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Back to school, back to school …
It’s almost time to head back to the classroom, and Hāpara wants to make sure that you do it with ease. Here are some helpful tips, tricks and tools to get you started for a year of success. So kick back, relax while you can and let’s dive into all things back to school!
Get to know your learners
As former educators, one of the best pieces of advice we’ve received is to learn your students’ names as quickly as possible. Not only does this action make it easier for you to address your learners in the classroom, but it starts them off with a sense of belonging. Use Highlights and Teacher Dashboard to create and customize your Class Groups and student names, then review them before the first day.
Build essential relationships
Along with getting to know your students’ names is actually getting to know who they are as people. Simply ask how your students are doing or try these fun and meaningful activities to start developing a relationship with your learners.
- Use the beginning of class or bell ringers as a time for students to free write. This activity could be an excellent opportunity to find out who they are, what they like, and all the other things you don’t always learn in the classroom.
- Find out what they’re interested in or their extracurriculars. Do they act, make crafts or play sports?
- Have students make a video of “everything I want my teacher to know” at the beginning of the year.
Teach digital citizenship with autonomy
It’s easy to close tabs when students are distracted or not doing their work. The hard part is keeping them focused while teaching them good digital citizenship skills. With Highlights, you can see what your students are doing online while also helping them stay on track during learning. You can also gradually release responsibility as they make healthy digital choices.
Use classroom monitoring for good
To foster a positive learning environment:
- Open up the discussion about using monitoring with your students.
- Be transparent about what monitoring means, why you do it and your learners’ responsibility. Most importantly, model what that good online behavior looks like so that students understand and can make their own decisions.
- Use monitoring in Highlights to encourage and support your learners by sending positive feedback while they’re working.
Simplify your lesson planning
It’s no secret that lesson planning can be very time-consuming, but it’s also necessary to stay organized and ahead of your work. Maximize your minutes by using Workspace to quickly find, build, modify and share digital lessons and projects. In addition, you can create student groups to serve different academic levels by quickly personalizing and differentiating a Workspace. This customization works for a group or individual learners to support their unique needs so that they can succeed in the way that works best for them. Get started by exploring some of these back-to-school Workspaces.
Incorporate SEL and watch your learners bloom
Create a caring and thriving classroom by incorporating social-emotional learning in your lessons. SEL helps develop the whole learner, ensuring that all students can succeed. Not sure where to start? Here are some great resources you can use to personalize learning for all your students.
- SEL e-book
- How to engage learners with a combination of STEM and SEL
- SEL is foundational — not just one more thing to do
- How to add SEL support into your lessons with Hāpara Workspace
Streamline your classroom
Every educator knows that there are many moving parts to teaching. Students have countless assignments, projects and assessments scattered around their Google Drives. With Teacher Dashboard, we try to keep all of those parts in one place to make it easier for you to focus on your learners. Using Dashboard, educators have visibility into student work and direct access to student files so that they can understand learners’ progress. So you can dedicate your time to giving learners differentiated, personalized instruction.
To log in to Hāpara, simply navigate to app.hapara.com. You can use your school issued email address to log in with Google.
Prepare your students’ backpacks
We don’t mean digging through all of the papers and candy wrappers in their JanSports. Instead, you can set your learners up for success using Student Dashboard Digital Backpack. Our solution streamlines Google Classroom for students, keeping all of their assignments, Gmail, announcements and files in one space, helping them stay organized and prepared with digital reading tools tailored to their reading level.
If you are a current Hāpara customer, simply have your students log in with their school email credentials to get started at https://mystudentdashboard.com and use this guide to help.
Brush up on your knowledge
If you’re a new educator just starting with Hāpara or a seasoned vet looking for a refresher, explore our professional development opportunities that work at your pace. As a Hāpara user, you can join Hāpara Champion Educator, Hāpara Community or our asynchronous learning courses.
As always, we are here to support you during the start of school and throughout the year. Please let us know how we can help and make your teaching experience with Hāpara easier.
Want to stay up to date all year long? Add community@hapara.com to your approved address list! We regularly send updates and resources to educators and admins, and this is the best way to make sure everyone is in the know on all things Hāpara!
Explore how an educator uses Hāpara Highlights as a coaching tool for social and emotional learning in her classroom.
