#Whatsup Wildcats - Classroom Edition

Trying something new always brings about an element of excitement. This week, I tried something new, and it was awesome. Was it easy? Nope. Did I do my best work? Nope. Did I feel comfortable? Nope. Did students have to help me? Yep. Did they look at me like I was crazy? Yep. Did I have fun? Absolutely. I learned something new and had a memorable experience. As teachers, this is what we should strive to do in our classrooms for our students: Create memorable experiences. This is when the best learning happens. It was just a normal Tuesday morning until we received an email from one of our fantastic art teachers, Ms. Carol Kinast, inviting staff into her Ceramics class. Her students were on an in-school field trip and had the opportunity to complete a raku and horse hair firing with Fox Valley Hall of Fame Artist, Joe Hernandez. Here are two videos that Ms. Kinast shared with staff showing the process of a raku and horse hair firing: Last semester, I observed a few ceramics...

Have you ever been super impressed by something you saw in another classroom, and you went back to your desk to do more research about the activity? If so, I'm sure you share my delight with the power of learning and curiosity. This week, I experienced this excitement after visiting one of our American Sign Language classes to observe a reflection activity that utilized Flipgrid, a game-changing tool for the classroom. I am proud to say that our school offers ASL as one of the World Language options for our students. Every time I walk into that classroom, students are engaged in the content and express their love for the class. Ms. Suzanna Laskowski, one of our ASL teachers, asked her students to learn an ASL story and then record themselves signing the story, using Flipgrid. She invited me in to observe her students as they assessed their own videos and reflected on the process. With the help of Flipgrid, students also had the opportunity to view other students' storie...

Exposure to an authentic, real-world experience is one of the most powerful and meaningful ways we can create a successful path for our students. These experiences are difficult to include in our already jam-packed curriculums; however, when we step back and consider what our students will actually remember and take with them when they leave our classrooms, the authentic, thought-provoking, challenging, and student-driven activities will leave the biggest impression. If you are familiar with this blog, I constantly stress the importance of the 4C's in the classroom. They are game changers. Incorporating creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking into class lessons, activities, and assignments automatically provide a new layer of learning for students, as it asks them to practice skills that are essential for surviving and succeeding in the real world. We can't know for sure where our students will end up after high school, so it is our job to make sure ...

There is nothing more special than watching a group of students proudly share and discuss something they have created. Providing students the opportunity to create something of their choice should be a key component of every class. When given the chance to plan, think, and execute something on their own, it is amazing to see what their creative minds come up with! I am extremely thankful that Ms. Elizabeth Morgan, a freshmen English teacher at Neuqua, invited me to visit her class this week to participate in a gallery walk that showcased her students' independent reading projects. She explained in her invitation that this assignment gave students ownership of the novel, project, and rubric:"This project is unique in that students chose a novel that they were interested in from a list of books that address Essential Questions of Unit 4: Complicated Relationships. They then met with me [Ms. Morgan] to propose an individualized project based on their personal strengths and cre...

This week, I had the opportunity to visit the freshmen English PLC and observe two of our reading specialists introduce a dynamic unit guide for teaching vocabulary during the team's study of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . Mr. Steve Fleming and Mr. Brian Hurst created a 7 step process that includes a variety of activities for teachers to incorporate into their unit. In order to make it easily accessible for our teachers, the entire process is in a HyperDoc format, and teachers can utilize all resources needed for this unit guide in one place. Such an awesome idea and resource for teachers!  Their goal was to incorporate short, effective activities in order to keep vocabulary practice a fixture in the classroom. As we look towards next year, our school is hoping to place a stronger emphasis on vocabulary and language development in all classrooms. With this, Mr. Fleming and Mr. Hurst's unit plan is a great step forward in helping teachers easily integrate vocabulary inst...

As a teacher, there is no greater feeling than ending a lesson and knowing that our students were engaged and challenged. Add student accountability and voice to the equation, and man oh man, life is good! I am thrilled to report that many of our teachers are utilizing the awesome features of Pear Deck and are super excited about its power in the classroom. For those of you who are not familiar with Pear Deck, it is an awesome tool that takes lessons to the next level by making them interactive. It promotes student accountability and choice, and through the variety of question options it provides, students are engaged and truly thinking through class content. Click here to learn more about this fantastic resource.  As a G Suite for Education district, our teachers are quite familiar with Google Slides and create most of their lessons using this resource. Pear Deck has a simple and powerful add-on for Google Slides that makes it so easy to enhance and transform our lessons to pu...

Week after week I continue to reflect on the importance of student voice in the classroom, and after a week of professional development activities, it still consumes my thoughts, plans, and conversations with colleagues. I was lucky enough to attend the ICE Conference this week and connected with numerous teachers and #EdTech gurus from around the country. I left feeling refreshed and eager to try some new activities in my classroom. Ultimately...these new activities centered around giving voice to ALL students in my classroom by asking them to be accountable and share their learning. My favorite, most memorable session of the conference centered on how to effectively check for understanding in the classroom. Holly Clark , co-author of The Google Infused Classroom , led the session and is a rock-star because the focus of her session was not EdTech tools; instead, she focused on the most important part of education: how our students learn and demonstrate their learning. She discussed...