The Day they Discovered Pi...

It's Pi Day again tomorrow! (In fact, since this is the 3rd month of 2014 doesn't that make this PI MONTH?!)

Sometimes nothing engages students more than a cheesy song about math, right? Especially BECAUSE they know they can create something MUCH, MUCH better! And that's exactly what should happen to push that learning into long term memory:

"They rhythmic repetitions and content-packed nature of music make it a very effective mnemonic device for learning new material...[or summarizing learned material]. Remember that the students' creation of the [song], not it's presentation to the class, is where the greatest learning occurs." Rick Wormeli

For Pi Day and other resources check out Edutopia. Happy Pi Month!

Who's Yours?

You are pretty special. Believe it.

Every kid has a champion right? A vigorous supporter? Someone in their corner, cheering? We certainly hope so. On his blog, Stony Plain Alberta principal George Couros posed these thoughts...

"Doesn’t every adult need a champion as well? I guess they don’t need a champion, but wouldn’t it make what we do that much better? Does it not make a difference when you know that the people you work with value and promote the great work that you do?"

We totally agree; all adults should have champions too. That's why we think you should consider these two essential questions:
1. Who are you a champion for?
2. Who's your champion?

What's that say?

Do your scholars endeavor to comprehend clauses with brobdingnagian vernacular? Er, what?! What we mean to say is this: do your students struggle to read passages with big words?

Recently, a teacher recommended Rewordify, a website that provides reading level and vocabulary options for digital text. And, it's very user friendly. We really hope you research it check it out.

10000 Ways that Don't Work?

Source

Formative assessment provides time for trial and error and thus encourages students to takes risks to achieve more. Even though it's time consuming in our classrooms, just imagine what the world would be like without it. Think about Thomas Edison. What if he hadn't been allowed to redo, rethink, and revise his work. What if he hadn't persevered? It's a "dark" thought, isn't it?

Scientists estimate that Edison's light bulb wastes 95% of the energy it creates. If so, I guess one could say his bulb still doesn't work perfectly and yet look at how it has dramatically changed our lives and the world.

Maybe there's another Thomas Edison in your classroom right now. Hmmm. Maybe finding 10,000 ways that don't work is actually pretty darn good work.

Austin's Butterfly-The Power of Feedback

The video about Austin's Butterfly made us wonder about each student's potential when given feedback. What can a kid actually do if we don't accept his first try?

Consider using these questions to reflect on how you might use feedback in your classroom:

• How do we know, and when do we decide, what is a student's best work? 
• What role does feedback play in offering students the opportunity to achieve mastery?
• How can we use feedback to push students beyond their perceived ability level? 
• What role do peers offer in providing quality feedback?
• Are we born talented or do we develop our talents?

Guilty as Charged. Can you relate?

 (c) Jessica Hagy

All teachers make mistakes. The trick is to forgive yourself and use them as opportunities to grow. We teacher-coaches have made many, many mistakes over the years. Together, it didn't take us long to compile these 26 common gaffes but, to be honest, it took us quite a while to really learn these lessons. Can you relate?

1. Not taking care of myself: coming to work tired, sick, or hungry only made me more tired, more sick, and more hungry.
2. Poor Aim: not ensuring students know the learning target.
3. I’ll do it later: not getting my materials ready ahead of time usually turned into a classroom management nightmare.
4. Keep a Copy: By not keeping the plan, next year becomes a teaching guessing game including that awesome lesson with that neat video clip.
5. Rush-Rush-Rush: not recognizing the importance of wait-time, think-time, time to reflect, time to process.
6. Tossing it over my Shoulder: using a new strategy only ONCE because it didn’t work perfectly the first time.
7. Kids These Days: after a lesson went poorly, I often blamed the kids as opposed to applying a different instructional strategy. 
8. Stern-face: forgetting to smile and greet kids (even when it starts to feel creepy) because this truly models respect.
9. It’s Easy or You're so Smart: saying these words does not make something easy, nor does it help a struggling student suddenly figure it out.
10. Who's Working Here? working harder than the students.
11. Chin Up!: focusing more on my insecurities than on modeling confidence.
12. They’ll Figure it Out: putting questions on a test that don’t have answers or are worded so poorly even I didn’t know what they meant.
13. Why do we need to learn this stuff? Forgetting to make learning relevant to students' lives.
14. But they’re Quiet: thinking students were engaged just because they were sitting nicely looking forward.
15. The Quick Kick-Out: not giving students a chance to explain the situation before jumping to conclusions and kicking them out of the class.  
16. Shutting my Door: avoiding collaboration because...what if someone finds out I feel like a fraud sometimes? 
17. Not Being Myself: even if my colleagues give advice, keep my philosophy in mind when making decisions.
18. Squirrel: getting easily distracted from the lesson through my own doing or through barely disguised student manipulation.  
19. Jumping on the Negative Pity-Party Bandwagon to Nowhere: self-explanatory.
20. Seeing ALL the Kids in the Pool: not preparing for the kids who need a lifeguard because they don't get it.
21. They're almost Adults: assuming that somehow a 16 year old would not have the mentality of a 16 year old. 
22. The Kids Don't Like Me: Trying to be every student's friend instead of being a role model/leader.
23. Lesson Plan B: not being prepared when the lesson ends too early or when the technology craters. 
24. The Anything & Everything Volunteer: the school will be okay if I'm not on every committee they offer but instead focus on one that I'm passionate about.
25. I TOLD THEM: not understanding the difference between students who were taught and students who learned. 
26. Get-em-out-the-Door: slow down, take a breath, pause, pay attention. 

David, Spencer, Valerie, Fran & Anna

5 Ways to Make Stuff Stick?

At our ATA PD day last week, Rick Smith shared strategies from his presentation 50 Ways to Leave a Lecture.

We appreciated this slide for its use of differentiation and its potential for tiering. It highlights some of those strategies and the five modalities teachers can use to pause the lecture and have students interact with the material presented. In other words, five ways to make stuff stick.

7 Things about Feedback

Educational researcher and leader John Hattie teaches that feedback and metacognition are the two biggest drivers of learning. Those two instructional components are key to assessment for learning. This prezi offers 7 short ideas for educators about feedback. How might these ideas be useful in your classroom context?        

Inquiry Minds Want to Know...

Source (and great resource): What Ed Said Blog

     "Inquiry is the process of finding answers to questions. The skills of science inquiry include asking questions, proposing ideas, observing, experimenting, and interpreting the evidence that is gathered.
     An inquiry may be...based on a question brought to the classroom by a teacher or student; or it may arise out of an activity, an interesting observation, an unexplained event or a pattern that appears worth pursuing." ~Alberta Education Science Curriculum Front Matter (c) 1996
     And speaking of the unexplained...what makes the world's largest volcano invisible?

But is there a format for teaching inquiry? Or a procedure that could be used as an anchor project? Consider using the F.E.R.A. cycle...

F-FOCUS on a topic generating interest and engaging a student's background knowledge.
E-EXPLORE objects, organisms and scientific phenomena that build on that prior knowledge.
R-REFLECT on observations and data, revisit prior ideas and develop or refine explanations.
A-APPLY understanding of science concepts to new situations and prepare to repeat the learning cycle.
-strategy developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center 

P.S. Get your "science fix" here.

Math: Three Different Ways

Exploring all techniques, exploring all answers, these Grade 3 math students are problem-solving without anxiety in an inclusive learning environment. Cool.