Base Teams

Base teams are teams of 3-5 students in your classroom who may do any of the following:
· Relay homework to students within their team who missed a class
· Help take attendance by noting who is missing from their team
· Take notes and provide them to students who missed a class
· Complete group projects
· Complete various classroom duties

Students love working with one another. Establish a routine on the first day of school that shows students how certain tasks will be completed in your classroom during the semester. They can create their own rules and procedures, vote for how to complete certain tasks and determine roles within their team. Students will feel good about the trust you place in them, and you’ll feel good when you can say, “base teams” and students move into their teams and get busy. In addition to all of the great content you teach, students will learn an incredible amount about team work, communication, accountability and responsibility.


Leadership Development for July 31, 2008

And Now for the Day's Current Events

It’s great if you can make your classroom material relevant to your students’ worlds, but what if you could also make your students’ worlds relevant to your classroom? It’s amazing to discover the diversity of students’ habits of learning about the world around them. Some pick up a newspaper each day, others listen to their parents’ conversations about the news, some hear tid bits of news on the radio during their commute to school, and others, when told about a recent occurrence, respond with a quizzical look and reply, “Oh really? I had no idea.”

Encourage your students to be students of the world by announcing that at the beginning of each class (or every Friday, or at the end of each class, or every Monday and Friday…whatever works for you) the class will have an opportunity to share current events they hear about. This will give you great insight into how students get their news, what they care about and how they react to various topics in the news. You might even be surprised by how often they pick up on something that directly applies to your course!


Classroom Engagement for July 31, 2008

Write and Speak Good

You’re right, you’re right. The above title should probably be “write and speak well.” Whether you’re an English teacher or not, students benefit from you modeling appropriate word usage. So take a few minutes to polish your skills. Here’s a quick and fun website to visit as often as you like. You can even subscribe to its useful RSS feeds.

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/








Professional Development Tip for July 31, 2008

Sales Skills

Whether a person’s job title includes the word “sales” or not, chances are, we will all sell something during our time in our respective careers. While we may not all sell products, we’ll have to sell employers or co-workers on an idea of some sort. As an educator, who taught you how to “sell” (or really communicate) your ideas for changes and improvements? Maybe no one did. So give your students a jump start and a little practice in the safety of your classroom.
1. Complete a short lesson on basic sales tips. Use the following resources for your students to look at or for you to gather information:
a. http://marketing.about.com/od/salestipsandadvice/Sales_Tips_and_Advice.htm
b. Here are five steps found at: http://communication.howstuffworks.com/sales-technique1.htm for generating a sale:
i. Attention: You have to get the attention of your prospect through some advertising or prospecting method.
ii. Interest: Build their interest by using an emotional appeal such as how good they will look to their boss when they make this deal that will save the company thousands of dollars!
iii. Desire: Build their desire for your product by showing them its features and letting them sample or test-drive it.
iv. Conviction: Increase their desire for your product by statistically proving the worth of your product. Compare it to its competitors. Use testimonials from happy customers.
v. Action: Encourage the prospect to act. This is your closing. Ask for the order. If they object, address their objections. There are then many variations of closing techniques that can help get the business.
c. You might even look for a few useful videos on www.youtube.com and have your students watch them.
d. http://sales.quickanddirtytips.com/
2. Ask your students to choose an object or idea they might work with in a future career.
3. Guiding students with the information and resources you’ve given them, have your students develop a “pitch” for the product or idea they’ve chosen.
4. Have the salespeople deliver their pitch in front of the entire class or act with a few people at the front of the room as though they are making a house call.
5. Celebrate your students’ success and encourage them to look for ways they “sell” ideas each day.

Career Development Tip for July 31, 2008