Sunday, September 28, 2014

"I was Lying on the Grass on Sunday Morning of Last Week" 3-2-1 Sunday Summary Week 7









3 Goals For October
  1.  I need to start filing things away so my papers don't build up!
  2. I need to formally tell students what their jobs are!  I have gone through the papers and have had them help out with various tasks, but I haven't had them time to actually post them
  3. I want to get my student birthday board put up.  I have most of the students' birthdays, but I need to actually put them up on the board.
2 Things I'm Trying Out
  1.  I have looked at Kahoot! before, but I didn't like that it was only text.  I looked at it this week because I wanted a way to better engage my 8th graders in class discussion/review.  We have a short unit that we are working on wrapping up (Light & Color), and I am incorporating various check-ins with students before they take their final assessment.  A quote that keeps going on in my head is:  Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results-Einstein.  I haven't been pleased in the manner in which students have been participating in discussion, so I think this will be well-worth a try.  I won't do this every time, but I want students to be engaged in discussion, so I need to be open to different ways of bringing them into the conversation.
  2.  I will be trying out Nearpod this week with my 8th graders as well.  I read a blog post from a teacher that I follow and I like her ideas about how this can be used to very quickly check student work and give very fast feedback.  For the first time we use it, I'm going to use it again as more of a check-in and a means to get students engaged in discussion about the concepts.  The teacher's account was that she used it for students to enter pre-lab information.  She said that she could see what they put in as responses immediately, and she could select model responses to share with students very quickly as well.  She said that could be done without sharing the other student's name.  This application intrigues me, as I am changing the way I am assessing students' interactive notebooks this year.  I am assigning certain tasks that I want them to do and encouraging this by taking a question or two directly from those tasks and building upon that work.  I am hopeful that students will see the connection with doing the work and being able to demonstrate greater understanding of content.
1 Thing that Happened this Week
  1. The math teacher and I survived teaching the 7th graders all day on Friday.  Kudos go out to elementary teachers that have the same students all day long.  I have a bit of a taste for how that works this year, having my science courses, MTSS, and study hall.  That means that I could potentially have some of my students three times in a day.  It was interesting to see how some students are during the earlier times of the day compared to when I have them in the afternoon.

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