Rejuvenating Education One Day At A Time
How reflection creates student agency. Game day was an overwhelming success. The students spent one day playing each others games and offering evaluations. Students then had time to review the feedback from their peers and make changes before their work was graded. Throughout the project students prototyped their games and collected data to make sure... Continue Reading →
The build up to game day has been anxiety riddled. Students have been testing their games, tweeking rules based on data, and working on design elements. I have spent the last few lunch periods at the laminator helping to create "real" game cards, while the students have been working in hallways on FaceTime with their... Continue Reading →
As we round the circle at the end of our Constitution unit the room is buzzing with energy. Students are out of their seats, holding their laptops like busy waiters during dinner service while chatting away to their peers on zoom, and pulling through the junk drawer of creative supplies. The time to put all... Continue Reading →
In our U.S. Constitution unit the students are tasked with sketch noting each article as a way of diving deep into the meaning of each section and clause. The ideas have to bounce around their heads as they figure out how to make words written in 1787 into visuals. The sketch noting forces students to... Continue Reading →
Writing is a large part of a humanities class. For my government class I specialize in informational and argumentative writing. Most social studies classes in America place a heavy emphasis on this type of reading and writing because our English classes cover most other forms. Practicing these skills is not always, or lets say never,... Continue Reading →
Sitting in a meeting about authenticating assessment, my mind wanders to the overall state of education. Here we are almost 1 year into a pandemic. Our systems have been thrown against a wall and decimated. Pivoting in a weekend our normal flow of life came to a dead stop. Everything started spinning and it isn’t... Continue Reading →
A huge part of the teenage experience in 2020 is living and learning through images. Students are bombarded by images through their social media. They absorb the majority of their information through images, so it is necessary that they begin to learn the skills that drive media. The skill of synthesizing information from facts to... Continue Reading →
SET THE STAGE One of the major skills I teach is argumentative writing. One would think that taking naturally argumentative pre-teens and harnessing that energy with be easy, unfortunately it is not. Students that can argue over grades, the pros and cons of wearing leggings at school and which football team will reach the Super... Continue Reading →
Flying high off the success of our last project, 8th grade U.S. Government students are excited to start their new adventure. They have been working with the same groups for the entire quarter and are ready to move forward with a dynamic new group. They enjoyed self-selecting their groups based on diverse qualities and skills... Continue Reading →
The learning goal is for students to explore the power distribution and relationship between people and their governments. The hook is a lightning project. To hook students into this lesson time was used to up the level of anticipation. This project could be larger and could take more time, but the same learning goals can... Continue Reading →
