The Louisiana Department of Education has published the Louisiana High School Planning Guidebook each year since 2014. This condensed resource consolidates the policies and programs that are most relevant to high school educators as they plan for the upcoming academic year and prepare all students for college and career success. Every year, across…

More Louisiana students than ever before are graduating with the academic courses, career credentials, and financial support they need to be successful after high school. In fact, the Class of 2018 was the highest achieving in state history. Louisiana's comprehensive plan to prepare students for college and career success includes a system of…

The teacher's guide presents a set of eight lessons designed to help students develop the skills necessary for making responsible and effective decisions. The lessons focus on: (1) the need to make many decisions daily; (2) alternatives to decisions; (3) decisions based on values; (4) the future consequences of decisions; (5) decisions that are…

To encourage students to do routine homework assignments, teachers might occasionally assign silly homework assignments (such as "Brush your teeth with the hand you usually don't use"). Class discussions and parent reactions provide feedback. A list of suggestions and a reproducible page are offered. (JL)

Reports the lessons a high school English teacher learned when she switched to teaching in a middle school. (JL)

When planning social studies units, teachers need to build in opportunities for creativity and honor those students who exhibit it. The characteristics of authentically creative work in social studies are discussed and suggestions for projects that encourage creativity are made. (IS)

The artfully inviting teacher utilizes both personal and professional teaching strategies and is thus most successful at maximizing student development. Personally inviting behaviors send messages which communicate caring and positive regard. Professionally inviting behaviors increase the recipients' efficacy, competence, and independence.…

Based on the philosophy that children learn best in functional, natural settings when a desire for learning persists, this book provides classroom-tested strategies for teaching children how to monitor and improve their own comprehension as they read a variety of texts. The goal of the book is to empower students to become successful, independent…

Students sometimes respond to writing assignments automatically, almost as if they were a generic form, rather than by investigating the idiosyncrasies and unexpected possibilities of each assignment. Writing assignments can be structured to help students transcend such habits, shifting the focus from accumulating information to creating meaning…

Over the years there have been different terms for the idea of educating for character. Some of these are moral education, moral reasoning, values clarification, and ethics. But the basic idea of using schools to produce people of good character has been around for many generations. This volume explores the importance of including character…

Defines and describes the fantasizing motif in children's literature and explains how teachers can use this motif to help children learn to live in society. (JL)

Designed to develop K-3 children's thinking skills before the children have mastered reading, this book presents 32 activities in which children learn to complete analogies--presented with an "attribute block" with 3 attributes, children choose a fourth attribute block to complete the analogy. The attribute blocks in the book are of 4 types--shape…

This book contains teacher instructions and a set of reproducible activity sheets concerned with self-esteem and stress management designed for teachers to use in the classroom. Included are activities for students at all grade levels, kindergarten through grade 12. The expressed purposes of the book are to: (1) explain in simple terms the nature…

This resource guide, for teachers and students in the upper elementary and middle school grades, has been developed in response to the nationwide interest in asking schools to play an active role in preparing students to become informed and responsible citizens. The guide is divided into seven sections, one for each character trait: Caring, Civic…

The pedagogical imperative to prepare students to become critical thinkers, critical readers, and critical writers for the coming millennium necessitates a comprehensive college discourse on critical thinking. The paper cites seminars and workshops that incorporate theoretical and practical dimensions of teaching critical-analytical thinking…