Responding to Student Trauma
A Toolkit for Schools in Times of Crisis
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Immediately effective trauma-response framework for educators to help students during and after crises.
Responding to Student Trauma is an urgent addition to current trauma response practices. Written by a middle school counselor, this easy-to-follow book provides a framework for understanding and responding to the needs of students experiencing trauma. With many schools lacking adequate staff for supporting student mental health, this guide gives educators the information and strategies they need to address the specific needs of their students.
Packed with strategies to use immediately, Responding to Student Trauma categorizes trauma according to the source: self/home, school, community, and country/world. It directly addresses how to respond to crises currently facing students and educators and includes tips for planning ahead to be ready for the next crisis.
The versatile structure allows Responding to Student Trauma to be used as a standalone resource, as a supplement to existing programs, or as a trauma response framework to create a schoolwide program. Having clear and comprehensive programs for times of crisis and students who are struggling with traumatic experiences allows staff to support student mental health and helps reduce staff anxiety and uncertainty about unexpected incidents.
Digital content includes a reproducible school-planning worksheet, teacher quick-guide worksheet, and action items checklist to ensure the entire staff is trained and feels prepared to respond quickly to situations. A free downloadable PLC/Book Study Guide available at freespirit.com/PLC.
Help Anxious Kids in a Stressful World
25 Classroom Strategies
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Equip teachers with the knowledge and tools needed to address child and adolescent anxiety at a critical moment.
The number of students experiencing anxiety at school is on the rise. With this book, teachers can create emotionally supportive environments and strengthen children's abilities to cope with anxiety.
This must-have resource:
• Provides a framework for understanding anxiety, its causes, and the various ways it can present in young people
• Offers standalone action strategies for classroom use, including a matrix to identify which strategies may be most useful for specific situations
• Makes implementation of strategies easy with reproducibles for teacher and student use
Drs. David Campos and Kathleen McConnell Fad wrote this book to ensure that teachers, regardless of their prior knowledge and background, have a wide range of easy-to-understand and useful instructional tools to address anxious behaviors.
Create an Emotion-Rich Classroom
Helping Young Children Build Their Social Emotional Skills
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Strategies and activity ideas to support emotional development in children.
What is an emotion-rich classroom? Similar to how a print-rich environment exposes children to a variety of printed materials, an emotion-rich one intentionally surrounds children with a wide range of social emotional learning experiences and supportive interactions. Creating an Emotion-Rich Classroom provides frameworks for planning and implementing strategies to support emotional development in children.
This practical and easy-to-use resource helps early childhood educators develop the emotional literacy of the young children in their classrooms. Readers learn how to:
• increase children's emotional vocabulary
• model how to recognize and cope with various emotions
• support self-regulation and reduce challenging behaviors
• discuss emotions in others and in storybook characters
• support and engage families in fostering emotional skills at home
Experienced in emotional development in children and early childhood education, author Lindsay N. Giroux, M.Ed., shows readers how to effectively weave social and emotional instruction into the fabric of the school day. Create an Emotion-Rich Classroom focuses on individual skills, making social and emotional instruction specific and measurable. With consistently structured chapters, this book is easy to use and rich in ideas and strategies.
Help Anxious Kids in a Stressful World
25 Classroom Strategies
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Equip teachers with the knowledge and tools needed to address child and adolescent anxiety at a critical moment.
The number of students experiencing anxiety at school is on the rise. With this book, teachers can create emotionally supportive environments and strengthen children's abilities to cope with anxiety.
This must-have resource:
• Provides a framework for understanding anxiety, its causes, and the various ways it can present in young people
• Offers standalone action strategies for classroom use, including a matrix to identify which strategies may be most useful for specific situations
• Makes implementation of strategies easy with reproducibles for teacher and student use
Drs. David Campos and Kathleen McConnell Fad wrote this book to ensure that teachers, regardless of their prior knowledge and background, have a wide range of easy-to-understand and useful instructional tools to address anxious behaviors.
Teach for Attention!
A Tool Belt of Strategies for Engaging Students with Attention Challenges
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
If learning is a motor, student engagement is the key. But when teaching students with ADHD and other attention challenges, sometimes even the most finely tuned classroom can sputter. Teach for Attention! is your tool belt of teaching strategies for students with ADHD, low self-confidence, distraction, and other attention challenges. Dozens of true classroom stories show the strategies in action. It's all about making simple fixes so you can reach every student without changing your approach or revamping your curriculum. Carry these ideas with you like tools on a belt-the right one will be there when you need it!
A Teacher's Guide to Stick Up for Yourself!
An 11-Session Course in Self-Esteem and Assertiveness for Kids
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
This teacher's companion to a classic book for kids provides tools for building self-esteem and personal power.
Without self-esteem, kids doubt themselves and may turn to unhealthy habits as a way of coping. With self-esteem, kids feel secure, are willing to take positive risks, and are resilient in the face of challenges. This teacher's guide expands the messages of Stick Up for Yourself!, teaching self-confidence and how to be assertive with easy-to-use sessions. Created for the classroom, these sessions can also be used in other group settings including counseling groups, out-of-school programs, community programs, and more. Digital content includes reproducible handouts.
The Cluster Grouping Handbook
How to Challenge Gifted Students and Improve Achievement for All
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Definitive resource for implementing, sustaining, and evaluating schoolwide cluster grouping, fully revised and expanded.
In today's standards-driven era, how can teachers motivate and challenge gifted students and ensure that all students reach their potential? This book provides a compelling answer: the Schoolwide Cluster Grouping Model. The authors explain how the model differs from grouping practices of the past, and they present a roadmap for implementing, sustaining, and evaluating schoolwide cluster grouping. Readers will find a wealth of teacher-tested classroom strategies along with detailed information on identifying gifted students for clusters, gaining support from parents, and providing ongoing professional development to teachers and other staff. The new edition:
• offers identification and placement guidance for a wide variety of student ages and populations
• directs special attention toward empowering gifted English language learners
• shows teachers how to use the Depth of Knowledge framework to differentiate learning tasks
• offers new ideas for integrating technology into both professional development and student learning
The Cluster Grouping Handbook offers a guide for schools to create a workable, defensible gifted program; to simplify teachers' jobs; and to maximize learning for all students. Digital content includes customizable forms from the book and a PDF presentation; a free PLC/Book Study Guide is also available.
The SEL Solution
Integrate Social and Emotional Learning into Your Curriculum and Build a Caring Climate for All
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Inspiring, practical guide on integrating SEL into the curriculum, fostering positive behavior and leadership, and creating a culture of excellence in the classroom and school.
Research shows that a socially and emotionally supportive setting is the solution to increasing student achievement. The SEL Solution:
• helps students and adults master critical social and emotional skills
• encourages student leadership
• provides effective and compassionate behavior management strategies
• increases student success Based on William Glasser's Choice Theory, the book shows educators how to integrate lessons on empathy, cooperation, self-regulation, leadership, and a range of other SEL (social and emotional learning) topics into the school day and into social studies and language arts curriculum. This book provides dozens of strategies that are classroom tested and proven successful. Both fun and easy-to-use, these lessons and activities help create and sustain a positive, thriving school culture.
For use by teachers, counselors, coaches, principals, and other educators, the strategies in this book provide a plan for engaging the whole school community in identifying, celebrating, and sustaining its positive values. Digital content includes customizable forms from the book and a PDF presentation for professional development.
Mindful Classrooms™
Daily 5-Minute Practices to Support Social-Emotional Learning (PreK to Grade 5)
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
A guide for busy elementary educators on how to easily incorporate mindfulness activities into existing curriculum
Teaching students how to focus and self-regulate at a young age can provide them with skills that will help throughout their schooling and adult lives. Like anyone, they need easy-to remember tools and strategies to calm their minds and focus on the moment. This interactive, research based curriculum helps preK and elementary teachers integrate simple, ready-to use stretching, breathing, and reflective exercises as well as other mindfulness practices into their daily routines. Includes digital content with reproducible handouts from the book.
Intentional Teaching in Early Childhood
Ignite Your Passion for Learning and Improve Outcomes for Young Children
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Guides early childhood teachers on a journey of self-discovery and self-determination to take charge of their own professional development.
This essential professional development resource provides advice for early childhood teachers who are navigating demands and changes in their careers, helping them see these challenges as growth opportunities. Through in-depth self-assessment and reflection, educators reexamine their teaching philosophy, integrate new knowledge and strategies into their practice, and strengthen the impact of their teaching on students. In the midst of a constantly changing education landscape, teachers will become more intentional in their practice and rediscover their unique purpose and passion for teaching young children. Digital content includes customizable forms from the book.
Teaching Kids to Pause, Cope, and Connect
Lessons for Social Emotional Learning and Mindfulness
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Thirty hands-on lessons provide students opportunities to learn and practice self-regulation strategies.
Students today face many challenges that did not exist a generation or two ago, and rates of emotional disorders (including anxiety and depression) have increased steadily over the years. Students must also manage an overwhelming amount of information. With today's reliance on technology and social media, they have fewer opportunities to develop effective self-regulation strategies and interpersonal and stress management skills.
Helping students understand their emotions and behavior when they're young will set them on a path to being successful learners and empathetic people throughout their lives. With thirty easy-to-implement, skill-based lessons and activities, “Teaching Kids to Pause, Cope, and Connect” provides educators with strategies to help students:
• manage and reduce their anxiety with healthy coping skills
• understand and regulate physical responses to stress
• separate emotions from actions
• respond mindfully (rather than impulsively) to difficult situations
• improve social skills, social awareness, and self-regulation
• develop empathy and compassion
Social Emotional Stories
Lessons and Learning from Plants and Animals
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Make social emotional learning fun and engaging with 24 ready-to-use lessons about phenomenal plants and astonishing animals.
Storytelling is a learning device used by humans for centuries, and for good reason: storytelling is one of the best ways to increase critical thinking skills and social emotional learning (SEL). Social Emotional Stories combines storytelling with thought-provoking lessons and activities to help elementary students improve their self-esteem, increase their engagement with school, and give them a sense of empowerment.
The book contains 24 individual lessons that include:
• An SEL objective with specific keywords like "inner strength," "problem solving," and "responsibility"
• An engaging story that focuses on a distinctive quality of either a plant (like the inner strength of bamboo) or an animal (like the courage of a pig)
• Multiple activities that are quick, easy, and require few supplies to help kids identify and dive deeper into the specific SEL concepts represented
Educators can use these lessons individually with students, in small groups, or with an entire class. The lessons are interdisciplinary and flexible, with only minimal prep time required, allowing educators to adapt them for their situation. Extensive digital content supports the lessons with reproducible forms and a full-color photo of each plant and animal.
Understanding and Using the Naglieri General Ability Tests
A Call for Equity in Gifted Education
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
An accessible guide to identifying gifted students and creating equity and inclusion within gifted programs.
The Naglieri tests (the NNAT series) have long been a standard in the field of ability testing. Amid the calls for equity and inclusion within gifted education, the new Naglieri General Ability Tests aim to meet that need. This companion, Understanding and Using the Naglieri General Ability Tests, offers educators administering the tests or who have students taking the tests a guide to the why, how, and what now.
Split into three parts, Understanding and Using the Naglieri General Ability Tests covers:
• why there is a need for these new ability tests for gifted identification
• how these new tests and test data are used most effectively to identify gifted students from all racial, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds
• what educators can do now to create equity and inclusion within gifted programs and services.
Written by well-known gifted education experts Dina M. Brulles, Ph.D., Kimberly Lansdowne, Ph.D., and Jack A. Naglieri, Ph.D., Understanding and Using the Naglieri General Ability Tests provides administrators, gifted coordinators, and teachers with clear direction for answering the call for equity and inclusion in education.
Start Seeing and Serving Underserved Gifted Students
50 Strategies for Equity and Excellence
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
The underrepresentation of students from historically marginalized populations-including English language learners, twice-exceptional students, culturally and linguistically diverse students, and economically disadvantaged students-in our gifted programs and services continues to be a critical issue in education. The importance of a caring and committed teacher who sees and supports the potential in all learners and who respects linguistic diversity and students' cultural identity cannot be overstated, yet teachers need the knowledge and training to do so.
This reader-friendly guide meets that need, promoting equity in gifted education by providing teachers with a variety of flexible tools to nurture the academic and affective growth of their gifted students from traditionally underserved populations.
Over fifty strategies are outlined within five chapters addressing how teachers can see, understand, teach, challenge, and advocate for their underserved gifted learners in all content areas. The authors share numerous student quotes, teacher anecdotes, and spotlights on successful school efforts. Digital downloads include all forms from the book and a PDF presentation. A free PLC/Book Study Guide for use in professional development is also available.
Empowering Underrepresented Gifted Students
Perspectives from the Field
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Help underserved high-potential students claim their right to an education that addresses their unique needs.
In gifted education, an important and contentious issue that has yet to be sufficiently addressed is the systemic underrepresentation of gifted students who have been discriminated against in school-based gifted and advanced learner programs because of their race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or other realities. Empowering Underrepresented Gifted Students gives a voice to those students and brings their stories into focus.
With chapters written by student and expert scholars who specialize in addressing the structural inequity and educational inequality in gifted and advanced learner programs, Empowering Underrepresented Gifted Students recommends practices and strategies for helping underserved high-potential students claim their right to an education that addresses their unique needs. Each chapter has key takeaways and discussion questions, providing a built-in book study guide to prepare educators to engage students in conversation and to help develop their self-advocacy skills.
Inspiring Student Empowerment
Moving Beyond Engagement, Refining Differentiation
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
A practical, comprehensive guide to help educators go beyond student engagement and differentiation to achieve student empowerment.
Student engagement continues to be an important goal for teachers, but it shouldn't end there. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to teaching anymore. School districts that have begun to shift their focus from engaging students to empowering them, and from differentiation to personalized learning, have seen a rise in test scores, motivation, attention, and self-confidence.
When students have voice and choice, they gain control over their learning and their actions and feel empowered to work harder and achieve more. Through sample lessons, strategies, and applications, educators will learn how to shift from engagement to empowerment, from differentiation to personalized learning, and practical ways to make these strategies work in the classroom.
Engagement and Empowerment
Educators will find:
• A comprehensive guide to engaged learning
• A comprehensive guide to empowerment
• Research-based best practices to promote empowerment
Differentiation and Personalized Learning
Educators will find:
• A comprehensive guide to refining differentiation practices
• A comprehensive guide to personalized learning
• Practical ways to use voice and choice, instructional design, and classroom climate to promote student empowerment
• An entire chapter dedicated to the social and emotional learning side of personalized learning
Create a Culture of Kindness in Elementary School
126 Lessons to Help Kids Manage Anger, End Bullying, and Build Empathy
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Increase empathy in the elementary classroom with ready-to-use lessons that teach students positive skills and attitudes.
Kids learn better and feel better about themselves in an atmosphere of safety and respect. This book shows you how to help students in grades three through six:
• Foster kindness, compassion, and empathy
• Manage anger
• Prevent conflict
• Respond to conflict
• Address name-calling and teasing
• Deal with bullying
• Accept differences
Finding Your Way Through Conflict
Strategies for Early Childhood Educators
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Learn how to engage in and resolve conflict productively to improve work relationships and create a more equitable community for children.
Conflicts are inevitable, often hard to navigate, and can quickly multiply and become unmanageable. And, resolving conflict requires self-reflection, understanding, and vulnerability. But, knowing how to tackle difficult conversations will strengthen relationships, create a more equitable community, and improve the impact educators have on the young children they work with.
The first of its kind, Finding Your Way Through Conflict specifically focuses on conflict in early childhood education settings and gives concrete steps and strategies to help manage and resolve it productively.
Big Conversations With Little Children
Addressing Questions, Worries, and Fears
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Be prepared to respond to a wide range of potentially tough questions and sensitive concerns posed by young children.
To work with young children is to constantly expect the unexpected. Tough questions are part of early childhood educators' regular interactions with children and families. Based on children's actual questions, Big Conversations with Little Children is readily accessible with guidelines for having difficult conversations with children, individually or as a classroom or group, and with families. The book provides guidance on how to approach specific topics related to:
• family, such as unemployment, divorce, and incarceration
• illness and death, such as loss of an unborn child, major illness in a child, and death of a pet
• social issues, such as racism, family structures, and gender fluidity
• upheaval and violence, such as natural disaster, terror events, and school shootings Fully based in developmentally appropriate practice, Big Conversations with Little Children helps educators support young children in a way that preserves their dignity and innocence when they encounter world and social events in addition to honoring the family's preferred approach. An expert in the field of early childhood education, author Dr. Lauren Starnes empowers educators and families to answer sensitive or tough questions children pose, respond to their worries and concerns, and be prepared for an ongoing dialogue. Digital content includes family take-home information sheets for each topic.
A Leader's Guide to The Struggle to Be Strong
How to Foster Resilience in Teens
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Activities, exercises, and questions invite teens to go deeper into the stories and issues of the updated edition of The Struggle to Be Strong.
Designed for use with the anthology The Struggle to Be Strong, this leader's guide explains how to use the stories in the student book to build teens' resiliency. Activities, exercises, role plays, and questions about the issues in The Struggle to Be Strong help students go deeper into the stories, reflect on them, relate them to their lives, recognize their own potential for resilience, and start building resilience skills.
Introductory materials offer guidelines for group leadership and provide leaders with more information about the seven resiliencies:
• insight
• independence
• relationships
• initiative
• creativity
• humor
• morality
The PBIS Team Handbook
Setting Expectations and Building Positive Behavior
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
A revised and updated edition of the best-selling guide for schools implementing PBIS Tier 1. PBIS (positive behavior interventions and supports) is the most important tool educators have to deal with disruptive student behaviors. This revised and updated handbook provides detailed guidelines for implementing and sustaining PBIS for schools and teams. New in this edition is a chapter addressing inequity and bias in behavior referrals and discipline; a tiered fidelity inventory (TFI) to evaluate adherence to PBIS practices; different methods of data collection; and new research on sustainability. Positive school climates are not achieved through expulsions, suspensions, or detentions, but instead through collective analysis and data-driven decision-making. Downloadable digital content offers a PDF presentation to aid staff buy-in and customizable forms to help manage data and assess progress with ease.
Talent Zones
10 Tools to Help Kids Develop Their Talents
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Many believe that talent is inherent-a person either has it or doesn't. But research shows that a student's environment is a critical determinant for developing talents. In Talent Zones, Dr. Lee Hancock redefines talent so that parents, teachers, and coaches of kids can create environments rich in opportunities for all kids to boost their confidence and for developing talents in multiple areas, from academics to arts to athletics.
Hancock presents ten evidence-based, developmentally appropriate strategies called Talent Development Zones (TDZs). These TDZs transform talent concepts and research into practical strategies adults can use to create environments for developing talents. Strategies include:
• Provide opportunities for deep, deliberate practice
• Develop and inspire creativity
• Build "I can" kids
• Help kids manage pressure
For more than 20 years, the author has worked with athletes from youth to professional and with classroom teachers, students, and parents of awesome kids. He's translated research and experience into approachable strategies for equitably developing talents in kids now and as they grow up.
Bright, Complex Kids
Supporting Their Social and Emotional Development
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
A field guide for understanding the complex characteristics and social and emotional needs of gifted kids.
Many bright and gifted kids do not feel understood or supported. For adults wanting to change that, “Bright, Complex Kids” provides guidance for gaining entrance to their internal world. This practical and easy-to-use field guide includes ideas for how and why to:
• listen and respond
• self-monitor adult biases
• avoid communicating awe of high ability because of the potential impact on trust and openness
• apply knowledge of learning disabilities
• help high-ability children and teens make sense of themselves Well-known gifted experts Jean Sunde Peterson, Ph.D., and Daniel B. Peters, Ph.D., wrote “Bright, Complex Kids” to be an accessible short course for adults wanting to build a base of knowledge for understanding and supporting the social and emotional needs of highly able children and teens. From how adults can be involved to insights on the social and emotional development of bright kids, each chapter has a section with "points to ponder."
Additional information is provided about characteristics, anxiety, perfectionism, resilience, underachievement, twice-exceptionality, and hidden distress to provide a picture of the whole child.
RTI Success
Proven Tools and Strategies for Schools and Classrooms
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Accessible, hands-on RTI guidance and strategies for educators at all grade levels
This practical, ready-to-use resource gives teachers and administrators the tools to successfully implement RTI or strengthen an existing program to target students' specific needs. Response to Intervention allows educators to assess and meet the needs of struggling students before they have fallen too far behind. Three expert authors explore this multi-tiered system of support (MTSS), offering over one hundred research-based, instructional techniques and interventions for use in diverse settings, advice on creating personal and positive learning environments, information on co-teaching, and approaches to purposeful grouping. Included in the book and as digital downloads are easy-to-use customizable forms to streamline assessment, implementation, and documentation. Also included is an extensive list of references and resources for further exploration.
Get Gifted Students Talking
76 Ready-to-Use Group Discussions About Identity, Stress, Relationships, and More (Grades 6–12)
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Updated, practical resource helps teachers, counselors, and youth leaders bring gifted students together to talk face-to-face about important issues in their lives.
In our digital era, young people need a safe, supportive place to connect and "just talk" with peers as well as with an attentive adult, whether that is a general education teacher, gifted specialist, youth counselor, or another leader. With new conversation topics, additional discussion questions, and a revised introduction, this updated edition of Get Gifted Students Talking addresses the issues faced by gifted students in middle school and high school. Through guided group discussions, young people:
• strengthen their social-emotional development
• gain self-awareness
• build important verbal communication skills
• cope with difficult emotions
• and more The book's guided conversations are proven ways to reach out to gifted teens and address their concerns and needs through face-to-face communication, and the discussions can be easily adapted and customized. Introductory and background materials prepare group leaders of all experience levels to feel confident as discussion facilitators. Digital content includes reproducible handouts from the book.
Differentiation for Gifted Learners
Going Beyond the Basics
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Revised and updated edition helps educators increase rigor and depth for all advanced and gifted learners to fulfill their potential.
With increasing numbers of students receiving gifted services every year, it's more important than ever for differentiated instruction to go beyond adjusting content levels, task complexity, or product choice-it must truly challenge and support learners on all levels: academic, social, and emotional.
How (and Why) to Get Students Talking
78 Ready-to-Use Group Discussions About Anxiety, Self-Esteem, Relationships, and More (Grades 6–12)
Part of the Free Spirit Professional™ series
Unique, practical resource helps teachers, counselors, and youth leaders bring students together to talk openly about important issues in their lives.
In our digital era, young people need a safe, supportive place to connect and "just talk" with caring peers and an attentive adult. With more inclusive language, new discussion topics about social media, and a revised introduction, this updated edition of How (and Why) to Get Students Talking addresses the unique issues faced by today's middle and high school students. Through guided group discussions, young people gain self-awareness, build important verbal communication skills, cope with difficult emotions, practice problem-solving, and more.
The book's guided conversations are proven ways to reach out to young people and address their social-emotional development, and the discussions can be easily adapted and customized. Introductory and background materials prepare group leaders of all experience levels to feel confident as discussion facilitators. Includes digital content with reproducible handouts from the book.