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What Makes a Great Educational Leader?

All great leaders have unique qualities that make them effective, inspiring, and admired. Nevertheless, there are identifiable traits and skills successful change-makers possess that separate them from the rest of the pack. Let’s dig in and explore 6 skills of great educational leaders, and how they impact the school community. Community-Building Community building is critical in educational leadership. Every great educational leader knows that, as the saying goes, “it takes a village.” The effective leader can reach out to parents, specialists, administrators, teachers, and students to unify them under one important goal. Positive Thinking An unwavering belief in the ability …

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Why Language Matters in Mathematics Education

Math language is the term used to describe the various jargon and academic language required to understand mathematical concepts. Math language is crucial to learning any math concept and is the surprising reason that many students struggle with mathematics both inside and outside the classroom. A student may understand a math concept but lack the knowledge of math language. For instance, this student may conceptually understand what it means to add something, but if he doesn’t understand the word add itself, he will not be able to demonstrate what it means physically. In other words, this student will not be …

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Why Parent Number Talk is Critical to Early Learning

Number talk is the term used to describe the type of language and questioning used by adults to help young children acquire early math concepts. These short, daily exercises help children develop number sense, which is an intuitive understanding of numbers and mathematics. Number talk is normally used in grade-level classrooms to help children understand number magnitude, the relationships between numbers, and how numbers can be modified by various operations. However, number talk is incredibly important for parents to utilize even before their children start school. Number talk is critical to early learning Most preschools don’t have children participating in …

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The Necessity of Community

March 13th, 2020 was the last day I walked the halls of my school with students still in attendance. I’ll remember this day well since it was supposed to be the day we had a big event for our male students called March Dadness. March Dadness is an event intended to foster relationships between male students and significant adults in their lives. We had speakers lined up, team building activities, and plenty of food and fellowship. It was a great event in 2019 and many of our students were excited to participate again. Sadly, we had to cancel the event …

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What Teachers Need to Know to Support Students with Chronic Health Conditions

Chronic health conditions are illnesses whose symptoms can wax and wane over a period of months or over the period of a lifetime. Chronic illnesses vary widely and are not equally symptomatic, even within the same person. Therefore, students with chronic illnesses require ongoing flexible accommodations. The education of a student suffering from a chronic illness can oftentimes be severely impacted. Teachers must be equipped with the knowledge of how best to assist these students. How chronic illnesses can affect education: Illness, or medication for illness, may reduce work ethic and endurance Chronic pain or certain conditions that impair the …

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Why Students Struggle with Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the ability to mentally process written words and deduce what they mean, integrating this new knowledge with past knowledge. It’s not just the ability to accurately read words on a page- rather, understanding the meaning of the text is the key part of reading comprehension. Many students struggle with reading comprehension, and this can put a serious strain on a child throughout all classroom subjects. Because learning all academic content requires reading in some form, students who struggle with reading comprehension often fall far behind their classmates academically in multiple areas. Fortunately, there are ways to help …

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Renaissance Releases K–12 Focus Skills to Help Educators Predict and Mitigate COVID-19 Learning Gaps

Focus Skills help educators identify and teach critical reading and math skills known to have the greatest impact on learning WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wis. (June 16, 2020) — Renaissance, a global leader in pre-K–12 education technology, has released Focus Skills tailored for each state to help educators bring students up to speed quickly following the extended school closures caused by COVID-19. Determined through extensive research to be the skills most critical for accelerating learning and closing learning gaps, Focus Skills unlock student understanding of key ideas in the subjects students are studying. Identified as key skills within Renaissance’s learning progressions—the path …

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Transforming Aggression, Defiance, and Disruptive Behaviors with the Skill of Self-Regulation

All teachers understand that the most difficult part of the job isn’t teaching the content- it’s handling student misbehaviors. However, sometimes these misbehaviors are not simply kids being kids. Sometimes a deeper issue is at play. Aggression, defiance, and disruptive behaviors are difficult for parents and teachers to know how to handle properly. In the classroom, teachers may notice an active defiance toward rules, excessive arguing, frequent anger and resentment, and amusement when others are punished. Students suffering from aggression or defiance may even harm others on purpose or intentionally destroy or steal school property. Students that are frequently disruptive …

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What Matters When Identifying and Serving Gifted Students from Low Income Backgrounds?

Gifted students are those whose creative, intellectual, artistic, leadership, or specific content abilities are greater than those of the average student. Gifted children are often put in special programs or classes to satisfy their curiosity and intellectual needs. The placement of gifted students into these programs is, in many cases, based on teacher and parent recommendations. Gifted students can come from any background, but unfortunately gifted students from low-income backgrounds are seldom identified and represented in these special gifted programs. Gifted students from low-income backgrounds are underrepresented Schools in the United States miss out on many opportunities when they fail …

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How Online School Set Me up for Career Success

There are many challenges facing the Class of 2020. Graduating college and finding a job already feels like an uphill battle, not to mention rising unemployment, low job prospects, and an increasingly competitive job market. Fortunately, I am one of the lucky members of the Class of 2020 who is walking off the commencement stage (albeit a virtual one) and into a fulltime job in my chosen field. Success did not come overnight. It took many years of preparation and diligence to get to where I am today. But I believe I owe a lot of it to the choices …

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