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| Easy Button Rewards Ms. Goss builds community and motivates her class by allowing students to push her buttons – her Easy Button that is. Read more about how her students look for opportunities to shine and to recognize each other’s achievements. |
| Encouraging Parents to Read with their Children Judy B., a retired teacher, encourages parents to read along with their children and offers guidance on reading techniques such as character voices, shared paragraph reading and making plot predictions. |
| Emotional Book Club This year, I created a counseling book club. We read books that have a message to which the group members can relate. For example... |
| Easy Transitioning for Little Ones I taught preschool and primary grades. Here are some thoughts on transitioning for those age groups. |
| Easy Updated Seating Charts When I make or update my seating chart, I use the software aplication... |
| Easy Chocolate Gift Ms. Junkin, a food and nutrition teacher, has an idea for holiday a gift. Without making promises about calories, we can say that it is fast (only 5 minutes of baking), easy (only a few ingredients) and delicious (trust us). |
| Electronic Parent Contacts Beth loves her mobile device. She can synch it to her computer to type notes and contact information for easier tracking. She downloads and prints her notes before meetings. Read more about how this tiny technical tool can help you stay organized too. |
| End of the Year Activity At the end of the school year, have this year’s kids write letters to next year’s kids. Give them suggestions on topics to include such as... |
| Encouraging Reluctant Readers One strategy that I have been using to entice my 8th grade reluctant readers is to give them a "book trailer." |
| Early Options In my room, students are expected to have a book at their desk at all times. Anytime they finish their work they can read, which they usually do. Then depending on what time of day it is determines wh... |
| Easy Bulletin Board Backgrounds Bulletin board paper is not easy to measure and put up so I use gift wrap instead. After stapling it to the center of my board, I add a pre-cut corrugated, colorful border. Gift-wrap not only does the... |
| Tracking Classroom Supplies Learn what Ms. Hanson does to make tracking depleted classroom supplies a breeze. She suggests an easy way to record and manage a list throughout the year, so replacing supplies eliminates guesswork and mistakes. |
| Echo Me, Please Echo Me, Please is a very useful tool for directing everyone's attention to you. You teach the students that whenever you say 'Echo me, please' they are to say it right back to you the same way you sa... |
| Education Association Members' Concerns I work to improve my work with adults, just as I do with students. I feel it is important that I give our association building reps a chance to share issues that are important to them. At the beginnin... |
| Adopt an Acre of Rainforest My class studied the rainforest and decided that we wanted to educate others about how deforestation affects us all. I divided the class into groups, which researched... |
| Efficient and Effective Grading There will always be papers in our grading boxes, but I have found that creating a variety of assignments and varying their lengths helps tremendously in cutting down on the work. Here are two of my f... |
| Effort Grades I teach just over 500 elementary art students. We are required to give only an effort grade for art, music and P.E. I log my daily grades by using my own letter codes (OT for Off Task, FD for Not Foll... |
| Egg Carton Multiplication If you’re looking for more math games, here’s a fun way your students can practice multiplication facts with only a Ping-Pong ball and an empty egg carton. Help your students bounce their way to multiplication success. |
| Egg Hunt Review Students create multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank review questions for all subjects. Parent volunteers stuff plastic eggs with these questions and hide them outside. Students work with a partner to find the eggs and answer the questions. |
| Egg-citing Egg Math Ms. Shackelford cuts egg cartons into ten holes to estimate, count, tally, and sort plastic eggs. Learn how she extends this lesson to the grocery store and helps her students become savvy shoppers. She culminates her egg unit with an egg hunt. |
| Einstein Monthly bulletin boards can be time-consuming. Last September, I hung a poster of Albert Einstein and his quote 'Imagination is more important than knowledge.' Each following month, I altered the post... |
| El Zippo Moving Game Mrs. Cochran plays an active review game with her class. Her students write the questions and answers, and then quiz each other. As students answer questions correctly, they move about the classroom switching seats with each other and the teacher. |
| Electing Our President In order to help prepare for our school’s mock election, I read Nancy Gills’ book, Electing Our President, which was very helpful to me. Students became representatives of the actual presidential cand... |
| Electronic Pen Pals Our first and fourth grade students are electronic pen pals. The students are each assigned a buddy to correspond with through email. They exchange letters, questions and responses. The result has bee... |
| Electronic Reading Group It's Right-To-Read Month at our school and in addition to many student activities, we organized an email reading discussion group for our staff. The staff makes comments about favorite books and thing... |
| Electronic Sub Plans I find that email is the perfect tool for sending sub plans to school when I am not able to go myself. I just email a friend who can print out the plans and take them with him/her in the morning. (Of ... |
| Element Mobiles I divide my high school chemistry students into small groups and have each group select an element of the Periodic Table. The groups must come up with creative ideas to represent products made of that... |
| Element Relationships When I teach the elements and the periodic table, I incorporate writing across the curriculum. I have students choose one element that they're interested in and research it. After they've finished the... |
| Elementary School Student Council In response to the teacher looking for help with a student council, some words of advice. Having the principal on board is most important, so speak to your principal for his or her ideas. They are you... |
| E-mail Better Than Signatures Ms. Trabucca created a new parent test and signature system. She uses a mass email alert, making parent-teacher communication faster, easier and cheaper. And best of all, it places responsibility for follow up on the parents. Find out how she does it. |
| Email Connections I help parents connect with their child's school experience by creating an email list of all parents with computer access. I email a newsletter to my parents weekly letting them know what's happening ... |
| E-Mail Extras I use the digital camera to take pictures of the students participating in class activities. Then I e-mail the pictures to the students in the class. They enjoy seeing their pictures and many times th... |
| E-mailing Students Some of my students have Internet access at home, and I have set up an e-mail exchange with them. They write to me at home on the net several times a week. We exchange jokes, I send them brain teasers... |
| Emergency Plans Near the beginning of the year, I make an emergency lesson plan box. I use an empty file folder box. In it, I place a packet of work that will cover a block schedule period. |
| Emergency Procedures If there should be an incident at our high school of 770 students, we hear a special code over the P.A. or intercom. It tells us what the incident is, specifically, and where it is taking place. We lo... |
| Encouraging Attendance To encourage attendance, our school gives an ice cream sundae party to the homeroom(s) that had no, or the least, absences each calendar month. We also require parents who are checking their children ... |
| Encouraging Classroom Participation In order to encourage and reward classroom participation in my science classes, I keep track of student participation on my seating chart. When a student answers a question, I put a plus sign by their... |
| Encouraging Healthy Snacks When we arrive at school our team focuses our first unit on nutrition. We encourage healthy snacks and provide incentives for those who participate in the monthly program. |
| Encouraging Oral Reading Some teachers create writing prompts to facilitate creative writing. Mr. Shuler creates reading prompts to help students practice their oral reading skills. They prompts are unique, and his students have fun with the assignments. |
| Encouraging Send-Offs My students are just starting to realize that there's a world beyond their playground so I try to connect their lives with the world of work on a daily basis. At dismissal, I always write 'Goodbye, fu... |
| Encouraging Students To Read Aloud One way to encourage students to read out loud is to send student teams of two, three or four into a corner of the room with a video camera and a reading assignment. At the end of the day, I play thre... |
| End of the Day Confusion Since our school is a neighborhood school, children leave school in a variety of ways. Some ride busses, some walk, and some are picked up by car, while others go to a local day care. This can make di... |
| End of the Day Routines I make cleaning up the classroom part of the classroom jobs. I have two students clean the floor, one in charge of the closet, one in charge of sharpening pencils, two to check the supply area, one to... |
| Enlarged Mouse Pads Her young students sometimes have difficulty keeping their mice on their pads, so Ms. Sharpless came up with a unique, inexpensive solution that helps students point, click and scroll with ease. Find out how she did it. |
| Enlisting Students' Help I teach more than one content area daily with classes of 2-14 students. To help with organizational skills (mine & the students), I type the class roster, print several copies, cut them into small rec... |
| Environmental Prints I use environmental prints as one way to give students a purpose to read. Children bring in packaging from cereal, bread, juices, and other food items. The children read the labels for various purpose... |
| Equal Participation To insure that I am calling on all of my students equally, I put everyone's name on an index card. I keep the deck of cards with me and instead of calling on raised hands, I call on the next card in t... |
| Equitable Team Homework Are you tired of your students doing homework from other classes during yours? Here's a creative solution that encourages students to complete homework at home and stay on-task in the classroom. |
| Essential 55 I just finished the most amazing new book that I'm sure will be required reading in every education program in every university by next semester. It's even better than the new Harry Potter book! The t... |
| Essential Skills One of the best book report ideas I have used with 8th graders uses the Lifeskills list found in Susan Kovalik's book, 'Iti: The Model Integrated Thematic Instruction' (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obid... |
| Evaporating Ee's I incorporate some science concepts into my reading readiness lessons and give students some tactile experiences before having them practice printing letters with pencils. They dip their finger in wat... |
| Every Job Requires Readers We have guest readers come to our school and read to classes from kindergarten through grade 5. Our objective is to help the children have a better understanding of the concept that every job requires... |
| Everyone's a Critic When Ms. Pergande shows instructional videos to her class, she uses a unique strategy to encourage attentive listening. Read more about how she organizes the game, rewards students for playing, and get everyone to be a film critic. |
| Exemplary Wall Ms. Potter motivates students to perform well on test and quizzes and to behave well at school with a unique version of a hall of fame. The best part is that it’s portable: student can take pieces of it home to share their good works with family. |
| Exit Tickets To keep my students focused on the day's objective, I tell them what their 'exit ticket' will be for each day. I stand at the door as the students leave and they tell me an interesting simile, a new v... |
| Exoskeletons I teach my students about exoskeletons with raw shrimp. I split my class into four groups so I only need to get about six shrimp. The students examine the headless shrimp's legs, exoskeleton and body ... |
| Exploring the Titanic My students read 'Exploring the Titanic' by Robert Ballard as part of our oceanography unit. The students are asked to pretend that they were hired to design a brochure advertising the ship's features... |
| Extra Copy Box I frequently have students absent, leaving my room for music lessons, calls to the office, nurse, etc. I have a box in my room labeled extra copies. After I pass out worksheets, I put 10 extra copies ... |
| EZ Grading Scale Do you often misplace your EZ Grading Scale? I tape a Ziploc bag inside the cover of my grade book and slip the grading scale inside it! Works like a charm! |
| Excursion Behavior Before field trips, Ms. Scruggs asks the students themselves to provide rules for their own behavior outside the classroom. Creating this list helps the students take ownership of their actions and simplifies classroom management. |
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