In this five part series, see all the pieces that come together for guided reading in Jenna Ogiers classroom. Students learn to work independently and rotate through stations, while Ms. Ogier meets with small groups of students and delivers a lesson at their level.

Hillary Mills uses a series of hands-on activities to engage and excite her students to learn new scientific concepts. Using fossils, buckets of sand, rocks, pennies and timeline cards, she covers in short order everything from geologic terminology to how isotopes break down over time. This fast-paced small group activity is deceptively simple yet packed with learning

Teachers skilled in classroom management are able to respond appropriately to just about any behavior that a student brings through the classroom door. While having a toolkit of specific behavioral strategies is important, the real secret of educators who maintain smoothly running classrooms with minimal behavioral disruptions is that they are able to view problem student behaviors through the lens of these seven 'big ideas' in behavior management.

Teacher David Pretos classroom is visited by teacher evaluator Renee OLeary. She suggests he work on engaging students by making lessons more active and communicating class goals more specifically. Watch him take her advice and put it into action.

Building a culture of respect while still challenging students to share their voices requires thoughtful and careful facilitation by the teacher. Urban Academy teachers discuss the roles they play across subject areas to develop this respect in their school and how consistency across disciplines helps to establish respect among students. Three guiding principles come out of the teachers' reflection that foster a culture of respect. Teachers do not allow personal attacks, asking students to instead 'attack' ideas instead of people. In facilitating discussions, teachers avoid questions with 'right/wrong' answers, recognizing the value of all students' responses, and arbitrate fairly so that students trust teachers to manage sometimes controversial subjects fairly.

In an effort to promote deeper analysis and understanding of multiple viewpoints, Urban Academy teachers discuss the conscious decisions they make to promote this type of discussion. The group reflects on how they structure discussions to highlight different perspectives and also rephrase and restate student comments to heighten differences in opinions and to draw out additional responses. In reacting and responding to these differences, students participate in a deeper analysis.

Supporting participation from all students is a challenging part of every teacher's practice. Discussing the different ways in which they support and encourage quieter students, Urban Academy teachers share ideas and reflect on the different ways in which students participate in learning. They recognize that different students participate in different ways and at different times but also make conscious decisions to support those who are not actively sharing ideas with the class. We see this happen with one student, Ebony, who was reluctant to share ideas but gains confidence through one-on-one coaching with her teacher, Sheila Kosoff. To support building this confidence, teachers discuss planning discussions outside of class and organizing smaller group discussions before bringing the whole class together.

Four teachers at Urban Academy Laboratory High School talk about how they use the inquiry approach in their teaching. History teacher Adam Grumbach talks about how using the inquiry model is a helpful strategy for teaching students of mixed abilities while History teacher Avram Barlowe discusses how the inquiry model is enriched by diverse participants. As students are shown having an inquiry-based discussion, we see evidence of different points of view and the importance of having these discussions in the context of the classroom. Adam shares the significance of having discussions with students from diverse backgrounds and diverse viewpoints and points out that this has as much educational value as more traditional learning opportunities. At the close of the video, four components of the inquiry approach are identified: it promotes a diversity of voices, it creates opportunities for students to share opinions, it teaches students how to use evidence and builds students' confidence.

Your classroom should be arranged to help you meet your pedagogical goals. Any setting, including your classroom, exerts many influences -- frequently subtle -- on the people in it.

This activity aims to help your class get the school year off to a good start. Students share their names and a high point of their summer; learn a little about their similarities and differences; and begin considering what kind of community they want to create in their classroom.

In this podcast, listen to a 22-year classroom veteran's tips and strategies for managing students with attention disorders.

Suggestions for keeping track of your teaching materials, your students, and their work.

Tina Maples' eighth-grade language arts students are serious about their work they do. When students work on projects they care about -- what Maples calls "brain food" -- they manage the classroom themselves.

How a middle-school math teacher realized she was boring and jump-started her career -- and her students.

High-probability requests are one feasible classroom technique that can be effective in motivating students to engage in assigned classwork (Lee, 2006). The teacher first identifies an academic activity in which the student historically shows a low probability of completing because of non-compliance. The teacher then embeds within that low-probability activity an introductory series of simple, brief 'high-probability' requests or tasks that this same student has an established track record of completing (Belfiore, Basile, & Lee, 2008).

Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student lacks essential skills required to do the task. Areas of deficit might include basic academic skills, cognitive strategies, and academic-enabler skills. Here are teacher behaviors to help fix this motivation problem.

Although the student has the required skills to complete the assigned work, he or she perceives the ‘effort’ needed to do so to be so great that the student loses motivation. Learn teacher behaviors to fix this motivation problem.

The student is distracted or off-task because classroom instruction and learning activities are not sufficiently reinforcing to hold his or her attention. Learn teacher behaviors to help fix this motivation problem.

The student requires praise, access to rewards, or other reinforcers in the short term as a temporary ‘pay-off’ to encourage her or him to apply greater effort. Learn teacher behaviors to help fix this student motivation problem.

The student has a low sense of self-efficacy in a subject area, activity, or academic task and that lack of confidence reduces the student’s motivation to apply his or her best effort. NOTE: Self-efficacy is the student’s view of his or her own abilities specific to a particular academic area (e.g., mathematics) and should not be confused with self-esteem, which represents the student’s global view of his or her self-worth. Learn teacher behavior to help fix this student motivation problem.