Research shows that children begin to feel negative stress at a very young age. As they are exposed to new situations, new environments, or witness the stress of others, children feel threatened and helpless. Negative stress can be destructive to the physical and mental health of the child, thus impacting a child's performance in school.

Implementing stress management strategies prior to or during a stressful situation can reduce a
child's stress significantly. Read more to learn five easy strategies that can be used
both in the classroom and at home.

Metacognitive strategies refers to methods used to help students understand the way they learn; in other words, it means processes designed for students to 'think' about their 'thinking'.

Teachers who use metacognitive strategies can positively impact students who have learning disabilities by helping them to develop an appropriate plan for learning information, which can be memorized and eventually routine. As students become aware of how they learn, they will use these processes to efficiently acquire new information, and consequently, become more of an independent thinker. Click "Read More" for three metacognitive strategies and related resources. 

 

Do you want to collaborate and share resources with other teachers on-line?

Do you want to create a webpage where students can access resources and information?

Do you want a network where parents can find information and resources that can help them support their child at home?

Using a web page to communicate and post information is a wonderful way to create a collaborative space for teachers, students and parents. Schools administrators and teachers, collaboratively, can
create a school website where educators can post information and share resources with one another. 

This Tip of the Month comes from a workshop presentation done by Roxanne Hoke-Chandler, Massachusetts PIRC @ FCSN and Kim Hunt, President, Massachusetts PTA, at the 2009 Federation for Children with Special Needs' Vision of Community conference.

Research shows that parents have a major influence on a child's achievement. According to a handout prepared by the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA), when parents are involved, regardless of income or background, children are more likely to earn higher grades and test scores, enroll in higher-level programs, attend school regularly, have better social skills, show improved behavior, graduate, and go on to postsecondary education.

 

Many students with learning disabilities have difficulty with executive functions such as organizing, planning, time management, remembering information and keeping track of multiple tasks. These students can often benefit from a variety of strategies that help with organization and planning.  Click on the title or "read more" to learn about some ways to support students using Web 2.0 and New Media Tools.

Executive Functions are a set of mental processes that help us with planning, organization and task management.  In day-to-day life, these functions enable us to focus our attention and activity in useful ways by integrating, making sense of, and prioritizing other cognitive and emotional processes and information.  Click on the title or "read more" to learn about some ways to support students who exhibit problems with executive functioning.

Featured Resources

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Daily routines provide structure to what otherwise can be viewed by students as a long and open ended series of tasks throughout the day. Routines typically follow the same sequence and render the same consequence during each cycle therefore making them very predictable. Predictability supports early learning.  Click on the title or "Read more" for information about how to create predictable classroom routines.

In today's high stakes educational environment, there is often little time to spare in our classrooms.  Teaching is often fast-paced and targeted while time for creativity and reflection can be limited.  The amount of time that it takes to process information and formulate a response varies from child to child, so click on the title or "Read more" for some useful strategies to meet the needs of all learners.

Most teachers would probably agree that there is no better way to start a school year than to be well prepared and organized.  Click on the title or "Read more" for some helpful hints.