Remember me?

Wow, it's been a great start to the school year! My students are a lot of fun and I have a fantastic student teacher working with me. Getting back into the swing of things schoolwise along with starting a new exercise schedule and a sixteen year old son who is now driving has made life busy. I think things are starting to settle down some...I hope to several new posts up soon about my professional learning community experience thus far.

Summer Vacation is almost over!

My school's in-service starts August 23rd so my summer vacation is quickly fading. I've enjoyed the beach, read many books, and went on a family vacation to Busch Gardens.

While I took a break from the blog this summer, I did do some school things.

I went to Washington, DC for a Professional Learning Community Conference by Rick & Becky DuFour. Our school took our world history and geometry teachers to learn how to work effectively in PLCs. I am sold! Again, it's all about teachers working smarter, not harder to help ALL kids learn.  With Delaware's Race to the Top requirement of 90 minute meeting time each week, this training will help us be effective with that time.

My new favorite quote from Rick DuFour is "Don't tell me you believe that all students can learn. Tell me what you are doing for those that aren't."

I've also been working on my Teacher of the Year portfiolo for the Delaware State Teacher of the Year competition. It is due in the beginning of September so I want to get it finished and turned in so I can concentrate on the new school year. Wish me luck--the winner will be announced 10/26/10.

I also did a workshop for a neighboring school district "Successful Teaching in the Block Schedule"---I love it when teachers can look beyond where they teach and work collaboratively to help each other help ALL students!

I will be posting more frequently to the blog now that the school year will be starting. Some upcoming topics include:  Classroom Webpages, Teaching in the Block, Professional Learning Communities....

As always, I'm looking forward to the start of school (if only that didn't mean the end of my beach days!)

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Using RAFTS in the Classroom

No, not a raft in the ocean or pool....but in your classroom. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, Topic and it is a learning activity in which students select (everyones loves a choice!) an assignment tied to the unit of study but with variations on the specific topic and format.

In our World History class, my team teacher Lucilla and I created a RAFT for our Black Death unit. We then reviewed the RAFT with students discussing each option and showed an example of a modern day public service announcement for H1N1.

Overall, the students really liked the assignment. We got some great poems about the Black Death as well PSAs. The cool thing about the RAFT is that it allowed us to assess students in different learning modalities.
Included below is the RAFT assignment and an example of one student's poem. Enjoy!

How could the RAFT work for you?

Explicitly Teaching Vocabulary in Your Class

My recent experience:
Several of our staff went to a workshop a few weeks ago on teaching vocabulary. Although I know that vocabulary is important, in the past I’ve been guilty of just giving students words and definitions. In the workshop we learned (really reviewed I had learned it before—just never really thought I had time to do it) some cool low prep ways to teach vocabulary and my team teacher(Lucilla) and I decided to give up 30 minutes of our valuable “teaching time” to try one of these strategies.

Here’s what we did:

We picked 7 important words for the unit. Most were big concept words like imperialism, nationalism…

We had students fold a sheet of paper to make 4 columns with these labels: Word, Meaning, Picture, and Related Words
Then students copied words and meaning from the board. As they copied I further explained the words as they would relate to the new unit.

Then students drew pictures to illustrate the meanings and came up with related words.

We were amazed by the effort students put into the picture and the related words. In fact, some students used vocabulary words they learned in their English class. (Go 9th grade English teachers!)


We then used the words each class in context of the lesson.

Was it worth the time?

Yes! In the assessment given to one of the classes yesterday, the lowest grade was an 85!

Now I know there are other variables that could have affected this outcome, but I can’t help but believe that this activity helped the students really understand the important vocabulary.

We will definitely be using this really easy strategy again! :)

What the brain research tells us about learning...

Research is from  Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen. Awesome book! I highly recommend it! It explains the research on learning and then HOW teachers can best utilize this research.
“You can teach more and faster, but students simply forget more and faster.”

In-depth learning (as opposed to superficial) learning requires time for organizing, integrating, and storing new information.

Our short term memory (frontal lobes) can take in only three to seven chunks of information before we go into overload.

The bottom line is that learning connections require time and maintenance. Therefore we should present new info in small chunks and then allow students time to process it.

12-15 minutes is the suggested chunk of time for new instruction for Grades 9-12.

“Less is more. Too much, too fast, it won’t last.”

Oh No! Spring Break Ends Today!

Well...that went fast. I hope everyone enjoyed their time off as much as I did.

Son2 got an honorable mention in his category at the Science Fair which wasn't bad at all since he had never done this competition before. Believe me, he took notes and he is already planning his project for next year.

Son1 has less than 3 weeks until his first year of college is complete. He is busy wrapping up his committments and preparing for exams. One year down, three (no, maybe five more with grad school) to go!

It will be a busy back to school week for me...in addition to teaching my classes--tomorrow I have to finish grading some projects to include in 3rd mp grades which are due Tuesday am. Wednesday night, I have a vacation bible school meeting at church. Thursday, I'm hosting a workshop for new teachers at my school and Friday, I'm in Dover at a vocabulary workshop. All good things...just all in one week!

Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to leave a comment with feedback as to what you'd like to see on this blog.

Happy last day of Spring Break! :)