As teachers, we work hard to engage and draw students into lessons. Teachers are masters at devising ways to help instruction stick. Everything from catchy tunes to kinesthetic movements accompanies instruction. Yet sometimes we all need a new idea or suggestion for a teaching approach. Here are three to get you started.

If you are looking for alternative ideas for teaching strategies from the CAFE Menu, a popular feature is the Ready Reference Guide for each strategy. This one-page document provides a concise definition of the strategy along with a secret to help students understand how it works, plus suggestions for instruction and troubleshooting.

Grade-Level-Specific Lessons, written in brain-compatible lengths for maximizing student potential for engagement and retention, are provided for a variety of grade levels.

The third resource recently came up in conversation at a workshop. A fourth-grade teacher shared that she had looked at the Tip of the Week on a Friday morning before her kids came into the classroom. She got excited when she saw the video where Joan introduces to Haylee the comprehension strategy Ask questions throughout the reading process. She had just introduced the strategy to her students the day before, and decided to start Friday's focus lesson by showing the video so her students could have another look at the introduction of this strategy.

Providing children the opportunity to see someone else instructing and practicing the strategy can help move them to a higher level, much like an anchor paper does with writing or solving math problems.

The video clips on The Daily CAFE are great to use in this manner, because most of them run five minutes or less. Whether it's for teaching the CAFE strategies; building stamina; teaching how to sit elbow, elbow, knee, knee (EEKK); or even what Daily 5 looks like when running successfully in a classroom, providing visuals of students or teachers coming into your room via video is a powerful teaching tool.

Looking for a quick way to see if there is a video on our site to support your teaching? Merely go to the Search bar, type in your keywords, and select Videos from the Article Type dropdown.

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