How to be an Effective Teacher: Part 3 of 3

Greetings,

Hope you had a great week. I know we had a great first week of school at our school. This is the final part on how to be an effective teacher from Dr. Harry K. Wong's keynote speech. I have been receiving a lot of feedback on my First Day of School PowerPoint I shared last week. Today I will be sharing all the different types of procedures and routines that you need to teach your children throughout the year. These can also be found in Dr. Harry K. Wong's Book: The First Days of School in Chapter 19.

Entering the classroom
Getting to work immediately
Listening to and responding to questions
Participating in class discussions
Keeping your desk orderly
Checking out classroom materials
Indicating whether or not you understand
Coming to attention
Working cooperatively
Changing groups
Working in centers
Keeping your notebook
Going to the office
Knowing the schedule for the day or class
Keeping a progress report
Finding directions for each assignment
Passing in papers
Exchanging papers
Returning student work
Getting materials without disturbing others
Handing out playground materials
Moving about the room
Going to the library or tech center
How to head your paper
Returning to a task after an interruption
Asking a question
Walking in the hall during class time
Which side of the hall to walk on
Responding to the following: fire drill, tornado drill, lock down (when a stranger is in the building)
Saying "thank you"
When you are late or tardy
End of period class dismissal
When you need a pencil or paper
When you are absent
When you need help or conferencing
When you finish early
When visitors are in the classroom
If the teacher is out of the classroom
If you are suddenly ill

Remember there is a procedure for teaching a procedure.

The Three-Steps Approach to Teaching Classroom Procedures (Ch. 20 in First Days of School)

1. Teach -State, explain, model, and demonstrate the procedure.

2. Rehearse - Rehearse and practice the procedures under your supervision.

3. Reinforce - Reteach, rehearse, practice, and reinforce the procedure until it becomes student habit of routine.

The last concept on how to be a very effective teacher is to have very high expectations for you and your students. You want to create an effect on you and then on your students. Positive expectations is the key. Believe in your students and when they say "I can't" point out to your students it means they are not trying.
Hope these ideas on procedures and routines help you out during the school year. Next week I will be sharing with you the exciting trainings I have been involved in over this past summer. I had the opportunity to take over $11,000 of advanced technology training classes and receive 25 books for free. Find out how next week. See you next week.

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How to be an Effective Teacher: Part 2 of 3

Greetings,

I know a lot of you are excited as the students return to school on Monday. I know you have all been patiently waiting for me to share my PowerPoint on procedures and routines on the first day of school. Remember this was featured in Dr. Harry K. Wong's keynote presentation all around the United States.

First let me share with you the 7 questions that student will have when they enter your classroom. The following information below was from my notes from the Keynote Address. You can find more information in the book: The First Days of School.

1. Am I in the right room?
This gives them a sense of security to know they are in the right place.

2. Where am I suppose to sit?
This lets them know I want you here and I am inviting you into my classroom and I have planned for you.

3. What are the rules in this classroom?
This helps the classroom run more smoothly.

4. What will I be doing this year?
This is your chance to sell what it is they will be learning this year. Create excitement for your classroom for the upcoming school year.

5. How will I be graded?
What is your grading policy? Let them know what it is they need to do to earn a grade in your classroom.

6. Who is my teacher as a person?
Let the students know something about you and they will have a better time relating to you. Tell them what you like, collect or any hobbies or interests you have. Tell them about yourself. If you do not do this, then they will be inventing things about you.

7. Will my teacher treat me fairly?
Yes I will treat you fair, but your definition of fair may not be the same as mine.

My PowerPoint on classroom procedures and routines is located below. All you have to do is click on the picture below and you can download it and save it. I hope these ideas help you be the best teacher you can be.

Once again, I hope these ideas I have shared with you help you out. I hope you have a great first day of school and I will see you next week. For more PowerPoints from other successful teachers please visit http://www.teachers.net/

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How to be an Effective Teacher: Part 1 of 3

Hello,

Today I will be sharing with you some key concepts and ideas on How to be an Effective and Successful Teacher. I recently had the opportunity to attend Dr. Harry K. Wong's and Dr. Rosemary Wong's keynote presentation on How to be an Effective and Successful Teacher. I have also been collaborating with him over the summer on a few ideas. To see his latest article for August 2010, please double click on the picture below.

Harry K. Wong is possible the most motivating, exciting and dynamic speaker in education today. His presentations result in a positive behavioral effect on his audiences world wide. he leaves his audiences with practical and useful techniques on how to be a successful teacher. He has given more than 3,000 presentations to nearly a half million people in America and Canadian provinces and in South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Dr. Wong's expertise is in classroom management and student motivation. He has been an excellent teacher who has shared his success wit thousands of teacher worldwide. Dr. Wong has won numerous awards and was also featured in a story by Reader's Digest.

During more than 33 years in the classroom, He has developed methods that resulted in having a zero dropout rate, no discipline problems a 95% homework turn-in record, and the ability to demonstrate master level learning by each of his students.

Instructor Magazine (March 2006) announced a reader's poll of the most admired people in the world of education. Harry Wong was on the list along with Maya Angelou, Laura Bush, Bill Cosby, Hillary Clinton, Ron Clark, Marva Collins, Howard Gardner, Mel Levine, and Oprah Winfrey.

Dr. Wong has over 30 publications including the best selling book in the world in Education. He has sold over 3.5 Million books as of 2010. Soon there will be a Chinese and an Arabic Edition; possible a French addition. What's the name of his best selling book? It is called The First Days of School. He also has an award-winning video series, a CD set and an e-Learning course in classroom management. He also writes a monthly column on http://www.teachers.net/wong

What is the secret to be an effective teacher? Here it is get you pen and paper ready. According to Dr. Wong, you steal. Well it's not really called stealing. It's called research. You walk into teachers rooms and you look around and look around for great ideas that you can use in your classroom. It's also called sharing and collaborating with effective teachers.

There is only one way to improve student learning and it is by having an effective teacher. You want to have a positive effect or produce a result with your students. According to Dr. Wong, you need the mastery of the following as a teacher:

1. Excellent Classroom Management Skills (Unit C in book)

2. Lesson Mastery (Unit D in book)

3. Positive Expectations (Unit B in book)

For more information on these key ideas, please refer to the newest edition of The First Days of School, which was published in 2009.

I hope these resources assist you in becoming a great teacher, role model and leader in your school or community. Next week I will be sharing with you parts of my PowerPoint on procedures and routines on the first day of school that was featured in his keynote presentation. I will also be sharing with you the 7 questions students want to know when they walk in your room on the first day of school. Now if you can't wait untill next week, you can always refer to the book. See you next week.

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How to Access Free Movies, Music, Books and Audiobooks!

Greetings,

Hope you are doing well. This week I will be discussing a place where you can access free resources within your community. You can get popular DVDs, Cd's, books, and audiobooks at your own local library. It's amazing of the statistics of how many people actually have a library card, it is about 2 - 5% of the population. That's maybe one one out of twenty individuals who have in possession a free library card.

All you have to do is visit your local public library, and search for the resource you are looking for. Once you find your resource then you will need to sign up for a free library card. You can even do a search online in some cases. If they do not have the resource you are looking for, then you can place a request for them to get it through interlibrary loan. They search hundreds of libraries for you throughout the country.

I have received resources from as far as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to name a few. You may have to wait a few days or weeks. Some of the movies I borrowed recently include the following: Avatar, Julia and Julia, Wall-E, The Power of One from the 1990's, The Karate Kid part 2 and 3 back from the 1980's. A few books and audiobooks I have checked out include books by John Maxwell, John Wooden, Stephen Covey and Eric Jensen to name a few.

Hope this helps you out as you look for the resources you want or need in the future. As summer comes to a close, millions of children will be returning to a new school year within the next month. Over the next two weeks I will be blogging about how to be an effective classroom manager. I will also be sharing with you a few slides of my First Day of School PowerPoint. This is the same PowerPoint that was recently featured in a Presentation by Dr. Harry K. Wong. Hope to see you soon.

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How to Get a Free E-mail Account

Greetings,

This week I am blogging about how to get a free e-mail account. There are a lot of teachers and people who do not know that they can get an email account for free. I personally use http://www.mail.yahoo.com/ http://www.gmail.com/ and http://www.hotmail.com/ accounts. The reason you want a free e-mail account is you can send pictures, audios, videos and interesting web sites to all your family and friends. Remember it's all for free. You can also choose your own e-mail screen name.

I like googles email account (Gmail) because you can send an attachment up to 25MB in size. Do you remember about 10 -20 years ago when we use to use save documents on plastic 3.5 inch floppy disks?

25MB is equal to almost 18 3.5 inch floppy disks. It's amazing how far technology has advanced.
Another reason I like using yahoo.com is because yahoo has an instant messenger (IM). With the instant messenger download application you can chat in real time with family and friends that have the same yahoo instant messenger. You can also use it with your web camera and see the other person in real time while chatting with them. I hear you can use http://www.skype.com/ to do the same thing.

Try these free e-mail accounts and let me know which ones you like best. Next week I will be blogging about how to access free books audio books, music Cd's, DVDs and more. See you next week.

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