I recently had my students make their last bulletin board of the year. I envisioned it turning out one way, but it morphed into something much more and I was blown away by their conversations about it. I had it say, “One Word Reflections,” and in one word my […]
Well it took almost a full school year, but thanks to a professional development I went to, I found a review technique ALL of my 7th graders were on board with. I call it “True, False, Fix.” The PD person led us through a variety of strategies, and […]
Well it’s March, so that means it’s Women’s History Month. I felt extra pressure to acknowledge it the most effective and impactful way this year since I have middle school girls. I wanted this to mean something to them, not be something they roll their eyes about. There […]
My goal this semester is to try a new strategy or technique once a unit in all of my classes. It’s a lofty goal but thanks to my teacher friends (some of whom have shared their ideas at the bottom of this post) and Pinterest I think I’ll be […]
This review competition is NO PREP and can take as few as 5 minutes or as many as 15, it depends on if you ask follow-up questions and how in depth the students’ responses get. I start by writing the main topics we studied on the board. Each is […]
I learned about word clouds a few years ago, but for some reason didn’t use them until this year. It is such a quick and easy informal assessment (especially if it’s one of those days where you need to shake things up, or you finished sooner than you […]
Since I teach 3 different social studies classes (World Geography, TX history, and US history), I rotate which class is represented on my bulletin board every few weeks. Well, when it was almost time for my Texas history class to have their rotation, I had a grand plan […]
I imagine most of us have been in this situation before: you plan a great lesson, it is engaging, challenging, and every student completes the work. Then you look at the clock and there’s 15 minutes left to class. Well that happened to me not too long ago; the […]
You always hear about why it’s good to include something positive about a student whenever you have to contact their parent with something negative, and that’s easy enough to do throughout the year when you have to reach out to parents. You also frequently hear how it’s a […]
One of my favorite first week of school discussions is about perspective. Because of this particular map (which I found at a map store in Seattle a few years ago), it always ends up being a student generated conversation (which I love!!!). After about 3-4 days in class, […]
