Back to School

August and September bring much excitement with “Back to School”. Teachers, parents, and students are all gearing up for the start of a new school year and getting back to routines. For many, “Back to School” night at schools are the first opportunity to make impressions - for students, teachers, and parents. These nights can really set the tone for the upcoming school year. Darri Stephens, Senior Director of Education Content for Common Sense Education, writes of “three tried-and-true tenets for a successful Back-to-School Night”. In her recent article, “Back-to-School Night: The Ultimate Conversation Starter for a Successful School Year”, Stephens encourages teachers to do three things: 

• Be transparent - Have a common language and explain your thinking
• Be direct - Invite parents into the classroom and set expectations for students
• Be consistent - Stay true to your rules and keep parents informed

Back to School Night provides a great opportunity to establish parent partnerships that will ultimately lead to student success throughout the year.

You can get more from Common Sense Education by visiting Graphite in Pepper’s Resource Library. To read more about this awesome resource, you can also check out this recent blog post from July 25, Graphite: Tools for the Digital Classroom.

Be sure to check out all our Pepper course offerings.

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Constructive Classroom Conversations: Teaching English Language Learners

Pepper has released another set of courses focusing on English Language Learners. These courses are developed by the Understanding Language Initiative at Stanford University. The most recent release, Constructive Classroom Conversations, is available at 3 different levels: Elementary, Middle, and High, which allows for differentiation of content. Each course is designed with the belief that in order to improve the quality of student discourse, educators need to listen closely to existing talk. Additionally, the course asks participants to gather, analyze, and share examples of student conversations from their classrooms.

Participants will engage in four distinct sessions:

1. Constructive Conversations
2. Teaching, Facilitating, and Reflecting on Conversation Skills
3. Modeling and Scaffolding Conversation Skills
4. Cultivating Conversation Expertise

It is suggested that teachers taking this course currently work as classroom teachers or have access to students in order to successfully participate in coursework and complete practical application assignments.

You can watch a course overview video to meet the instructors and gain a better understanding of course content.

You can get more information and a full course outline by visiting the appropriate course section below:

• Constructive Classroom Conversations - (K-5)
• Constructive Classroom Conversations - (6-8)
• Constructive Classroom Conversations - (9-12)

The overall goal is for participating educators to better understand student-to-student classroom discourse and use what they learn to facilitate higher quality interactions that build disciplinary knowledge and skills.

Be sure to check out all our Pepper course offerings.

Sign up to receive "The Big Idea" directly to your email each time it's updated. To do this, simply add your email under "Follow PepperPCG Posts by E-mail!" to the right.