How to Teach to a Diverse Classroom of Students

Each year teachers are faced with the daunting task of teaching
to a classroom of 20-30 individual students, each with their own
learning styles, interests, and abilities. Providing optimal
learning for such a diverse group can seem overwhelming. But,
there is a simple approach that can be used which will enable
all students to succeed, and that approach is simply using
variety and choice. Not only does this approach address the
multiple learning styles of students, but it also aides in making
them independent learners.

While the classroom still needs to have structure (routines,
rules, procedures), providing variety within that structured
environment can aide in providing optimal learning for all
students. Using a variety of instructional approaches such as
lectures, PowerPoint presentations, inquiry-based instruction,
hands-on experiments, project/problem-based learning, or
computer aided instruction, not only addresses the various
learning styles of the students in the classroom, but it can help
learners become more flexible in their learning. Most learners
do have a preferred learning style, however this does not mean
they are strictly dependent on that style to learn. They are
also comfortable with and able to learn from several other styles
as well. Exposing students to a wide variety of learning styles
will enable them to become more flexible learners.

It is also beneficial to vary the input devices used and the
resources made available in the classroom. Children have a wide
variety of preferred learning devices, therefore making as many
available as possible provides for this diversity. For example,
when presenting information use audio (songs, speeches,
interviews, etc.), video, books, posters, hands-on
manipulatives, food, and smells. Technology has made available
a wide range of resources, such as PowerPoint presentations,
live video feeds, chats, and communication. PowerPoint
presentations are a great way to present information using a
mixture of audio, video, animations (movement), and text. These
presentations can also be made available to the students via the
computer for them to review at their own pace. The internet/
computers also offer interactive learning activities that combine
movement, visuals, and sounds, such as virtual science
experiments. These allow students to conduct experiments
never before thought possible due to danger or lack of equipment.
Virtual experiments can be found at http://www.explorelearning.com .

How to Teach to a Diverse Classroom of Students

Pre-exposure to material also aides in learning. The more
familiar students are with a subject the easier it is for new
learning to occur. Therefore, providing students with a
variety of pre-exposure materials can better prepare them for
new learning units. For example, monthly calendars that list
the upcoming themes, a classroom website with links to various
websites related to upcoming themes, books, magazines, maps,
posters, computer software, and manipulatives can be provided
for students to browse at their leisure. Providing a variety of
materials takes into consideration the learning preferences of
all students.

Novelty can be used to gain and keep students' attention.
People usually only pay attention to things that are of value or
things that are personally meaningful. Therefore, relating
learning to your students' real life experiences or interests
can catch and keep their attention. "Shock" them with an unusual
noise, experiment, video, song, etc. You can also present them
with a problem or project that relates to their real world in
order to gain their attention and interest at the beginning of
a unit. Issues such as environmental problems, problems with
long lines in the cafeteria, designing the perfect playground,
planning a field trip within the budget, local traffic issues,
etc. can all be considered. Making learning meaningful,
relevant, and interesting to your students not only gains their
initial attention, but keeps it throughout the lesson.

When planning your lessons it is beneficial to try to include as
many of the senses and/or Gardner's multiple intelligences
(verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, kinesthetic, visual-
spatial, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist)
as possible. You can do this by using a variety of activities
in your plans such as songs, games, experiments, field trips,
real world experiences, interviews, guest speakers, physical
movement/exercise, small group activities, individual activities,
partner activities, cooking/food/snacks, hands-on experiences,
etc. Providing a variety of activities will enable students of
all ability levels to succeed.

Not only do students have diverse learning styles but varying
bio-cognitive cycles as well. Some students learn best in the
morning, some in the afternoon. Therefore, having a flexible
classroom schedule can provide for these differences. Also,
varying the times and types of assessments can give all students
a fair chance of showing their true abilities.

When applicable, it is beneficial to give students choice in
activities and assessments. This provides students
opportunities to showcase their individual talents and can aide
in classroom management as well. If students are constantly
dictated to and not given a voice or choice they can grow
resentful and "act out". Provide a variety of classroom
activities for students to choose from during structured and
unstructured times, give them several projects such as posters,
PowerPoint presentations, reports, interviews, videos, brochures,
etc. to choose from when assessing their knowledge. Giving
students choice provides them with a sense of empowerment over
their learning and can aide them in deciding what learning styles
and assessments work best for them, thus helping them become
more responsible for their own learning.

It would be a pretty boring world if all learners were the same.
Diversity makes the classroom more interesting and exciting.
Teachers should honor and respect the uniqueness of each
student by offering variety and choice in their classrooms. Not
only will this address the diverse needs of the students, but it
will also help them to become independent learners as well.
After all, is that not the goal of education?

How to Teach to a Diverse Classroom of Students
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Tina O'Block holds a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction and a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. She has been teaching for 13 years.

She is the author of Now I Know My ABCs and a Whole Lot More: Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers and Kindergarteners which is available at http://www.oblockbooks.com and the article, How to Help Your Child be Successful in Kindergarten.

You may also contact her at oblockbooks@worldnet.att.net.

Donation Thank You Letter - 2 Effectual Examples

It's no secret that sending an effective donation thank you letter can help an organization to build long-term relationships with donors. Every charitable organization should make it a practice to thank donors for their contributions. This is especially true for new donors.

Sending a thank you note and token gift to donors will help to set the tone of the new relationship between the donor and organization. Fundraising professionals must make donors understand that they are partners in fulfilling the mission of the organization.

The following examples, written specifically for new donors, will show you how to effectively do this.

Donation Thank You Letter - 2 Effectual Examples

Note that each letter reinforces a positive feeling in the donor for having given to the organization. This is equivalent to the sales professional who wisely helps his customer to avoid "buyers remorse." This kind of donation thank you letter often opens the door to future gifts for additional drives or funding objectives.

Samples Donation Thank You Letters

I am writing this letter to personally thank you for the donation you recently made to the Women for Women International organizaton. Your generous gift is helping us to aid women living in war-torn environments to rebuild their lives and communities.

As a new member of our Premium Donor's Club, you will receive monthly newsletters to keep you abreast of our ongoing efforts. Also, to express our appreciation for your truly generous donation, we have enclosed a gift card for Barnes and Noble Booksellers. Please accept it as a token of our gratitude for your help in this important work.

Once again, we truly are grateful for your sacrifice in contributing to our work. We hope you will feel compelled to donate again in the future.

Sincerely,

Thank you, Mr./Ms. ____________, for your very generous gift to the Children With Cancer Foundation. As a first-time donor to our organization, we want you know that without generous donors like you, we would not be able to continue the important work that we do. Your will be used to help purchase 0,000 worth of much-needed medical equipment for the children's oncology center downtown.

The greatest benefit of all, I hope, is the feeling you get knowing that you personally helped one child to fight the debilitating disease that is afflicting him or her.

As we promised, you will soon be receiving the beautiful calendar you ordered--our free gift to you for your contribution to our work. Again, thank you so much for your donation. Your continued support is sure to help us in the fight to save many promising young lives.

Many thanks,

Donation Thank You Letter - 2 Effectual Examples
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For out more about writing a donation thank you letter that will open the door to future funding opportunities at Thank You Note Examples and Tips today!

J. Spann is a freelance writer who specializes in business and health.

Beauty Salon Floor Plans

A beauty salon has become an almost iconic image in Western culture. It is a place where people go for beauty treatments and to purchase beauty products. Women frequent beauty salons to get their hair trimmed and nails polished.

A beauty salon is also a center for community news and confessions. No two beauty salons have the same environment. Each salon tries to have its own distinct identity and ambience. Some cater to a particular section of the society, while others meet the demands of certain ethnic communities.

There are hundreds of attractive possibilities for designing your salon with creative and well-organized working floor plans. To begin with, make a rough sketch of the salon with proper dimensions. The floor layout is drawn using a grid paper or an architectural scale. For a good beauty saloon, the normal space required per stylist is around 125 to 150 square feet. The salon should also contain rooms for facials, massages, skin care, or electrolysis, as well as a men's hairstyling space with small waiting area, and a tint room.

Beauty Salon Floor Plans

Many beauty salons are now remodeled in order to make the interior as well as the floors more attractive. Even though one can undertake the remodeling planning and designing by oneself, it is better to consult an architect or interior designer for professional assistance. An architect's advice will help a lot in the structural redesigning of a beauty salon. Take special care in designing the reception area as it creates the first impression regarding the salon.

Various versions of floor plan software are available for free on the Internet. These can be easily downloaded to create great looking floors for the salon.

Beauty Salon Floor Plans
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Beauty Salons provides detailed information on Beauty Salons, Beauty Salon Software, Beauty Salon Equipment, Beauty Salon Supplies and more. Beauty Salons is affiliated with Natural Beauty Products.

Personals Like Craigslist - But Better!

If you go looking, you will find personals like Craigslist all over the internet. Most sites offering online classifieds have a personals section nowadays. They all suffer from the same problem, however. And this problem will usually result in you wasting time and often losing money.

This article is here to give you fair warning about the drawbacks to using these internet classifieds and also a solution that is a much better alternative for you to find a date or casual encounter.

The problem with personals like Craigslist is the huge number of con artists using the service to market dating products. If you post a personal ad, you will receive dozens, sometimes hundreds of responses. The majority of these emails will come from clever internet marketers, posing as attractive women who want you to join a dating service in order to meet them.

Personals Like Craigslist - But Better!

Some of those emails will come from real women, true, but how are you to tell which ones are real and which are fake? There is no way. Which means, though the personals at Craigslist are a good concept, they tend not to work for most of us.

The solution that most people overlook is to use a big-name dating service. Most people are put off by these services because they think you need to pay to use them. Not true. You only pay for premium features. And, let us face it, if you do pay for premium features, that is probably a small cost to pay for what you get.

And what do you get? Well major dating sites are personals like Craigslist in many ways. You can join for free and use many of their services without cost. You can make searches of people in your area and read what they are looking for.

You get a lot more, though, than that offered by personals at Craigslist. You get real people, no internet marketers trying to con you; you get to see who is online and who is offline; you get to contact people with instant messages; you get to add them as friends and view their photo albums.

So, all in all, they represent a much better alternative. They offer far more features, many of them offer free accounts, and when you get an email from a woman you know that she's real, and not some clever con artist!

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Now that you know about personals like craigslist, you can get a free account here: Personals Like Craigslist. They are one of the most visited dating communities on the planet.

What is Community Counseling?

The term 'Community counseling' is widely in use nowadays. You can find several instances on the Internet or on television about different community counselors that are working for this society to help people live their life in a better way. Working as a Community Counselor is one of the top career options available for people who are in love with society and teaching people the right way of leading their life. If you are looking to become a community counselor then it is important for you to understand what community counseling is all about.

Community counseling is a form of counseling in which different counselors work with families, individuals, couples and also communities in one or the other way. Community-counseling is generally conducted to prevent a problem and assist in setting prevention programs in different communities. The community counselors also advocate different social changes to assist their patients and clients at the large. Community counseling is actually a different form of counseling in which not only people are taught about different right or wrong things but there also shown the right ways so that they can live their life peacefully and happily.

Community counseling is carried by community counselors who are trained to work in different kinds of settings like:

What is Community Counseling?

-Schools and hospitals
-Family services and mental health agencies
-Department of the veteran affairs
-Private industry and businesses
-Behavioral health agencies including the evaluation, training and abuse programs.
-Insurance companies and private practices.

There are a variety of community counseling programs in a number of universities and even on the Internet that will help you in attaining the right kind of information and knowledge to become an accredited community counselor.

These various community counseling programs will provide you with the information to tackle different sections of the society using appropriate means and reducing the disturbance produced by violent and mentally challenged people. After earning your degree from these community-counseling programs you can get a job at one or the other agencies mentioned above to practice as a community counselor.

With the increase in the development of psychology, it can be seen that people who are interested in this field are finding variety of new options to enhance their careers. Community counseling and psychology aims to improve the condition of the community by giving therapy, supportive counseling, linkage and referral, advocacy and various other services as demanded.

The services provided by community counselors can be done on one on one basis, groups to adults, adolescents and families. In these community counseling programs the students are taught to provide an access to the public towards an affordable and effective counseling that is culturally appropriate and physically assessable.

In order to become a certified counselor you will have to have a graduate degree in the requisite field. Most of the under graduate colleges provide a great educational base to a psychology student like bachelor of science, bachelor of arts, degree in education, counseling, psychology or social work.

You can also improve your education by achieving a master's of art degree or masters in education in the similar discipline.

So, if you are looking to make your career in community counseling in psychology then you are not only going to work towards a noble cause but you also can experience a great growth in your career as well.

What is Community Counseling?
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PsychologySchoolsU.com provides the opportunity to research and request free information top psychology majors and top psychology schools for potential students looking to start or expand their career in psychology.

How to Start A House Cleaning Business In 7 Simple Steps

One of the main reasons people start businesses is to make money. For some it's a blessing to make money doing something they love. I'm not saying that you have to love house cleaning in order to have a successful house cleaning business; however it would be a good idea if you didn't hate it.

How much money you make depends on how big you want your business to be. It could be a one person operation where you set up at home and service areas close to home, or you could set up a commercial office and hire people to work for you.

Here are 7 simple steps to get you started on your own house cleaning business.

How to Start A House Cleaning Business In 7 Simple Steps

1) Decide exactly what kind of house cleaning services you will offer.

Here you decided what cleaning you will do, like making beds, vacuuming, mopping and waxing floors, dusting and so on. Also note what you won't do, e.g. laundry. You can also decide to specialize, e.g. by cleaning carpets only, or cleaning suspended ceilings only.

2) Pricing your housecleaning service.

To have an idea of how to charge for your housecleaning service, use your competition. Check your telephone directory and the classified ads section in your local newspapers for cleaning businesses, call them up (pretend to be a prospective client) and find out exactly what cleaning services they offer and how much they charge. With this information gathered decide the best price to charge for your cleaning service.

3) Workout startup costs.

For this you need to consider, tools, material, transport, advertising, insurance etc. Write down a list all the tools and material you need, like cleaners, sponges, mops, carpet cleaning equipment etc. Next find out the cost of each item on the list and write it down next to the item.

Transport: you will have to estimate your costs here. You see it depends on where your client is located and your means of transportation to get to your client. (Having your own vehicle would be to your advantage).

Advertising: You can use free advertising (word of mouth) and paid advertising (classifieds, telephone directory ads etc). Phone calls to your local newspaper and the telephone company who publish your telephone directory will tell you the cost of placing ads.

Once you've gathered all this information, calculate your total startup costs.

4) Name your business.

Choosing an appropriate name for your house cleaning business is important. Here are a few examples I got of the internet, 'Maid Brigade', 'All Shine Cleaning', 'White Glove Cleaning Service'. Please avoid using 'Your Name Cleaning Services'. Using your own name as part of your business name is over done by many house cleaning businesses. Brainstorm and come up with a name that helps you stand out of the crowd.

5) Learn the zoning regulations of your community.

Check the city clerk's Office or your local library for a copy for a copy of the zoning laws governing your community. Your reason for doing this is that some zoning regulations prohibit home businesses in a community.

6) Do a few free cleaning jobs.

Well you're not actually doing them for free. You're doing them in exchange for references (these add to your credibility for future paying clients and are invaluable). You can offer these free cleaning jobs to friends, non profit organizations in your communities etc.

7) Get your first paying client then get another and another and another and so on.

Tell everyone you know that you've started a cleaning business and place ads in the local newspapers. In the beginning you need to spend most of your time and money getting paying clients. However, the more clients you get the less time and money you spend on marketing and more time you spend on cleaning and making your clients happy.

This is just the beginning. Once you start making money take a house cleaning business course to help you better manage your business in terms of growth, accounting, taxes, insurance better marketing strategies and more.

--

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated. fayolap@yahoo.com

How to Start A House Cleaning Business In 7 Simple Steps
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Fayola Peters is the webmaster of housecleaning-tips.com. To find more information about a house business cleaning course check out her website at http://www.housecleaning-tips.com.

fayolap@yahoo.com

School Professional Learning Communities

It is suggested that learning communities should be promoted and applied at the school level. It takes effort to apply and sustain a learning community. There is a gap in the translation of the learning community professional development model into practice.

It has been proved that joint teams can improve student's learning but that effort is difficult to apply on traditionally competitive teachers as it cannot be mandated. The school systems which were fragmented and opposed to learning are beginning to express that the prospective of school to school collaboration will have focus on raising the bar and closing the gap.

A successful professional community has ability to encourage and maintain the learning of all education professionals in a school community. It includes inquiry orientation and has flexible boundaries, both externally and internally-all together with combined reason of improving pupil learning. The flexibility refers to exterior learning from extra schools and the public knowledge-base. School network is the perfect answer to this.

School Professional Learning Communities

We have a little knowledge about the network based professional community and the localized professional community. We have just started to learn what transpires in such communications that involves resources for professional learning and school improvement.

Learning communities are groups of various classes connected through academic term. They are like regular classes only. You can learn various subjects under one roof, in other words the syllabus is not restricted.

Three types of professional learning communities

o Linked courses: In this community you can get yourself enrolled in three or two classes connected in thematic manner, the students here study the same core subjects.

o Student cohorts: This learning community has large classes and contains small group of students, the teacher coordinates through web conference facility, with students located in various parts of states.

o Coordinated study: It has courses which are taught by faculty members, it also has defined subjects followed by teachers and students.

Benefits of communities

1. It enhances academic achievements, intellectual development and you can complete the degree on time.

2. The faculty members keep revising the syllabus, hence the students get to learn the new content,which are valuable in present days.Students are helped by teachers with their study related problems during tutorial.

3. They pay emphasis on experimental learning, collaboration and interpersonal dialogue.

4. They also deal with various societal issues like how to increase the fragmentation of studies.

5. It strengthens the partnership between academic affairs and students.

Professional learning communities have the syllabus which has a proper amalgam of general curriculum as well as real life teachings.

K-12 School Related Article - Professional learning communities 

School Professional Learning Communities
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Dr. Patricia Fioriello has 25 years experience in K-12 education as a teacher, principal, and central office manager. She publishes blogs, articles, e guides and books addressing the critical issues in K-12 schools. Writing services include study materials, documents and presentations. Dr. Fioriello also conducts workshops, private online tutoring and consulting for K-12 educators and the community. She is available online at http://www.liveperson.com/dr-patricia-fioriello.