Welcome to the Shurley English Blog! For the past thirty-five years, our mission at Shurley Instructional Materials has been simple. We do all we can to help teachers and students experience grammar and writing success. With that goal in mind, we wanted to create a space where our team of educators could share tips, tricks, and techniques to ignite learning. It’s all about educators helping educators on the Shurley English Blog. We invite you to join the conversation!
When my third graders were first learning the parts of speech, some of them would mix-up adverbs and adjectives. I found a great process that would move my students from definitions, through Bloom's Taxonomy, and towards application. Let me show you...
Read MoreToday’s classroom teacher wears many hats, and that’s a fact. Not only are they responsible to help children develop and improve their literacy, mathematic, and social science skills, they must also evaluate student progress and performance along the way. To be upfront, I’m not just talking about grades for the aforementioned subject areas. I’m talking about an assessment that goes much deeper.
On a daily basis, classroom teachers must
Read MoreKindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Some of the words associated with kindness are affection, gentleness, warmth, concern, and care. The act of being kind often requires courage and strength, but a simple act of kindness can have huge effects individually and globally.
Think back to a time when someone was kind to you or when you were kind to someone else. Do you remember the feeling you felt when that person held the door open for you? Did you happen to see the other person smile or light-up when you acted with kindness?
Take a look at how kindness affects a human being:
Read More“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can change your brain.” Wait a second, that’s not how I learned it! Many of us grew up reciting some version of this common idiom, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” This childhood chant means that hurtful words cannot cause any physical pain and thus will be ignored. I will speculate and say that as we grew older, we all learned that this chant is not true; words can and do hurt; they can actually change your brain!
Have you ever been on the receiving end of someone’s
Read MoreIn previous blogs, we’ve discussed the benefits of taking some time to slow down, relax, meditate, and focus on being more of a human-being rather than a human-doing. For teachers and students alike, that all seems easy to do during the summer months, but how do you avoid getting sucked into the busyness of being that human that is always “doing” during the school year? …“PLAYTIME” might just be the answer for both you and your students.
I recently read an interesting article in a local health magazine that focused on why children need unstructured fun in their lives. Trust me, I don’t need to be convinced that playtime-fun is beneficial to human development, but I wanted to read what the experts had to say. Play was described as
Read MoreDuring my undergraduate days, I was headlong into all of my pre-teaching training courses. I truly enjoyed all of them. But, as I neared my junior and senior years of college, I began to get more into the philosophies of teaching. It seems that, at that time, the prevalent theories of teaching led my professors to refuse to tout the use of specific curriculum. That was both good and bad. It was good because it forced me to think along the lines that I did not need to depend on current published curriculum to be able to teach well. It was bad, however, because it generated the incorporation of a hodgepodge type of homemade curriculum that was left strictly up to me to develop and teach—risky, to say the least.
After I landed my first teaching gig, I knew I was in trouble because the school district had a mandated curriculum, which is what I was told would probably happen. We were taught in college to “just close your door and teach the way you know is right.” Well, that was risky, too, because my lack of experience in the classroom made it nearly impossible to know “what was right.” So, I proceeded with what I thought was right while still trying to adhere to the required curriculum. What I discovered unsettled me.
Read MoreI have never taken a class in martial arts, but I have certainly enjoyed watching Bruce Lee’s moves in his action-packed films! Let’s face it! The guy was physically amazing, but more than that, he had a way with words!
Lee was more than just a famous martial artist! He was also an actor and a philosopher with a long list of inspirational quotes tagged to his name. Many of his famous quotes are still being used today to trigger personal growth, and one of my favorites says:
Read MoreIs purposeful movement an integral part of your instructional toolbox? I was reminded lately of the power of using motion to assist the brain in the retention of information. I recently set a goal for myself to memorize a favorite portion of scripture, I Corinthians 13, The Love Chapter, which is commonly quoted at weddings. As I pondered how to best attack this lofty goal, I was reminded of the units that my former coworker and I designed for our third-grade students, years ago.
Read MoreIf you have been following my posts about guiding kids to connect emotionally with their learning…thanks! I hope it has been interesting and helpful. I am wrapping up my series with another combo from Jensen’s work: controversy and introspection.
The mere mention of the word controversy is controversial. But what I mean is not going to usher in a strike of some kind and make you want to walk in a picket line. Controversy and introspection in the classroom are a dynamic duo because of the kind of thinking they inspire in your students.
Read MoreWelcome back to my series on emotional intelligence. My two previous articles were closely related because drama and storytelling involve playing the roles of characters. The same is true with this entry about role modeling. Role modeling, like drama and storytelling, reaches deep into the emotions of learners. Real-life situations and relationships get real-world practice in role modeling.
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