#Whatsup Wildcats - Classroom Edition

"True beauty is born through our actions and aspirations and in the kindness we offer to others." ~Alek Wek With the chaos of finals, the end of the semester, and the added holiday stress, I am always thankful for some fun classroom events that boost positive energy and remind us that our students are pretty awesome. Over the past two years, I've been invited to visit the Peer Partners Adapted PE classes during finals week to judge their holiday dance competitions. Let me tell you...if you are in need of some excitement and entertainment during this stressful time, this is the place to be. I walked out of every period smiling ear to ear after witnessing the true excitement some of our students have for school and the passion other students have for helping and supporting their peers. Every year, the students in Mr. James Kennedy's Peer Partners class work to choreograph, practice, and perfect a holiday dance to perform for their class, peers, teachers, and teach...

The end of first semester is quickly approaching, and the students are in survival mode. Yes, my friends, final exams are upon us, and students are anxiously trying to finish up semester items and prepare for the various assessments awaiting them next week. As a school, we are constantly thinking about ways to alleviate students stress during this time of year. It is a daunting task; however, we fight the good fight and continue to provide time, strategies, and graphic organizers to help students properly and sufficiently prepare...without losing their minds. This year, I've been thinking a lot about how we can help prepare our students for performance-based assessments. For various classes, students are assessed on skills that cannot be measured on a scantron: Writing, speaking, collaboration, creativity, and so forth. While we can provide note-taking and graphic organizer-style resources to help our students prepare for these assessments, I observed English teacher, Mrs. Ally...

I am excited this week to be co-authoring a post with my #BFF and partner in all things EdTech  Steve Wick .  Steve is a science teacher and Instructional Technology Coordinator at Neuqua Valley High School. We will be cross-posting this story on his blog “ Know Your Why ”. If you’ve never had a chance to explore Steve’s blog, I highly recommend that you change that today. Steve provides some awesome insights about teaching and learning for all levels of students. One of the perks of our profession is that we get to be lifelong learners and can use what we learn to enhance and transform instructional practices in our classroom. We believe that teachers need to make time for these celebrations and conversations, as they provide awesome learning experiences. With our busy schedules, it can be difficult to find time to share what we are doing in our classrooms with other teachers in the building. With with this in mind, we decided to have our teachers take ownership of our Third ...

Back in October, I shared the past, present, and future work of the Collaborative Learning Team at Neuqua Valley High School. You can click here to view that post if you need more context regarding today's post. On that day, I shared my excitement for the team's future because of the work our teachers planned to do over the next 6 weeks. And don't you worry...our teachers rocked out the tasks by completing horizontal classroom observations and experiencing what our students do on a daily basis in various classes around the school. This week, we came back together to reflect , hypothesize , and plan for the future. The room was full of energy as teachers discussed student learning. Teachers were grouped based on what level they observed: Freshmen, sophomore, junior, or senior. First, the team was asked to Reflect . Here are the questions they answered after their observations and then talked about in groups during our meeting: What intrigued, surprised, or made you c...

One of the best parts about being an educator is observing the various ways that students learn. There is no one definitive way to engage and inspire; instead, we get to continuously brainstorm, take risks, and learn ourselves as we try various techniques in the classroom. This week, my partner-in-crime, Mr. Steve Wick , shared his plans to engage students and spark curiosity about their current class topic, Time and Earth Systems. His plans included various techniques to teach them necessary content, have them do something with the content, engage with their classmates about the content, and then eventually, assess their understanding of the content. His assignment sheet provides the expectations and resources needed to learn about Time and Earth Systems and do something creative with this content:  Step 1: Learn the Content Students were given digital resources to learn various topics connected to time. These resources included visuals, videos, and textual information ...

Our students appreciate teachers who take time to understand their learning process and then adapt lessons and content to fit their students' needs. We can't expect students to truly understand something if they cannot wrap their heads around it and make it work for them. This, my friends, is the challenge we all face as we start new units or introduce new content in our classes. I am excited to share a rockstar math lesson I witnessed that combined questioning and vocabulary to introduce a new unit of study. It was awesome. Many of my students know that I love to visit other classrooms around the building. Over the past few weeks, I've heard numerous students complimenting the teaching style of one of the teachers in our math department, and when I asked more about the class, two of my students encouraged me to come in and observe. So, I contacted Mr. Emmett Farrar and was able to observe an introductory lesson in his Honors Algebra 2 Trig class's upcoming unit. Le...

My classes this week have been awesome. Like, the kind of awesome that makes you a bit sad that a particular lesson and/or unit is coming to an end. So, unlike my usual posts, I am excited to share what I observed in my own classes this week as I watched students get excited to write a narrative story. That's right...I said excited . Read on to see how and why this phenomenon happened. Usually, this unit is not my favorite. Usually, I struggle to decide if my lessons and activities are enough to engage and inspire. Usually, I see very similar student artifacts although the prompt offers variety. Well, this time...I took a chance...you know, tried something new. Instead of making assumptions about its success, I just decided to jump in and make it my own. I was honest with my students that this activity was new and that I didn't know how it would go. I am thrilled to share that the risk was well worth it because my students are energized, working hard, and have been implementi...