Tips for Teaching Resource Room

I had an amazing year last year. I taught Resource Room for the first time ever. For my first time as a teacher I'll finally have the same subject/grades this year! I am used to having to prepare all new lessons. Now that I have most of the curriculums down for many of the grades I can really focus on having an even better year than last!

For all of the Resource Room teachers out there- any tips, tricks, or really good lessons, handouts, organizers, etc? I have high schoolers 9-12 grade. We work on all subjects. Most are LD with goals pertaining to reading, writing, outlining, etc. Some basic math goals as well.

I want to rock out as a teacher this year! I have 2 weeks to really get stuff together before school starts and I want to have an awesome year.

Thanks!

ETA- One of the biggest problems I had last year was finding a nice balance between working on skills and incorporating the curriculum. I work at a very competitive private school. The students are very, very focused on their grades and their current tests. Any help with incorporating their current units of study would help a lot!

Message edited 8/20/2011 7:51:13 AM.

Re: Tips for Teaching Resource Room

I am also a RR teacher for grades 9-12. The past few years I have had 11 and 12th graders and I found out that this year I will only have one class of 12th graders and the rest 9th graders. I am doing collaborative algebra 1 and 2. I am a little upset because I don't like the younger grades but anyway, what I liked about the older kids is that I did a lot of college placement test review with them. NCC has their placement test on their website, or at least a sample. I did all 3 sections with the kids. I also did sample college essay writing and a mock college interview with them. I did SAT/ACT prep with my juniors as well. THey all really needed the math review. As crazy as it sounds, review of multiplication and division facts is fun to do with all the grades because they don't know them offhand! I did math minutes with them and gave out candy for prizes. They loved it. The reason SAT/ACT and college placement tests are good to do is because it reviews all the subjects taught. I also did a fun activity over the course of a quarter where they kids had to pay bills and balance a checkbook. THis even involved addressing a fake envelope because they can't do it. You will be surprised how much the kids do not know. Maybe my kids are lower functioning than yours, I don't know but the bill paying lesson prepares them for life. I also go over scheduling study time and how to balance activities and study time as well as how to prioritize assignments. I find that the older they are the more flexibility you have to do lessons. The younger kids have regents exams to prepare for and they have more than the older ones. I like the older ones because there is room to wiggle. I also do an SAT word of the week with all of my grades and we do vocabulary lessons around that word and past words. You can do weekly math facts too. Some teachers do that. I also start my day with a what is going on in the world talk for about 5 minutes because the kids have no clue what is going on in the world. Hope that helped!

Re: Tips for Teaching Resource Room

Thank you so much!! Yes that helped so much- now I have too much stuff to do I really like the idea of going over basic math facts. I remember from last year most of my kids couldn't add or subtract without a calculator!

Re: Tips for Teaching Resource Room

I work with younger students (middle school) but I liked to also do what I called weekend writing. I'd just have them write about their weekend (upcoming or past) and then we analyze their writing. I use it to teach paragraph structure, grammar, spelling, etc. It only takes one misuse of there, their, they're to teach a really great lesson to all! I also did a lot of math practice (multiplication and division). I also used a lot of websites for the students to go on to "play" math games while I worked with others more 1:1. I really tried to use their own weaknesses to guide my time with them. The rest of the time, they spent working on research reports, essay writing for class, or even HW help/review, and test review for core classes.