Giveaway Time!

A healthy and active brain can help with clear-headedness, memory and thought endurance. To encourage brain training, Mighty Minds is hosting a brain teaser competition for all the wonderful teachers! One lucky winner will receive a copy of our Senior Brain Teaser eBook (Edition One), valued at $300.

To win, simply go to our Facebook group and solve one of our weekly brain teasers! Each correct answer equals one entry and the winner will be drawn on the 25.05.2020.

Best of luck to all the budding brain-builders!

Creating a positive tone in a classroom is one of the top skills in a teachers toolkit. The ability to create laughter, a growth mindset and a work ethic are just some of the superpowers we see in classrooms everyday. With students returning to school we spent some time talking to teachers about what their first day back would look like.  

In this edition of Classroom Connections, we have compiled a list of strategies being used in classrooms by teachers in their first week back, provided positive feedback strategies and an overview of Cognitive Skills with some FREE cognitive skills questions to use in your classroom. 

Creating the Perfect Teaching Atmosphere

As we start the return to on-campus schooling all teachers have been preparing for the best way to re-establish expectations and have a positive outlook for the remainder of the year. By creating the perfect teaching atmosphere you are also creating a positive learning environment.

We have spoken to teachers heading back to school about their strategies to get their positive classroom back into learning.

Featured blogs

Strategies for Providing Positive Constructive Feedback to Students 

Every teacher’s goal is create a classroom full of young people that love to learn. When we create resilient individuals that can challenge themselves and feel safe making mistakes we have achieved that goal. Positive feedback can be used to support our students when they make a mistake is one of the best ways to build this resilience and have them learn from their mistakes.

Cognitive Skills in the Classroom

Cognitive Skills are the fundamental skills that are taught in every classroom. By explicitly teaching cognitive skills, students are better able to understand what a question requires of them and how they should approach answering the question.

Resources

Are you trying to build your students writing skills?

To support the shift in senior schooling, Mighty Minds have created an online Writing Program. Our program is easily integrated into your student’s workday or as self-paced learning.

The Writing Program includes:

Foundation, intermediate and advanced senior writing strategies broken down into 20 lessons per level.

• A flexible selection of topics – these can be selected by the student, teacher, or the teacher can select topics that relate to their lessons and block them out from student selection (for use in the classroom as required) and leave a range for students to choose from.
• Students/teachers can choose to do the program consecutively from start to finish or individually select lessons based on knowledge requirements.

At $9.95 plus GST per student this is a great product to introduce into your learning program to ensure students have a deep understanding of writing.

Steps to the Future – Online Program

Steps to the Future is designed to help students pave their own pathways in life, focussing on their future education, training and careers. 

Students work through four carefully crafted chapter based on the QCAA Career Education Short Course Syllabus (2018). Each section steps students through the process of finding work, setting goals for the future and identifying their strengths and weaknesses in order to build the ideal career path. 

Exciting Upcoming Resources

Critical and Creative Thinking Program – online and fabulous!

The introduction of Cognitive Skills has led Mighty Minds to re-examine thinking processes and skills that young people need – that was the basis for the creation of our new online Critical and Creative Thinking Program.

Creativity is about originality and innovation. Everyone has the ability to be creative but do they have the necessary skills? In order to reach their full potential, students should engage in higher levels of thinking. Over the course of the program students will have the opportunity to develop and practice their critical thinking skills in order to be engaged and effective learners.

Free Resources

Cognitive Skills Printable Worksheets

The 75 Cognitive Skills are the foundation of all assessment. Understanding the Cognitive Skills will be vital to student success. At Mighty Minds we have deconstructed each Cognitive Skill and produced an effective guide on how to teach each stage of the Cognitive Thinking levels in relation to that specific skill.

This week we are providing our wonderful teachers 4 Cognitive Skill handouts that you can use in your class. Each handout has one question with a space for students to complete their answer.  

Icebreakers for Students

Getting to know you activities can be a little cheesy. Check out these 3 to help in your classroom as your students return from their remote learning.  

Social Superstars

Mighty Minds is happy to announce that we have created a Facebook group just for teachers!

This group is a safe space for teachers to connect and communicate about important issues impacting schools, share resources and ask for advice. The group is open, so any teacher can create posts and ask questions of their fellow teachers. 

We will also be providing free resources each week to assist you in and out of the classroom!