Teachers and families across the country have been under immense stress approaching a different kind of instruction over the last year and a half, and worrying about how it has affected our students. While focusing on health and safety is always a top priority, as students return to the classroom this year, we may need to broaden that focus and prepare them with an accelerated learning approach. But as educators, we are not only concerned about academics, but also about mental health, and to ensure students flourish upon their return, it is important we look at the whole child. In this 14-lesson plan eBook, created in partnership with Cathy Henry of The Curriculum Corner and Free Word Work, we've put together a variety of lessons and activities for K-12 students, including those in special education classrooms, to work towards project-based, student-driven learning designed to help combat the academic impact of lost instructional time.

Educators know that having strong behavior management skills can be as important, or even more important, as the ability to teach content. We want to help children modify detrimental behaviors, but we also don’t want any of our actions to result in a child feeling shamed or demeaned. This can be a challenge! Because we've all had a challenging past few months, and feelings of embarrassment won’t help children improve their behavior, we've partnered with Cathy Henry of The Curriculum Corner and Free Word Work to put together some ideas to help you work on actions and reactions with your students on a more personal level. These are ideas to help students learn and grow and meet goals, making them proud of their positive results!

Engagement. Inclusivity. Social-Emotional Support. With all that students have experienced in recent months, you're looking ahead to the future. In a "normal" year, your federal funding dollars may have gone towards field trips, student performances, or hands-on lab materials. Now you have decisions to make on how to spend that funding in a meaningful way to set up for what next year will bring. Overcoming challenges from distance learning, promoting inclusion and equality, and expanding your social-emotional support efforts are just a few concepts that will require extra action as students (hopefully) return to classrooms. Today we'll explore a few major funding streams and how you can use aligned tools to face these challenges, head-on.

While celebrating the earth is given a special day each year in April, students are fascinated with learning about the ground and the elements and the weather all year long. Recycling, limiting energy usage, and cleaning up litter are all important concepts to instill in our future generations, but what's equally important is their understanding of how the environment functions as its own thriving system - whether humans are here to enjoy it, or not. With rock cycles, life cycles, tide patterns, and more to explore, today we're going to talk about the water cycle, and tips for teaching it with a full class, in small groups, or as a take-home project for students.

by Cathy Henry, Guest Blogger Special education teachers have an important job working to help students reach their full potential. They work tirelessly to find ways to help students navigate the general education classroom and to build life skills. While the job is never easy, it has grown to include even more obstacles and responsibilities during the time of COVID. Trainings offered to help during this time along with new tools for teachers and students are growing. However, finding the time to master these can be a challenge with the very full schedule teachers already have. Today I am sharing five quick tips, plus a downloadable guide with templates and ideas, designed to help you navigate the challenges of teaching special education via a virtual or hybrid model.

You put lots of time and effort into the materials you create for classroom activities and discussion. Wouldn't it be great to use them over and over again, while maintaining cleanliness and sanitization standards?

At VariQuest, we are your source for the tools and resources you need to enhance your ability to teach students in your classroom. The goal of interactive learning is to increase the attention and retention of students, increasing their overall knowledge and comprehension in various subjects. One device that can help teachers convey important knowledge to students in the classroom is the cold lamination machine.

CARES, ESSER, HEERF, GEER....is your head spinning with letters? With additional funding for education to assist with planning in light of the COVID-19 Pandemic, there's a lot to process in terms of what is meant for which purpose, and we're here to help. Below you'll find some explanations, links, and a downloadable resource to help guide you through the COVID Funding for Education "jungle" and offer some suggestions on investments that align with the funding to enhance learning and safety today, tomorrow, and beyond!

We're moving towards holiday break, and we don't need to tell you that it has been one crazy year. Whether your students are heading home for their break early in distance learning, or they're only apart from the classroom for the holiday, send them off with a "Flat Stanley"-like cutout of their favorite teacher (that's you!) and a fun assignment to document your (their) experiences while you're in two different places! With social-emotional support at the top of every educator's mind during a trying year, what better way to remind your students you're always with them, than a small cutout take-along of yourself!

You've got a big job to do. And like always, we want to help. You're preparing for a new kind of year. You might be welcoming students back to your school building with brand new safety precautions, continuing distance learning for the foreseeable future, or a hybrid of the two - but your teachers, students, and staff will need new resources to adapt to the changing times. And so, we pledged to give you new content - for education on virus prevention, directional crowd control, and social-emotional wellbeing - on TOP of tons of new pieces for traditional and virtual instruction! We've delivered. Exclusively for the VariQuest 8.0 Software, this content update is packed with over 2,500 NEW and revised templates, cutouts, graphics, fonts, and collections - bringing our grand total to over 22,000 content options for our nation's best educators to create with. And it's FREE for our customers!