This inspiring, practical and highly usable activity book shows how to create peaceful, productive classrooms from the first day of school. Teach students respect, acceptance and conflict resolution skills while also improving writing and language skills-important with today's emphasis on academics and accountability. The Peaceful Classroom in Action will show you how to: [ create a peaceful classroom from the first day of school [ build a climate of respect [ help kids resolve conflicts [ maintain an atmosphere of peacefulness throughout the year [ teach all your students, even your most difficult, how to be peacemakers [ improve your students' writing ability as you teach peacemaking concepts [ integrate literature and peacemaking [ build collaboration across the curriculum [ implement effective techniques for dealing with challenging students These simple peacemaking skills will enhance your students emotional competence and make classrooms everywhere caring and inviting places. (A companion book to Learning the Skills of Peacemaking by Naomi Drew) Grades K-6.

Charting the progress of twelve children in a real Texas classroom, educator Donna Goertz shows how positive change can occur given the proper environment. In each case she describes a child's transformation from destructive troublemaker to responsible citizen of the classroom community. Readers will learn how to apply Montessori methods to virtually any early elementary environment.

This timely book provides educators with examples of safe schools and many of the strategies safe schools use to create a culture of peace. The author proposes that lessons in peace--cooperation, respect, effective communication, celebrating diversity, expressing emotion, and conflict resolution--be incorporated into the school curriculum. The Peaceful School: Models That Work is for all educators with an interest in making schools and, ultimately, communities more peaceful.

Wouldn’t it be great if your child could exercise, have fun, and build concentration skills all at the same time? In 2006, the Little Flower Yoga program was developed by teacher and certified yoga instructor Jennifer Cohen Harper, when her successful use of yoga in her kindergarten classroom led to requests by other students, teachers, and administrators for yoga programs of their own. Harper slowly began to teach more and more yoga classes, and eventually recruited other yoga teachers with education backgrounds to continue growing what had become a flourishing program. Little Flower Yoga for Kidsoffers this fun and unique program combining yoga and mindfulness in an easy-to-read format. Written specifically for parents and kids, the book aims at teaching children to pay attention, increase focus, and balance their emotions—all while building physical strength and flexibility. Based on a growing body of evidence that yoga and mindfulness practices can help children develop focus and concentration, the simple yoga exercises in this book can easily be integrated into their child’s daily routine, ultimately improving health, behavior, and even school achievement. The book details the five main components of the program: connect, breath, move, focus, and relax. Drawing on these components, Harper shares practical activities that parents can use with their children both on a daily basis and as applied to particularly challenging issues. And while this book is targeted to parents, teachers may also find it extremely useful in helping students achieve better attention and focus. For more information about this innovative program, visit www.littlefloweryoga.com.

Grade level: k, t.

... This book provides step-by-step instruction for implementing a narrative-based approach as an alternative to traditional discipline strategies.

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.