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Bring Mindfulness to Your Life and Your Classroom Starting Now

New Quick-Reference Guide for Teachers Now Available

Schools across the country are introducing mindfulness to students as early as kindergarten, with many classroom teachers now allotting time throughout the day or week for mindfulness practice. The reason for the growing popularity of mindfulness is simple: It works. As recently reported in a post for Edutopia by Youki Terada, multiple studies show that mindfulness not only helps lower stress, increase mood, and improve coping skills, but it even boosts academic performance.

As teachers hear more and more about the benefits of mindfulness, many of them want to incorporate it into their classroom, but don’t know how or where to begin. Elizabeth McAvoy and Jacqueline Thousand have written a six page quick-reference laminated guide to help K-12 teachers learn to practice mindfulness in their own lives and teach it to their students. The guide, Mindfulness for Teachers and Students, explains why mindfulness works, and emphasizes quick and easy ways to incorporate it into daily life and into the classroom. Sections include:

Mindfulness 101
Daily mindfulness for teachers
Meditation techniques
Mindfulness activities for the classroom
Guided meditation
Cultivating optimism
Using the senses
Personal mindfulness journal

The guide is available now for immediate delivery and can be purchased on the NPR, Inc. website for $12.95 each. Volume discounts are offered for orders of 11 copies or more. Place your order today!

Order the Guide

Get Expert Guidance on Using UDL to Implement Florida State Standards

The Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaces No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as the federal legislation for K-12 public education, gives states greater responsibility and flexibility to set rigorous academic standards and design high quality assessments that are accessible to all students. The law calls for states to use the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)—a scientifically that “(A) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and (B) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students”—in developing assessments (and alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities) and delivering instruction.

The new quick-reference laminated guide Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Florida State Standards (FSS) by Joseph Casbarro is designed to help Florida educators understand and incorporate UDL. It provides an overview UDL, along with strategies for providing multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, and multiple means of engagement. It also describes specific UDL best practices that enhance implementation of the Language Arts Standards (LAFS) and Mathematics Standards (MAFS). Other features include a UDL lesson planning framework and a review of approaches— such as differentiated instruction, brain-compatible learning, multi-tiered system of supports, cooperative learning and project-based learning— that support UDL in the classroom.

Hot off the press, the guide is now available for purchase on our website. Schools may make tax-exempt purchases online by setting up a “Schools” account. Quantity discounts are offered on this and all laminated reference guides published by National Professional Resources/Dude Publishing.

About the Author

Joseph Casbarro is the Chief Operating Officer at National Professional Resources. He worked as an educator for 30 years in public schools, holding administrative positions including building principal, director of special programs, and assistant superintendent of schools. He received his PhD in school psychology from Syracuse University and has taught for many years at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Casbarro is the author of the book Test Anxiety & What You Can Do About It, as well as several quick-reference laminated guides published by National Professional Resources/Dude Publishing.

New Executive Function Classroom Resource for Teachers by Sandra Rief

Students who are routinely late to and/or disruptive in class, forget to turn in homework, and make many careless errors were once considered merely difficult, distractible, and disorganized. Some of these students were diagnosed with ADHD, but it is only in recent years that neuroscientists and educators have come to realize that many students with these types of symptoms have executive function deficits. Best-selling author Sandra Rief has written the laminated guides “Executive Function: Skill-Building and Support” (Elementary version and Grades 6-12) to help teachers understand executive function processes, the ways in which executive function (EF) impairments affect learning and behavior, and how teachers can help promote executive function skill building and support students with EF issues.

In a concise six-page laminated guide (one version for elementary teachers, another for teachers of students in grades 6-12), Rief offers dozens of specific strategies that elementary, middle or high school teachers can use to strengthen executive function skills in all students, as well as scaffolds and accommodations for students with executive function impairments. These are organized by category, with specific strategies and techniques provided for addressing the following areas of executive function difficulty:

Working memory
Inhibition and self-control
Organization and time management
Planning and prioritization
Sustaining Focus and Attention
Activation and initiation
Shifting/flexibility
Self-Monitoring and metacognition
Emotional control
Goal-directed persistence

These guides are now available for purchase online. For more information and to purchase the elementary guide, visit http://www.nprinc.com/executive-function-skill-building-support-strategies-for-the-elementary-classroom/. For the 6-12 version, go to http://www.nprinc.com/executive-function-skill-building-and-support-strategies-grades-6-12/. Guides are $12.95 each, with bulk discounts for 11 or more copies.

This is a reference teachers will relish having at their fingertips in the classroom. Other terrific resources for teachers can be found on author Sandra Rief’s website, http://www.sandrarief.com. In addition to downloadable charts and forms, Rief provides links to her Pinterest pages, featuring hundreds of ideas and materials for Teaching and Learning Strategies, Class and Behavior Management, ADHD, Class Organization & Time Management, PBIS (Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support), Brain Breaks & Classroom Games, Response to Intervention, Learning Activities and more.

New Release: Schools of Social-Emotional Competence and Character Laminated Guide

Schools of Social-Emotional Competence and Character: Actions for School Leaders, Teachers, and Support Staff, the newest in NPR, Inc.’s series of laminated reference guides for educators, is now in-stock and available for purchase.

Written by Maurice Elias and Marvin Berkowitz, this six-page quick-reference guide offers information and action steps to help educators build schools that promote character, social-emotional competence, and a schoolwide climate of safety, caring, challenge, support, respect, and inspiration in which to educate students.

The guide outlines

Core social-emotional competencies
Key aspects of character
Research on character education & social-emotional competence
What leadership teams can do to cultivate a positive school climate that promotes of good character
Professional development approaches
Ways of encouraging student voice and empowerment

About the Authors:

Maurice Elias

Maurice J. Elias, PhD is a professor in the psychology department at Rutgers University and director of clinical PhD training. Other positions include:

Academic director of The Collaborative, Rutgers’ Center for Community Based Research, Service, & Public Scholarship;
Past president of the Society for Community Research and Action/Division 27 (Community Psychology) of the American Psychological Association;
Co-founder of the Consortium on the School-Based Promotion of Social Competence, a research consortium comprised of nationally prominent scientists;
Director of the Rutgers Social-Emotional Learning Lab;
Coordinator of Improving School Climate for Academic and Life Success (ISCALS) at Rutgers’ Center for Applied Psychology;
Founding member of the leadership team for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL.

The focus of Elias’ work is on establishing the field of prevention, school-based preventive intervention, and social competence promotion as a credible, important, and rigorous area of research, practice, and public policy. With colleagues at CASEL, Elias was senior author of Promoting Social and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for Educators, which is already circulated to over 100,000 educational leaders in the U.S. and internationally.

Elias lectures nationally and internationally, has been featured on numerous television and radio programs, is frequently sought out as an expert in magazines and newspapers, and devotes his research and writing to the area of social-emotional and character development in children, schools, and families. He writes a blog on Social-Emotional and Character Development (SECD) for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, edutopia, at http://www.edutopia.org/user/67

Marvin Berkowitz

Marvin W. Berkowitz, PhD is the inaugural Sanford N. McDonnell Endowed Professor of Character Education, and Co-Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and University of Missouri Thomas Jefferson Fellow. He was the inaugural Ambassador H.H. Coors Professor of Character Development at the US Air Force Academy (1999), and Professor of Psychology at Marquette University (1979-1999).

He earned his Ph.D. in Life-span Developmental Psychology at Wayne State University in 1977.

His scholarly focus and expertise is in character education and development. He is author of Parenting for Good (2005), You Can’t Teach Through a Rat: And Other Epiphanies for Educators (2012), and more than 100 book chapters, monographs, and journal articles. He is founding co-editor of the Journal of Character Education.

Dr. Berkowitz received the Sanford N. McDonnell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Character Education Partnership (2006), the Good Works Award from the Association for Moral Education (2010), and the University of Missouri System’s Thomas Jefferson Professorship (2011-12).

Assistive Technology Laminated Guide, Revised & Updated, Available Now

A newly revised version of the top-selling laminated guide, Assistive Technology: What Every Educator Needs to Know, is now available for immediate purchase.

Written by Brian Friedlander, this 6-page laminated reference guide answers both the “what” and “how” of assistive technology. It reviews the built-in accessibility features of Windows and OS X (Mac) operating systems, as well as the iOS (iPad), Android, and Chrome (Chromebooks) operating systems. It also recommends and describes specific software/apps for desktop and mobile devices that are designed to help build key skills in the areas of reading, writing, organization, and math.

Find recommendations for the best

Text Scanners
Audio/Digital Books/libraries
Screen Readers
Time/Task Management apps
Graphic Organizers
Note-Taking apps and devices
Speech Recognition programs
Word Prediction software
Virtual Manipulatives
…and more!

Purchase your copy now for $12.95 each. Bulk discounts for orders of 11 or more copies. Visit the the product page on www.NPRInc.com for more details and to order now.