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.

Distance learning has been hard on students (and teachers!) - not just from the lack of human interaction, but the stress of figuring out new technologies, the eye strain of staring at screens, and the absence of hands-on, collaborative learning activities they thrive on in a classroom setting. With distractions abound and parents often struggling to assist, take-home, printed activities may be a strategy worth employing to encourage a kinesthetic approach to a learning environment we've all had to adapt to.

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!

At the close of a year, we talk a lot about new year's resolutions - and how we want to better ourselves in the "fresh start" of a new orbit around the sun. But after the 2020 we had, it feels more important to look ahead to the possibilities of the future and frame "betterment" in a new light - in the form of hopes, dreams, and visions for what could be.

There's no doubt about it, most of us are spending more time at home these days. And when we spend lots of time at home, we tend to have more time to think. This year, there has been a lot to think about. We wouldn't be able to teach history in our classroom if no one had documented it, and because no two experiences are alike, it is a valuable exercise to encourage our students to document their own experiences at 2020's end.

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!

2020 is almost behind us, and the holidays are looking different this year. But one thing that will not change is the spirit of giving - and we'd like to give back to you. In a year of in-person, distance, and hybrid learning, you've adapted your teaching in a thousand different ways. Thanks to technology, our world has gone on - but children still require hands-on activities to grow their minds, and our VariQuest team, many of whom are former educators, truly believes in the VariQuest Suite whether learning is occurring virtually or in the classroom. So we turn to you - our nation's best educators, to find out more about how you are, or would, use the VariQuest Suite of Tools and Content - when students are learning from home - and in exchange we're giving away lamination tools to protect your materials and make them "sanitize-able"!

Introducing a new learning concept with students may feel like a daunting task - with the uncertainty of the coming weeks top-of-mind. In the year that keeps us on our toes, we can still rely on those teaching strategies that are tried-and-true for classroom instruction, but quickly adapt them for distance learning when we have the right tools. The Y-Chart is one of them. The concept of a Y-Chart is likely not new to you, but thinking of ideas on how to make this group discussion concept work in a hybrid or distance learning environment, might be. We've again partnered with Cathy Henry from Free Word Work and The Curriculum Corner to put together some tips and activities that you can use, especially for distance learning.