Room 344

 Writing (both teaching and learning) is one of the most fundamental skills students need to be successful. However, writing is also one of the skills students not only struggle with, but are reluctant to practice.  I totally get it, it's hard to motivate yourself to practice something you are not good at. I felt the same way with using my left (non-dominant) hand in basketball. I had a coach who, instead of having my work on all the different skills that I needed to do to get better with my weaker had, had my focus just the skill of dribbling. To my coach, dribbling with your left hand was the start, if you could not do that not much mattered. If you could not dribble do not bother with shooting with your left because you will not be able to put yourself in a position to score. I did get better with my left hand. Slowly working from dribbling, to left hand layups and floaters and I eventually turned out to be an above average basketball player. I found that focusing on dribbl...

  The Frayer Model is as tried and true as a graphic organizer gets. The Frayer Model is easy to use, its versatile, it can do vocab, it can do content, it can do it all really. That's why I love it so much. The Frayer Model is one of the most used practices in my classroom and in lesson 2 of the year I introduce it to my students. In lesson 2 students get 2 reps using the Frayer Model. In the first rep, we Frayer a Friend, which is straight from the EduProtocols. A nice breakdown of the practice is found here . I  adjusted this model to highlight some of our class norms and terms as well. My version can be seen below: Glows in our classroom are things that we are doing really well either individually or as a class. For example, a class glow would be getting a 95% on a Round 2 of Fast and Curious. On the other hand a groan is something that is not going well in the classroom. For example, if we did not get get above a 85% on our Round 2 of Fast and Curious. Further, we can gro...

The first week (if weeks are only 3 days) has passed and this week I got to meet all of my classes. Due to a schedule quirk, I did not see my last block class for the first 3 days of school. Typically, that first "real" day of class is hello, how are you, lets read and go over our syllabus to a bunch of groans. However, this year I tried to use our "syllabus day" as a way to introduce my students' to not only what this class is about, but also how this is going to operate in the future. First, students completed round 1 of one of my favorite  EduProtocols : fast and curious. This protocol is simply to implement and gives you loads of student data to work with. Pick your favorite online question platform (I use Quizizz ) have your students answer questions in Round 1 (the scores will most likely be bad, I get really cheesy in explaining that this number is not good or bad, but just.... is), complete a lesson of new content, and have students answer the same quest...