Edutopia

Edutopia is dedicated to transforming kindergarten through 12th-grade (K-12) education so all students can thrive in their studies, careers, and adult lives. We are focused on practices and programs that help students acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, skills and beliefs to achieve their full potential.

• Additional Resources from Edutopia
  • Helping Students with Autism Transition Into a New School Year In this article a mother reflects on what helped her son with successful transitions to a new class and teacher. She provides common sense suggestions that can contribute to reducing stress and encouraging well-being for both the teacher and student.
  • Response to Intervention: Meeting Students at Their Learning Ability
    Meyer Elementary uses RTI to provide targeted instruction and support to meet students at their learning ability.
  • Special Report: Overcoming Autism
  • Autism Peer Help (Video)
  • Enabling Dreams (Assistive Technology) (Video)
  • Introduction to Social-Emotional Learning (Video)
  • Fundraising and Grant Resources for Tech Integration
  • 5 Educational Resources for Parents and Families
  • Free tools and guidelines for Social-emotional learning in after school programs
  • Building Social and Emotional Skills in Elementary Students: Passion and Strengths
  • Simple Music Integration for Primary Classrooms
  • Empathy In the Classroom: Why Should I Care?
  • The Long Game: 4 Essentials for a Successful Mindfulness Program
  • Social Emotional Learning: A Schoolwide Approach
    Strategies like mindfulness, emotional regulation, and supportive small groups help Symonds meet the academic and social needs of their students.

  Family Engagement

  • Edutopia’s 2011 Home-to-School Connections Guide
    This guide highlights solutions for connecting home and school in order to improve student learning and success. Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or district administrator, this guide provides you with relevant and valuable tools and resources for how best to strengthen the bonds between schools, families, and communities for student learning and success.
  • Mobile Devices for Learning
    This guide can help you better understand how mobile gadgets — cell phones, tablets, and smartphones — can engage students and change their learning environment.
  • Cultivating Parent Engagement (Video)
  • Parent Engagement in Education Resource Round up

  Healthy Mind, Healthy Body

  • The New PE: Special Report: Students Learn That Active Bodies Lead to Active Minds
    As research linking physical fitness to academic success continues to emerge teachers are coming up with creative ways to keep kids active during teaching time, instead of relying on recess and those ever-dwindling PE hours. Teachers say they find that using movement in the classroom doesn’t just get the jitters out, but actually makes for better learning as well, because engaging students’ bodies in turn activates their minds.
  • Move Your Body, Grow Your Brain
    Incorporating exercise and movement throughout the school day makes students less fidgety and more focused on learning. Improving on-task behavior and reducing classroom management challenges are among the most obvious benefits of adding physical activities to your teaching toolkit. As research continues to explore how exercise facilitates the brain’s readiness and ability to learn and retain information, we recommend several strategies to use with students and to boost teachers’ body and brain health. The article includes the following resources:
    • Brain Breaks
      Physical activity ideas in the classroom from the Michigan Department of Education
  • Just Breathe: When Teachers Practice Mindfulness
    In this Edutopia blog by Elena Auguilar she introduces Meena Srinivasan’s new book,Teach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom. She describes it as a resource that “speaks to a yearning I hear across our country: a desire to teach and work in a way that is anchored in joy, emerging from compassion, and that is more humane and slower than the way we work now.” This easy-to-read book is a roadmap for this desire. She introduces a variety of mindfulness practices and then offers a wealth of resources for how to integrate these into our lives and classrooms.
  • Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused Attention Practices
  • Simple Music Integration for Primary Classrooms
    The blog describes five easy ways for primary teachers to integrate music into their classrooms. Each activity is specifically designed for individuals of all backgrounds and abilities, and none require musical training or experience. So why use music in your primary classroom? Well-designed music activities can deepen and reinforce knowledge and skill development across a wide range of subjects. Music is engaging, fun, and can motivate even the most detached students.
  • Empathy In the Classroom: Why Should I Care?
  • The Long Game: 4 Essentials for a Successful Mindfulness Program
  • Social Emotional Learning: A Schoolwide Approach
    Strategies like mindfulness, emotional regulation, and supportive small groups help Symonds meet the academic and social needs of their students.
  • Empathy In the Classroom: Why Should I Care?
  • The Long Game: 4 Essentials for a Successful Mindfulness Program
  • Social Emotional Learning: A Schoolwide Approach
    Strategies like mindfulness, emotional regulation, and supportive small groups help Symonds meet the academic and social needs of their students.
  • Resources on Mindfulness in Education
  • Positive Strategies to Avoid Stress, Anxiety and Burnout
  • 5 Simple Lessons for Social and Emotional Learning for Adults
  • How Emotions Affect Learning, Behaviors and Relationships
    Bring lessons from the movie “Inside Out” into your classroom
  • Islands of Personality and Trains of Thought (Inside Out)