September is a great time for data collection activities as students are naturally curious about their new classmates. Ask questions that require students to analyze data and support their conclusions.

This year, we are taking a cue from the honey bee, and trying our best to adapt to new environments. Whether this is an online classroom, part-time school, or full-time classroom planning, The Bee Cause Project is here to meet you where you are with plug and play pollinator lesson plans.

The Back to School Bee Program is built to begin with the Six Week Bee Unit and then adapt to your classroom as you see fit. The Six Week Bee Unit can be completed in sequence, or as individual lesson plans. Each of our new resources has teacher guides, are mapped to the standards, and are easily adapted to digital platforms.

As we go back to school this year, having important conversations can truly make a difference for our students. Try out a few of these ideas and feel free to come up with your own. Our students will benefit from these conversation starters allowing them to truly express their feelings.

Teachers and students come to school bringing a wide range of backgrounds, languages, abilities, and temperaments. Get things off to the best start by asking them to respect their differences and make the most of their similarities. By sharing information on their lives and dreams, students and teachers can build community in the classroom that will support literacy instruction throughout the school year.

These activities will help you get the year off to a good start by engaging you and your students in getting to know each other, practicing listening skills, and discussing the values that will shape your classroom community. There are separate sets of activities for grades Pre-K to 2, grades 3 to 5, and grades 6 to 12. They are adapted from exercises in our Resolving Conflict Creatively Program and our 4Rs Program (Reading, Writing, Respect & Resolution).

Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for increasing equity and access to high-quality K–12 education. Many state education agencies now have offices devoted to identifying and using OERs and other digital resources in their states. To help states, districts, teachers, and other users determine the degree of alignment of OERs to the Common Core State Standards, and to determine aspects of quality of OERs, Achieve has developed eight rubrics in collaboration with leaders from the OER community.

Students write an owner's manual that helps them get to know their classroom, provides them with a sense of ownership, and lets others know about their classroom.

This audiotape is linked to Creating People Centred Schools learning guide, but carries debates which could also be used in a free-standing way by anyone interested in school organization and change.

Students will learn about similarities and differences within the classroom and with our families.

Students will learn to identify their own emotions and those of others.

Students will learn that different cultures have different ways of welcoming or greeting others.

Students will learn that welcoming the ways others are different and the same helps them feel they belong.