How to Get More F’s in School
Debra Em
Now THAT got your attention, didn’t it? In today’s blog post I’ll be sharing a strategy that is highly effective but also nets you more F’s in school. No, I don’t mean F’s as in the lowest obtainable score one can achieve. I mean F’s as in Fun, Fun, and more Fun. When I interviewed the teams of successful collaborators, the word “fun” was often mentioned, meaning collaboration wasn’t some drawn out, snoozefest where nothing got accomplished and no one agreed on anything. Collaboration was an inspired work of art causing the wheels of instruction to turn smoothly and creating an environment that made the teams want to come to school and hang out with each other. Through collaboration, they put the “F” back into their day . . . Fun! One of the strategies they described, I ended up calling “The One-for-All Strategy.”
Getting Started With the One-for-All Strategy
The secret to finding ways into the classroom for students who are usually pulled out for services begins with discovering a common denominator—a strategy that the individual student needs that could also help ALL students in the classroom. For example, if the individual student who is pulled out is working on calming strategies, why not teach the entire class the calming strategies? In this way, all the students learn the strategies, and this helps those students who need support but don’t qualify for services as well.
The support staff member and the student who is pulled out for services work together to learn a strategy that they can teach to the entire class.
With the classroom teacher’s input, a time is agreed upon where the specialist and student teaches all the students the strategy.
Now, when the individual student is in class and needing to calm or focus, other students know the strategies to support the one student. One-for-All now becomes All-for-One, where all students support the one student by using the strategy in the classroom as a whole group. My favorite winner is the Minute Moves for Calming routine.
Using the One-for-All strategy is a beautiful thing because no student is marginalized, and all students benefit from learning compassion, understanding, and self-regulation skills to support students with specialized needs in the classroom.
The teacher benefits by learning new strategies that could not be learned if the strategies were taught only outside the classroom with the individual student. Carry-over is a breeze, and it’s a win-win for everybody. The One-for-All Strategy now becomes the All-for-Fun and Fun-for-All strategy. Isn’t that why we got into a business where we get to hang with kids all day? Let’s put the “F” back into education and have some FUN. Fun and laughter are evidence-based to improve our health. Who wants to argue with that!
For today’s post, tell us of a strategy you have used that was originally targeted for only one student but became highly effective when brought into the classroom setting for all students. Did you and the students up the “F” factor as a result?