Focus on the Future Newsletter - September 8, 2004

Tips and strategies for classroom teachers from the publishers of the Career Choices curriculum.

Lesson Planning Help Online!
Welcom back! We hope you had a great summer. Now that you're getting back into the swing of things, we thought you might appreciate a little lesson planning help.

We've put several different Career Choices lesson plans on our web site for you. They're available as PDF documents so you can print them easily. Once you've reviewed them and found one that fits, you might be interested in receiving the lesson plan formatted as a spreadsheet so you can easily customize it for your own classroom.

Visit our web site for printable Career Choices lesson plans.

Stop Apathy in Its Tracks -- Article on Engaging Students
The September issue of ASCD's Educational Leadership has an interesting article by Sam M. Intrator, a veteran teacher. He spent 130 days sitting in class with students and observing their level of engagement. His article outlines many different strategies for creating episodes of "engaged time" in the classroom.

One point Intrator makes is that connecting "content to teen questionings" focuses student attention and immerses them in the learning process. The format of Career Choices -- Who am I? What do I want? How do I get it? -- does this very effectively. His article has many other tips you'll want to explore.

Read this ASCD article -- "The Engaged Classroom".