Student Expectations of Schools

Every. Teacher. Must. Watch. This.

Apple Showcase Event

Today our district hosted 2 sites visits for visitors from all over Illinois and Indiana.  I cannot tell you how invigorating it is to hear what others have to say about our district and all of the amazing teaching and learning going on.

Some feedback from the evaluation form:

"Hands on learning. Variety of lessons and activities. Teachers were focused on learning but the students controlled their learning. Very collaborative!"

"Great examples and models of collaboration, and creative engagement by both students and teachers.
Student demonstrated an understanding of their responsibility. It was good to hear them articulate their understanding."

"I was very impressed with the level of student engagement and teacher support." 

"Loved seeing all the students actively involved in learning and all conversation between the students were focused on the lesson. Students all looked happy and engaged!" 

Bivariate Data Day 2

This is what teaching should be like everyday!

I arrived at Freedom early today to make sure Meagan and Colleen had enough hawaiian leis for their students.  They both have so much energy and are excited to start this unit!  Who knew math could be so much fun :)

Class began with the Limbo Song was playing loudly and teachers giving leis to each student as they walked in....students were immediately engaged when walking into class!

Meagan handing out leis

A few quotes from students...."Ooh, I feel like I'm in Hawaii!".... "I love this class right now"...."Are we having a party?"....

Some of the more surprising were, "Are we doing math?" and "Why are we doing this?".....students were surprised we could learn AND have fun.....we need to change this mentality!

Meagan told her students that "although we are going to play a game today, this is still Math class, so you need to keep track of one number: the number of times you can successfully make it under the Limbo bar.  She told them to record this on the chart that was up on the SMARTBoard screen.  I then demonstrated how to Limbo and then students lined up and began to Limbo.  After lots of giggles and smiles, students were encouraging their classmates who still hadn't gotten out.  EVERY SINGLE STUDENT WAS ENGAGED.

Students began to understand the concept immediately.....shouts of "The short people have it easier!", "This isn't fair cuz I'm so tall," and "You are lucky you are short, girl!" were quite common.

Once all students had limboed, Meagan asked "Why do you think some students did better than others?"  Immediately students said because some were shorter or more flexible.  Meagan led the discussion of which of these two things we could measure today....and students then proceeded to measure their heights and enter in their data on the data table.

Meagan had students predict what a graph of their information would look like, and then revealed the actual graph.  Students spent the next 10 minutes analyzing the graph and learning how to read a trendline.

They made predictions, identified outliers, and concluded that their hypothesis was correct.  Homework was to come up with an idea of two other things that could be measured and compared to see if a relationship existed and to post this idea on the eChalk discussion.

This all happened in 45 minutes, by the way.

A very insightful observation from one student...."WAIT!  So each of those dots on the graph is a person?  Ohh!  I would have done so much better on the pre-test if I knew that!"  Learning has already taken place....and in a very meaningful an memorable way.

Best part of the day was watching Meagan be such a leader.....so confident and excited to allow her classroom to be a bit chaotic for the sake of learning.  Not many teachers are willing to do this!

Click here to read Meagan's own post about this day in her blog.



Here are some more pictures from the day....including this one of the principal testing his limbo skills in Colleen's class!

Students entering in their data