Author Archive: Cheryl Brooks
Cheryl Brooks is the resident Educator for Family Guiding. After forty years in the classroom, Cheryl Brooks has mastered the art of marrying teaching with creativity. Of the many skills Ms. Brooks honed during her extensive teaching experience, she is most appreciated and known for her successes teaching second language learners and children with Individualized Education Plans to read. Ms. Brooks attributes her successes to being effective engaging and motivating children to want to read. Later in her career, she applied her engagement and motivation strategies when training teachers to implement evidenced-based reading curriculums in their classrooms. Upon retirement, Ms. Brook’s will be remembered for her uncanny ability to improve the literacy of even the most challenged learners who struggle with difficulties concentrating, impulsivity, and English fluency. What is even more impressive is that Cheryl Brooks raised three children and supported them in becoming successful adults while educating others and maintaining her reputation as a renowned aerobics teacher.
Education – Learning the Language of Emotions
What is mental health? Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you feel it? If its not working, can it be fixed? In my 39 years of teaching, I have learned to recognize typical student behavior traits; traits that can be easily managed with a positive reward system and sometimes, a little extra [...]
Education – Going Green in the Classroom
“Why should we worry about our earth?” This is a question I hear from many of my students whenever I do a lesson around celebrating Mother Earth and teaching children how to be kind to her. I believe that teaching children from a young age [...]
Education – The Blooming of Proficiency: Helping Students Prepare for Tests
In education our fiscal year ends in spring. This is when the blooming of knowledge and concepts are practiced and measured. Testing provides a picture of each student’s knowledge for teachers, parents, students and the government to evaluate…
Education – Money Matters in the Classroom!
I believe it’s never too early to educate children on the in’s and out’s of money. In my classroom I adopted a system in which students could experience the coming and going of money, including the calculations and the responsibility that acquiring money entails.
Education – When Having the Children Inside is Frightful!!!
Winter is the time of year when educators find themselves indoors with very active students, as recess and lunch schedules are washed away with wintry days. Wiggly bodies filled with extra energy must be occupied and educated. When the weather outside is frightful, there is no break for those of us who have students or children. [...]
Education – Christmas is for Giving! Not Getting!
It’s very hard to teach children the true meaning of the holiday season when my brain is bombarded with shopping frenzies, such as desirable gifts, décor and the newest toys. I look around me and it’s seems I am not the only one; we all want more! In the classroom I’ve used the book, The [...]
Education – Gratitude Works Every Time
Gratitude in the classroom is the key to a successful student management system. Appreciation of student’s good behavior creates a positive safe learning environment, encouraging a sense of connectedness among students and their teachers.
Education – Singing Smooth Transitions
A teacher must orchestrate smooth transitions from one subject to the next and from one activity to another while maintaining a fluid and efficient order. Over my many years I have tried a variety of techniques for transitioning students, such as waiting until all students realize it’s time to change and requesting, “all eyes on [...]
Education – Summer Classroom
Summer becomes an open classroom for your children to experience and learn in the world around them, and gives parents an opportunity to become “teachers.” You, the Parent Teacher, can choose the curriculum by creating lessons through specific experiences, such as going on vacation or spontaneous activities within your daily summer routine. In conferences, I [...]
Education – Graduating Through Phases of Learning
June is the time of the year when you might find yourself attending a Kindergarten, Middle School, High School or College graduation. What a feeling of accomplishment for family, friends and educators! Everyone involved can be confident that their graduates are ready for the next phase of learning. Teachers make this possible by carefully ordering [...]
Education – Playing with Phonemes
Learning to read can begin with play. “What kind of play?” you may be wondering. Phoneme play! Teaching reading is as simple as understanding that there are two distinct parts to literacy − the auditory and the visual. Each part must be developed to allow for automaticity. Louisa Moats’ research suggests that reading has been [...]
Education – Shining in the Life Lab
March is the time of year for planting seeds and getting out in the Life Lab to watch the sleeping winter world come alive with the warmth of spring. The seeds I planted in the classroom for learning to read had sprouted and were in full abundance for most of my students, but there were [...]
