Skip to main content

100 Powerful Learning Specialist and Educational Therapy Materials

This week I wanted to tell you about my online store, Good Sensory Learning. I’m Dr. Erica Warren, and I established this site so I could share all the materials that I have created over the last 20+ years as a learning specialist and educational therapist. When I first began my private practice, Learning to Learn, I had great difficulty finding fun and multisensory materials for my students that were effective and engaging. So back in 2005, I made it my mission to design and distribute high-end, remedial products as well as memorable, motivating lessons that bring delight to learning. If you would like to try a free sampling of my activities , CLICK HERE . How Are the Products Organized at Good Sensory Learning? You can download my Free Printable Catalog or you can browse the site using the grey “search all products” bar in the top right of any page with keywords such as dyslexia, working memory, and executive functioning. What’s more, drop down menus in the red banner allow you t
Post a Comment

Nurturing Grit and Resilience: Classroom Strategies for Success

Resilience and grit are two popular terms in education that are associated with student happiness, motivation, and academic success. These are learnable behaviors, thoughts, and actions that help learners cope with stress, face adversity or trauma, and bounce back from challenging experiences. Angela Duckworth proposes that the development of grit is an important skill to teach our students. In fact, Duckworth shows in her research that grit is a better gauge of academic achievement and success than one's IQ!
How to increase grit and resilience for students
What is Resilience? Resilience is an attribute or skill that helps us recover from negative events or feelings, cope with challenges and adversity, and take care of ourselves.

What is Grit? Grit is the ability to maintain passion, motivation, and effort when developing a mastery or an expertise.

Some of the Most Important Characteristics of Grit and Resilience Include:
  • Managing Emotions - being open to one’s feelings and able to modulate them in oneself.
  • Awareness of Strengths - cognizant of one’s talents or strong abilities.
  • Persistent Determination - continually pursuing a course of action despite difficulties or opposition.
  • Passion-Driven Focus - actively persevering with a powerful and clear intention.
  • Resourcefulness - acting effectively or imaginatively, especially in difficult situations.
  • Personal Sense of Control - subjective awareness that one is initiating, executing, and managing one's own actions.
  • Ability to Reach Out to Others - pursuing connections and assistance from those around us.
  • Problem-Solving Skills - finding solutions to difficult or complex issues.
  • Bouncing Back - quickly recovering after a setback or when facing significant stress, adversity, or trauma.
Key points in the Research:
  • The research offers some important outcomes about resilience and grit in the classroom:
  • Students and can learn skills that can increase their resilience and grit.
  • Teachers start the transformational process by believing in themselves.
  • Teachers can change their own attitudes and improve connections with their students.
  • Teachers can learn to nurture and instruct these skills.
Teaching Strategies that Nurture Resilience and Grit:
  • There are a number of approaches that can help to culture resilience and grit in your classroom and create a sense of community.
  • Be present and find joy in being with your students.
  • Nurture caring and supportive relationships that make each student feel valued.
  • Offer guidance and high expectations in each student's potential for growth.
  • Present opportunities for creative expressions and critical thinking discussions.
  • Build community in your classroom, and provide opportunities for students to help one another.
  • Encourage students to ask for help.
  • Recognize and reinforce the expression of feelings.
  • Teach learners to see failures as opportunities for growth.
  • Help students to recognize and change negative and self-defeating behaviors.
  • Help learners cope with stress. Talk about stress factors with your students in the classroom and brainstorm management strategies. 
Classroom Activity Ideas:
  • Have your students complete and score a grit scale test. Then watch Angela Duckworth's TED video and lead a discussion about how students can become more gritty.
  • Once a week/month, sit in a circle with your students for appreciation dialogue. Ask each student to express appreciation for another member of the classroom and share it aloud with the group. Then ask them to share a personal accomplishment. If they have trouble with this, ask the rest of the class to help.
  • Avoid negative labels such as incorrect or wrong. Instead, use words like, "nice try" or "almost" and guide your students to the correct answer.
  • When grading assignments make positive comments about growth and effort.
                                       
Becoming resilient and gritty is a challenging skill for anyone to master. However, employing this mindful approach can help teachers find joy in their profession, nurture a supportive community within their classroom, and help students to reach their true potential.

Cheers, Dr. Erica Warren
Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator, and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials. She is also the director of Learning to Learn and Learning Specialist Courses.

· Blog: https://learningspecialistmaterials.blogspot.com/
· YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/warrenerica1
· Podcast: https://godyslexia.com/
· Store: http://www.Goodsensorylearning.com/ & www.dyslexiamaterials.com
· Courses: http://www.learningspecialistcourses.com/
· Newsletter Sign-up: https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/69400
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 Free Ways to Improving Visual Tracking for Weak Readers

While reading, tracking across the page from one line to the next can be tricky when the text is small, but for students with dyslexia or weak reading skills, it can be a problem regardless of the font size.  So why is this the case?  Perhaps one of the problems is poor tracking skills. What Exactly is Tracking? Tracking is the ability for one's eyes to move smoothly across the page from one line of text to another. Tracking difficulties happen when eyes jump backward and forward and struggle to stay on a single line of text.  This results in problems such as word omissions, reversals, eye fatigue, losing your place while reading and most importantly it can impact normal reading development.   Can Tracking be Improved? Tracking can be improved by strengthening eye muscles as well as getting your eyes and brain to work cooperatively.  There are three eye movements that need to be developed:   Fixations: The ability to hold one's eyes steady without moving
Post a Comment
Read more

Do I have dyslexia - Explaining Symptoms and Myths for Kids

What do you do when you learn that your child has dyslexia? Should you hide this diagnosis to protect them from labels and misunderstandings, or should you tell them? If you do decide to tell them, how do you do this? Can you help them to overcome any potential fears or misunderstandings? These are the questions that I will answer in this blog that includes kid-friendly graphics. What are the Benefits of Telling Your Child That He or She Has Dyslexia? Educating your child with dyslexia about the common signs and misconceptions can help them to: understand that they learn in a different way than other kids that don’t have dyslexia.  shed negative labels such as stupid, careless, unmotivated and lazy. correct any misunderstandings. identify with other successful people that have or had dyslexia. acquire the needed intervention and instruction in school. learn that many people with dyslexia have strengths that others do not have. Individuals with dyslexia are often: great
Post a Comment
Read more

Teaching Students Metacognitive Strategies Improves Grades

We are living in an information, distraction-rich time and multitasking seems to be a common way of navigating the complexities of reality. Our youth have grown up observing their parents juggling multiple responsibilities at one time while they have also been immersed in the modern-day influx of technology. As a result, many young learners have applied their observations to academic endeavors, and homework is often completed while laying prey to constant interruptions from social media, online video chatting, texting, television and more. Although there is some utility in life to being able to multitask, the learning process is hindered when attention continually shifts. In contrast, to this multitasking approach to learning is metacognition, and this can play a critical role in successful learning. How Can Students Learn to Do Schoolwork with Greater Efficiency? The foundation to instructing students how to maximize their learning potential is teaching them metacognitive strat
Post a Comment
Read more