Education Resources Blog

When it comes to bulletin boards, the creativity that educators display knows no bounds. It's the timeless school décor that brings back the most familiar and fondest of memories for both young and old. As you plan for the upcoming school year, here are some fun bulletin board ideas to implement in your classroom or school building!

When it comes to professional growth as an educator, you have a lot of choices to expand your skillset to help your students and further your goals, but your time is precious. From continuing education on social-emotional development and neuroscience, to tactical strategies for learning in the classroom, we at VariQuest have put together a list of some of our best professional development webinar and video opportunities for educators to help you fill your teaching toolbox with valuable resources and future-forming assets.

After the last two years being anything but normal, you might be on a constant quest for ideas and ways to support the social-emotional wellbeing of your students and boost their self-esteem. Social-emotional learning (SEL) has become a critical focus in helping our students grow not only personally, but academically as well. In partnership with Cathy Henry, an educator and founder of The Curriculum Corner and Free Word Work, we've created this Motivation Station Social-Emotional Lesson Plan activity to help spread a little positivity! And it's not only approaching the topic from a self-love standpoint, but encourages peer-to-peer support as well!

Have you ever wondered why we choose to work for VariQuest? We've got a whole team of dedicated employees and in our new promotional video series, #variquestvalue, you can hear their unique stories and perspective on our brand and the value our products and services bring to our customers!

Self-Awareness: the ability to see yourself clearly. How do others see me? How do I see myself? How are my actions being interpreted? Are my actions in line with the person I want to be perceived as? What are my strengths and weaknesses? How can I use those to make a positive impact? As children ask these questions to cultivate an understanding of how their choices, emotions, and actions affect the world around them, it is important we as educators help guide them in exercises to enhance their self-awareness, and of course, make learning about it fun! In this bonus installment of our social-emotional learning unit series, we spark discussion among students about what it means to be self-aware.

There are plenty of reasons and ways to recognize students. Doing so promotes self-confidence, determination, a positive attitude, and overall social-emotional wellbeing! In the age of cell phones, social media influencers, and YouTube stars, the word "selfie" has become commonly used in our vocabularies, and the concept is foreign to no one. Alongside displaying student artwork in your school hallways and classrooms, allow students to showcase work they're especially proud of, and infuse parental involvement in a modern way with this fun and easy selfie station in your classroom!

Developing a Growth Mindset isn't easy - but that's what makes it important. There are talents you're born with, talents you develop, and talents that aren't yours...yet. Research shows that your mindset is what drives your abilities to achieve goals and accomplishments, so when we suggest that a student's strengths lie 'elsewhere' - we're actually doing them a disservice to divert their dedication in another direction.  To develop a growth mindset, we must first understand ourselves, and what strengths we have that help us achieve success in all endeavors. To help students realize these things, we can point them in the direction of looking at goals they've already achieved, milestones they've reached, tools and resources available to them, and asking for input from those around them. Enter this fabulous printable take-home activity created with ideas from Dr. Melissa Hughes, expert on whole brain teaching and learning: My Growth Mindset Year Journal.

Gratitude: to show appreciation for. It's easier to focus on the bad, but to develop a strong growth mindset, we must help our students focus on the good. Going beyond saying thank you to others, gratitude is being thankful for all that we are blessed with, and is shown through acts of kindness, cooperation, and embrace. In this bonus installment of our social-emotional learning unit series, we spark discussion among students about what it means to develop a grateful heart.

We used to think of a healthy person as someone who focused on a well-balanced diet and regular exercise. But as more and more research has been done on the subject of health, we as a society have moved to a more wholistic discussion - focusing on health of not just the body, but also the mind and soul. And at no point has this ever been truer than through the rollercoaster of the last couple years. In the same vein, we used to think of a school as a place where students came to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. And while educators have always been social-emotional supports and adult role models for their students outside the home, schools have also changed with the times to incorporate a more whole-child-based focus, supporting not just the minds and bodies of our students, but focusing on emotional support as well.  As social-emotional learning is powerful for forming strong, confident members of our society for the future, we at VariQuest are constantly coming up with new ways to support our educators in strengthening their social-emotional support curriculum. Here are a few resources that might help in your classroom and school building:

We paint our walls, choose our belongings, and get dressed every day based on color. With an immense gift as a species to see the world through vibrant tones, it has been researched and frequently discussed that color can have mood-boosting, mind-stimulating, and sensory-calming effects on humans. And of course, our classrooms for our students are no different. Outside of the colors we use in our environment and in our learning materials, the act of coloring can also have incredible effects on the brain's ability to focus and learn, thus supporting our students' social-emotional wellbeing. Reduced anxiety, focused mindfulness, and kinesthetic busy-ness are all positive effects of this easy and do-anywhere activity. We've rounded up some of our best coloring downloads and resources for learning, for calming, and just for fun.