Happy New Year! In our monthly eNews, we bring you the latest education news, resources, and classroom ideas from the Eye On Education Blog and other blogs we read. Click below for our favorite educational blog posts from the past month.

Did you know that January is considered International Creativity Month? This month remind your students about the importance of being creative. Give your students the ability to creatively express themselves by providing various options for a particular class assignment. For example, instead of assigning the same writing assignment to every student...

In Reducing the Risk, Increasing the Promise: Strategies for Student Success, Sherrel Bergmann and Judith Allen Brough provide a clear path to follow for helping your at-risk students achieve success in and out of the classroom. Packed with actionable items for school leaders, teachers, and parents, this book provides a basis for effective communication between school and home, and important piece of the puzzle often overlooked.

This infographic outlines six skills students need to be successful in school, and in everyday life.

In Power Up: Professional Learning in the Digital Age, Kristen Swanson provided:

• A deep understanding of the three phases within digital professional development (curation, reflection, and contribution)
• Specific tips and strategies for using social media to aid your learning
• Ideas for sharing your experiences and expertise about digital resources with your school and the world

In this video clip Kristen discusses the three phases of user-generated learning: curation, reflection, and contribution.

We would like to wish you a happy and safe holiday season! Whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa, this time of the year is always a joyous occasion. Most of you will be on winter break next week..

In this post, Bryan Harris, author of Battling Boredom: 99 Strategies to Spark Student Engagement, discusses a lesson plan that is perfect for refocusing students during the holidays.

Movement is critical to the learning process. Adults and children are better engaged when they are physical, particularly during the holiday season. This dueling lesson is just the thing to help students and teachers stay on track this hoilday season while blowing off some steam.Try this lesson during your next professional development meeting or encourage your teachers to do this with their students.

The following blog post is part of a blog series called "Comments on the Common Core," written by Eye On Education's Senior Editor, Lauren Davis.

The Common Core State Standards stress the importance of teaching grammar. The standards lay out which grammar rules should be taught at which grade levels. So you know what rules to teach… but how do you teach them? Here are ten tips for teaching grammar according to the Common Core...

The following was written by Bob Sickles, President and Publisher of Eye On Education. Bob invites you to share your comments below.

As I mourn the children and adults who lost their lives in Newtown, I want to echo one of the points Barack Obama made Sunday night at the vigil: “This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right.”

In the context of his speech, the President was talking about parenting. But I want to extend that idea because, after parenting, I believe the next most important job is educating our children and youth. We need to get that right. And if we don’t, everything that follows will not be right either...

In The School Leader's Guide to Social Media, Ronald Williamson and J. Howard Johnston use real-world examples and practical tips to show school leaders how to address both the potential benefits and common concerns presented by social media. This blog post provides tips for getting parents on board with social media in your school.

Parents can be tremendous advocates for twenty-first century instructional approaches or formidable impediments to their use. It depends largely on how well the school conveys the fundamental principles of partnering to parents and stokes their enthusiasm with evidence of their child’s success...

Teaching Grammar: What Really Works by Amy Benjamin and Joan Berger shares procedures for teaching grammar effectively and dynamically, in ways that appeal to students and teachers alike. This tip provides four alternative ways of getting students to recognize a complete (declarative) sentence beyond the traditional "complete thought" definition.

While it is true that a sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought, the concept of “complete thought” is abstract. Because the back-and-forth of conversation does not require that complete sentences be uttered, students, especially those who are not habitual readers, do not feel the cadence of written sentences...

Kristen Swanson, author of Professional Learning in the Digital Age: An Educator's Guide to User-Generated Learning, will be hosting a 3-week virtual book club starting in January 2013. Sign up now >>

Kristen currently helps teachers design meaningful, interactive curriculum at the local and national level, and is very active in the educational technology sphere. She is a Google Certified Teacher, Twitter Teacher, Edublog Award Nominee, and an avid blogger. Her newly released book discusses how educators can transform their professional development and become truly connected educators with user-generated learning...

The following tip was written by Annette Breaux and featured in her book with Eye On Education: 101 Poems for Teachers.

Fact: Written goals are far more likely to be accomplished than mental goals. Most people have goals, lots of tehm. But many people never accomplish them. Consider New Year's resolutions. "I'm going to get skinny." "I'm going to save more money." "I'm going to get rid of the clutter in my house." "I'm going to be a nicer person." Notice how vague these goals are...

Pete Hall is the principal of Shaw Middle School, a Title 1 school in Spokane, Washington. Pete has been honored with ASCD's Outstanding Young Educator Award, and Phi Delta Kappa's Emerging Leaders Award. He has worked as a personal consultant and motivation coach, not only for educators, but also for profesisonal athletes, comedians, fire fighters, and business executives.

In this video podcast, Pete talks about motivational lessons and strategies to make great leaders become even greater.

The following guest blog post was written by PJ Caposey, author of Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders. PJ is the principal of Oregon High School, an adjunct professor in the educational leadership department for Aurora University, and he is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree through Western Illinois University. He can be found on Twitter @principalpc, and he is a guest blogger for many websites such as ASCD, Edutopia, and Test Soup.

This activity from A Good Start: 147 Warm-Up Activities for Spanish Class by Rebekah Stathakis provides a fun brain teaser to help students further their understanding of a foreign language by looking at "tech language" or "texting language" based on abbreviations