I am so excited, and also a bit nervous, because I (along with three other great teacher-bloggers) have been invited to present at one of Laura Candler’s awesome webinars! We are collaborating together to bring you a bevy of strategies, activities, and ideas for starting your year off right. The focus will be on the building community and team-building aspects of this special time of year. We want to help you to create a caring classroom for yourself and for your students.I will be focusing my piece on positive ways to respond when a student gives you the wrong answer during a lesson or a class discussion. I chose this topic because a wrong answer is an amazing opportunity for building or for destroying a student’s self-confidence, trust, and willingness to take risks in the future. It is super important to set the correct tone, right from the start. My goal is to give you some new strategies to add to your collection.

The webinar will take place Thursday, August 8 at 8:00 EDT. It is free, but you do need to register. Hopefully, you will be able to attend the live event. That is the best option for two reasons: first, the webinar is interactive, so you will get to participate. And second, we will be giving all participants a Back to School Gift Pack! The gift pack features an normally for-purchase back-to-school product from each of us. If you can’t make the live webinar, you can still watch it at your convenience as long as you register (but you won’t get the Gift Pack).

I have decided to contribute my Classroom Procedure Task Cards to the Gift Pack. The cards will not only help your students learn your classroom procedures, but will also give you a chance to try some of the “wrong answer” strategies I will be discussing in the webinar.

Please visit the blogs of the other contributors to see what they will be adding to the Gift Pack:

• Laura Candler of Corkboard Connections: Green for Go Stoplight Management System
• Christi Fultz of Ms. Fultz’s Corner: Back to School Community Builders
• Mandy Neal of Teaching with Simplicity: 101 Educational Websites for Kids
• Air Huddleston of The Science Penguin: Setting Up Your Science Notebook