Kick Off the New School Year--Fun Ideas to Get Off to a Good Start!

In some parts of the country, students have been back in the classroom for several weeks, while for others, the new academic year is just beginning. To help get you started, check out these articles, posts, and pins, and get inspired for the new school year! Make sure to remember not to lose sight of your own professional and personal development in the midst of the many demands and excitement of the new year.

Check out this Education World post on "Fun Activities to Get the School Year Off to a Good Start." Pick up some great ideas to help you set the tone in your classroom this year!

Take a look at this great article from Edutopia.org, and start "Preparing for your Best Year Ever"! The first tip on the list? "Dive deep into your own professional learning." Take advantage of the amazing professional development that Pepper has to offer!

Finally, just for fun, head to Pinterest.com for a fantastic collection of "Back to School Teaching Ideas"--you can find resources, materials, and fun activities for your students!

Good luck, and have a great year!

LET’S COLLABORATE!

We’re excited to give you even more opportunity to communicate, be social, and stay informed with our new notification alerts!

Log into your Pepper Dashboard and look for the conversation bubble on the top right.  The number indicated in the bubble will alert you that a peer or a coach is reaching out.

Receive and View Notifications About:

·        Any new personal messages

·        A new post to one of your discussion topics

·        Collaborative activity in your coursework portfolio

·        You’ve been added to a personal Pepper network 

Receive and Send Messages in Pepper:

·        Communicate and collaborate directly with other Pepper participants!

·        Within the People search, click on the message bubble icon to open up an individual dialogue with an instructional coach or peer.

·        You will receive a notification when they respond and can continue collaborating.

ALSO – please don’t forget that Google Hangouts are included in each course, and a great place to collaborate live!

Please contact Pepper Support with any questions, we hope you find these new tools helpful in your Pepper teaching and learning adventure.

Learning-Friendly Classroom Design!

It's no secret that the spaces and places in which we live and learn can have an enormous impact on our mood, our attention span, our ability to focus, and our social interactions. So it's incredibly important for educators to think about the way their classrooms encourage students to be engaged in the learning process. This is particularly true as educators integrate education technology into classroom spaces in ever more organic and thoroughgoing ways.

If you're interested in challenging yourself to create a learning space that's more "brain-friendly," then join the Classroom Cribs Challenge! There are four easy steps that will help you rethink and redesign your learning space to enhance the learning experience, and then share your new ideas with others.

Take a look at this video by interior designer-turned-teacher Erin Klein, where she talks about what it means to design a classroom space that really helps students engage with learning.