s book, Permission to Feel, contains an excellent tool for explicitly nourishing students’ emotional lives. The RULER acronym gives you a way to teach and talk about emotional regulation with your students. Over the last few months I’ve created a series of blog posts on the RULER acronym found in Brackett’s book. Here’s a round up of the posts: Intro to the Ruler Acronym Intro to the Mood Meter Help Students Recognize Emotions…
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An Efficient Way to Digitize Multiple Choice Quizzes
Sometimes I try to imagine how many of us our out there, going through our files and digitizing everything. It’s a gargantuan task and I’m slowly learning how to make the process easier, faster and more foolproof. Lately I’ve updated a series of multiple choice assessments that are part of my The Girl Who Drank the Moon novel study, and I developed a few tricks to make the whole process smoother. Here’s how I’m digitizing my multiple choice quizzes for distance learning: Mise en Place First up, get everything ready. So pull up the quiz you want to digitize and create a new Google Form. Pull up the quiz. Then…
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The Best (and Easiest, and Healthiest, and Fastest) Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffins
There are two things that make me desperately wish I was a better photographer: My children, and… these muffins. I have yet to take a photo of these muffins that does them any justice, so I hope you try them at least once because this is one of my most treasured recipes. These muffins are tasty, fast, and relatively healthy. In Great-British-Baking-Show parlance they “check all the boxes.” And best of all? You only have to dirty one bowl to make them. 1 Bowl + 1 Fork + 15 Minutes = 12 Muffins To make these using one bowl, I begin by mixing flaxseed and water, then squish the mixture…
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8 Activities to Scaffold Emotional Regulation in the Classroom
The RULER acronym ends with R for emotional regulation. Regulation strategies help us adjust our emotional state so that it’s not too overwhelming for us. This doesn’t mean we can control our emotions, making negative emotions disappear at will. But it does mean we don’t have to be controlled by them. The classroom can be an overwhelming place, and students benefit from being explicitly taught regulation skills. Here’s some activities that can help scaffold students ability to choose a regulation strategy to fit their emotional state: Here’s a master list of regulation strategies. Students dig deeper into each category with the following activities: These activities are included in my RULER…
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“To Do” vs. “To Be”–Planning in the Time of COVID-19
I spent the last week of December writing a long, extensive list of goals for 2020. The goals encompassed all aspects of life. By January 1 I had 10 pages of personal, spiritual, professional, relational, financial and parenting goals. Some of the goals were task-oriented, others were more values-based. Either way, I was ready for 2020. Then came the pandemic, tanking TpT sales and a sudden move. So while my values-based goals have become more relevant, my task-oriented goals have become less relevant. I’ve had to adjust my goals and expectations, and with the uncertainty looming over the 2020-2021 school year, more adjustment is sure to come. So I’ve been…
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Expressing Emotions, Social-Emotional Activities, RULER
This summer I completed a series of social emotional activities built around the RULER method for social emotional learning. Over the next few weeks I’d like to share them with you! You can purchase the activities in my TpT store, or use them as inspiration for your own activities. This post will focus on expressing emotions. This was one of the more difficult units to create–expression is valuable, but also risky. We want to help students express emotions in a way that is most likely to yield a good outcome. This unit helps students think through two things: Methods/Options: HOW can I express my emotions? Problem Solving: Which method/option best fits my situation right now?…
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Help Students Read Every Day while Learning From Home: Distance Learning, At-Home Reading Workshop
When school closures rolled across the country last April, teachers quickly adapted to provide digital resources for their students. We were all in survival mode, and a lot of these activities amounted to digital busy work. It was the best we could do. But now we’re faced with the daunting reality of intermittent school closures, or models that combine face-to-face teaching with digital teaching. One of the greatest challenges, I think, to digital teaching is the loss of a daily, reading practice. At school you can monitor and assist student’s daily reading. You can develop reliable routines that help students build reading stamina. But when kids are learning from home,…
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Let Me Introduce Myself: The Teacher Behind “Teacher In Exile”
Hey there! According to WordPress Insights, about 45% of you are returning visitors. I don’t know who you are, but I’m honored that you’ve chosen to spend some of your valuable time here at Teacher In Exile, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about who I am, what I’m doing here, and what I hope to contribute. Teaching Raggedy Ann When I was a kid I played school a lot. I distinctly remember the day I realized my Raggedy Anne doll was my favorite student. Until then I hadn’t much liked her. Yarn for hair? Come on. I’d seen the doll section of the American Girl catalogue.…
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Labeling Emotions, Social-Emotional Activities, RULER
Last month I completed a series of social emotional activities built around the RULER method for social emotional learning. Over the next few weeks I’d like to share them with you! You can purchase the activities in my TpT store, or use them as inspiration for your own activities. This post will focus on labeling emotions. This unit is my favorite in the RULER bundle because it’s all about building an emotional vocabulary, and it lends itself well to some of your usual vocabulary activities. Here’s a peek at some of them: Here’s another feelings journal that expands on the ones in the recognizing and understanding units. Now students find themselves on the mood meter,…
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Real World Reading Conferences: A Flexible Plan for Reading Conferences
Reading conferences tend to get lost in the shuffle. When your reading block is too short, your roster too full, and your attention too scattered, squeezing in a short conference can seem impossible. Still, we know reading conferences are one of the best ways to provide individualized teaching, encourage good reading habits, and remind students that we care about their reading lives. So while I can’t offer you more time, more attention or a smaller class, I do have a handy freebie to help you eeeeek out a few reading conferences every now and then. Before we get to that though, what is a reading conference? What is a Reading…
