Your Summer Learning Center
If professional learning is part of your summer plans, this is for you. This issue of Upbeat News is filled with flexible, go-at-your-own-pace professional learning options, from free on-demand webinars to book study guides to new strategies to try in your classroom.

In this month’s book excerpts you’ll find:
  • how to set students with attention challenges up for success when teaching novels or complicated texts
  • strategies to build, activate, and organize students’ prior knowledge so they are invested in their learning
  • the benefits of a visual learning portfolio and why it can be a great tool to give students and parents a “big picture” view of students’ progress and learning


In this issue, you’ll also find book study guides for RTI Success and The PBIS Team Handbook for any MTSS initiative your school or district is launching or working to sustain. We’re also pleased to shine the spotlight on our free on-demand professional development webinars. Watch anywhere, anytime! Free Spirit expert authors present on topics such as mindfulness, visual learning, and self-regulation. Many of the webinars also allow you to earn continuing education credit.
Spring Sale
Get 30% off and free shipping sitewide.* Sale ends June 30, 2019. Use code SPRING30 at checkout. 


*Excludes already discounted sets, clearance items, and ebooks.
Resource Spotlight
Free professional development at the tips of your fingers. Watch anywhere, anytime. Choose from nineteen webinars presented by our expert authors. Many of the webinars also allow you to earn continuing education credit. Webinars include:
  • “Making Mindfulness Work in Your School”
  • “Understanding and Supporting Students with Mental Health and Learning Disorders”
  • “Developing a Visual Learning and Teaching Toolbox”
  • “Flexible Grouping and Collaborative Learning: Making It Work”
  • “End Peer Cruelty, Build Empathy: Create Safe, Caring, Inclusive Learning Climates”
  • “Self-Regulation in the Classroom: Helping Students Learn How to Learn”

For a full list of available webinars, visit freespirit.com/webinar

Join our edWeb community, Social-Emotional Learning, Positive Behavior, and Student Achievement, to download free resources, connect with other educators, and register for upcoming webinars.
Tips & Tools from the Free Spirit Blog
Ever left school for the year thinking of all the things you want to complete during the summer months only to let time slip away? Blogger Andrew Hawk shares a few ideas for SMART goals educators can try this summer. Read now.
Amadee Ricketts, public librarian and author of Gentle Hands and Other Sing-Along Songs for Social-Emotional Learning, offers tips for building a classroom where your students are surrounded by books every day while making the most of your limited resources. Read now.
Grants
Educational grants available for your school or community:

Study.com offers grants that support teachers in developing curriculum, purchasing supplies, or implementing one or more projects to positively impact students and improve learning.

Eligible applicants are active, full-time, preK–12 teachers in the United States and US Territories who spend at least 50 percent of their time providing direct instruction to students. Applications must be submitted using the online system.

Eligibility: Public, Private, Charter
Prize: One grant of $1,000 is awarded, along with a one-year Study.com Teacher Edition membership.
Deadline: Applications are due September 1, 2019.

The Kazanjian Foundation offers grants for projects that increase economic literacy, paying special attention to proposals and projects with national impact, and specifically to programs that raise the public’s participation in economic education or create a demand for greater economic literacy, apply new strategies for teaching economics, encourage measurement of economic understanding, and help otherwise disenfranchised young people learn to participate in the economic system.

The foundation does not use a specific application form. Interested applicants must develop a proposal according to the foundation’s guidelines.

Eligibility: Public, Charter, Other (including homeschool, 501 (c)(3) organizations)
Prize: Grants up to $150,000 are awarded.
Deadline: Applications are due September 15, annually.
Recent Review
Teach for Attention! is a superb read for K–8 educators of all experience levels. As a seasoned resource specialist, Ezra reminds us of the effective tools that are readily available within our reach outside of the usual choices, preferential seating, and mini breaks for our students. He frankly talks about speed bumps, including relatable situations, while offering genuine tested solutions through various anecdotes. Furthermore, his inclusion of tech tools to help truncate and/or facilitate student work is veritably handy. This is an essential book that all educators can refer to time and again to help the kiddos who struggle in academic settings.” —Valerie Sun, Ed.D., EmpowerED Consulting

Free Download
MTSS Book Study Guides

If your school or district is planning to launch, or is working to sustain, an MTSS initiative to provide academic and behavioral interventions and supports, we have free professional learning community (PLC)/book study guides to help. If your focus is on academic interventions and supports, download our RTI Success PLC/Book Study Guide. If your focus is on behavioral interventions and supports, download The PBIS Team Handbook PLC/Book Study Guide.
Find Free Spirit
Upcoming Events 

June 12: Free webinar presented by Connie Bergstein Dow: “Skip, Turn & Hop into Teaching ECE Math and Language Arts Through Movement”

June 20–25: American Library Association, Washington, DC

June 29–July 2: American School Counselors Association, Boston, MA

July 23–July 25: Military Child Education Coalition, Washington, DC

Did you know we’re on Instagram? Follow us @freespiritpublishing for a behind-the-scenes look at your favorite titles, the Free Spirit office dogs, and more!
“Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
—John C. Maxwell, American author and leadership expert