We tend to think of visual cues as supportive tools for students with special needs or for English language learners, but sets of visual prompts can also be helpful to students outside of these groups, and especially important for classroom management. This concept might relate to a direction in the classroom, a recognition of desired behavior, or a redirection.

We won! We won! And we couldn't have done it without you, our nation's best educators. The VariQuest® Visual and Kinesthetic Learning Suite was recently awarded with a 2021 Best Primary Tools for Back to School Award by the publication Tech & Learning. The Best Tools for Back to School Awards annually honor leading-edge products that help students, teachers, and families succeed in categories for primary, secondary, and higher education. This year's winners included everything from distance learning cameras to online curriculum programs and of course, the VariQuest Visual and Kinesthetic Learning Suite.

In the fall, the leaves change, and so does our content! We just released our VariQuest® Design Software version 9.0 - packed with brand new and updated Engage Every Learner® Content, and we know you'll love all the latest additions around social-emotional wellbeing, health & safety, movement, and more. Along with new functionality adding our new Perfecta® 2400PRO Poster Design System, and shortcuts and options to make using our tools even easier, you'll love having over 22,000 templates, graphics, fonts, collections, cutouts, sensory paths and more to use in your classrooms, hallways, and throughout your learning community.

For organization, for health, for safety, or for sanity - labels make a huge difference. In the classroom, labels are needed now more than ever - to keep track of constantly changing schedules, student belongings, personal protection equipment (PPE) supplies, and the list goes on. With capabilities for user-friendly customization, class list uploads, and creative template options, the VariQuest® Design Software, complete with our educator-influenced Engage Every Learner® Content, makes creation easy on the VariQuest Motiva® 400 Specialty Printing System. See how easy it is:

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.

This contest has ended. Click here to view our winners and get ideas on how you could use the VariQuest tools to do creative and helpful projects in your school! Are you a VariQuest customer? Are staff members at your school creating cool things with your VariQuest tools? Show the world your creations, and WIN!

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!

Kinesthetic learners learn best while processing information when they are physically engaged or active in some way. The standard classroom setting is not necessarily well-suited for these learners. They tend to learn better when involved in active participation in some form. At VariQuest, we offer a wide-ranging selection of tools and resources to help you innovate and transform your classroom experience, including providing visual/kinesthetic learning tools for kinesthetic learners and those teaching these students.

An emotion meter is a great way to gauge what mood your students are feeling in the moment! Whether it's for posting in the classroom, calming corners, or student journals, this tool can be created large or small for group or individual discussions. With social-emotional learning for students a topic of the utmost importance as children grow and mature, use these simple exercises to give students meaningful tools for managing and working through their feelings!

As students today are spending more time sitting with technology than ever before, educators continue to innovate with creative ways to get them up and moving, while learning as they go. And after a year centered around terms like isolation, quarantine, and shelter-at-home, finding new ways to engage students and welcome them back to school buildings for learning can be a challenge. But we've got a fun way to get the wiggles out. And as you may have guessed, it's another free sensory path for schools! (Download our forest adventure sensory path here!)