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Actively Engage Students as The School Year Ends

May 1, 2018 by Inspired Together Teachers 1 Comment

With Spring in full force and the number of days to the end of the school year dwindling down, we thought it might be helpful to share some ideas for finishing your school year successfully. While it may be tempting to ease up on academic activities, we encourage you to help your students stay engaged in learning. How do you actively engage students as the school year ends?

Here are some suggestions to keep students focused on learning:

Skip the public end of the school year countdown.

We know it is common for teachers to have a countdown to the last day of school prominently displayed. We get it. You are tired. Your students are tired. You are looking forward to summer.

Keep in mind that anxiously counting down the days sends a message that you can’t wait to get out of school. You want to stop the learning. You want to be away from school and from your students.

Believe it or not, many students are happier in school that out of school. School is safe. They participate in meal programs and extracurricular activities. They are supervised. Adults pay attention to them. Many students feel untethered during school breaks, left alone to entertain themselves and care for themselves. Be aware that to some students, summer is not necessarily something to celebrate.

Find ways to celebrate the learning that students have accomplished this year.

If your district uses portfolios, you have a built- in system for celebration. Give students time to analyze their work, choose the work that represents their best learning, and reflect on the skills they have learned. Be sure to share their portfolios with peers and with parents.

Create a project for the last couple of weeks that allows students to create and demonstrate their learning from the year. This might be a great time to have them create a video, a “Ted Talk” type of speech, a Power Point or another form of presentation.

Put on a puppet show! Students can create puppets and write scripts about something they have learned over the school year. This is a great way to review concepts.

Have students use the writing process and write a letter to parents sharing the key things they have learned this year.

Have students write letters to next year’s students sharing their favorite activities and events, keys to success, and the most important things they learned in your class this year. Collect the letters into a class book.

Let students nominate themselves and submit their best work for your class “awards.” These can be all kinds of made up awards such as “Best Use of Experimental Procedure” or “Most Original Composition.” Use your standards and curriculum to come up with many awards, both serious and just for fun.

Give students opportunities to publicly share their learning from the year.

Present your class play, your student’s poetry, or your students musical talents at a nursing home.

Let students select their best pieces of writing and collect them into books to display at local businesses.

Display student art work in local businesses.

Have older students teach younger students a skill they have learned this year.

Give students suggestions for summer activities.

This doesn’t have to be summer homework, though some schools do assign summer reading or other work.

Give students a list of your top ten favorite books, which they might want to read over the summer. Do book talks and make the books sound so good students will want to read them!

Give students the schedules for summer library programs or local day camps. Share information about local events, museum exhibits or activities that they might want to participate in over the summer months.

Tap into your students’ expertise as well. Have them make lists of their favorite books, movies, and summer activities.

Ask students to make a plan for learning over the summer.

Maybe they will love trying out the experiments found in books of science activities for students. Maybe they would love math puzzles. Maybe they would love to write and illustrate their own book of poems. Maybe they would love to watch 20 classic award- winning films. Perhaps they can read and watch videos to improve at a sport or hobby.

If students have access to technology over the summer, challenge them to make a video or other project. They might love to write plays based on fairy tales, act them out and make videos with their friends! Or, they may become the next You Tube sensation by explaining historical people or events to other high school students. An interest in history worked out well for Lin- Manuel Miranda!

These are just a few ideas to get you thinking about how you might keep students engaged in learning at the end of the school year and over the summer.

We would love to hear your end of school activities in the comments below!

Our best,

7 TED Talks for Teachers That Will Inspire You to Be a Better Teacher

December 28, 2017 by Inspired Together Teachers Leave a Comment

As life-long learners, we love TED Talks and have gathered a collection of some of the best Ted talks for teachers. TED is a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading unique and interesting ideas through short, powerful talks. TED talks use the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world.

We love the inspiring power of TED talks. We’ve written about our favorite TED talks for educators in the past, and this week we revisited the TED website to find more talks that speak to us today.

Here are 7 powerful and short TED talks that will inspire you to be a better teacher.

The Power of Believing that You Can Improve: Carol Dweck 10:15

Growth mindset researcher Carol Dweck shares an example from her research of students with fixed mindset vs growth mindset. If you haven’t learned the power of yet- this is for you.

A Short Intro to the Studio School: Geoff Mulgan 6:16

What can we learn from studio schools? More learning by doing? More team work? Smaller schools? Personal coaches for students? We see much potential in this concept to inform our practices. Think about how you can take these ideas and apply them in your classroom. Power Hour? Makers Spaces?

How to learn? From Mistakes: Diana Laufenberg 10:00

We no longer need to come to school to get information, information is available all around us. What we need to do is come to school to learn to do something with that information. Laufenberg discovered that when you ask kids to use their own voice, learning happens. And yes, there will be mistakes along the way.

Why Schools Should Start Later for Teens: Wendy Troxel 10:33

Do you teach teenagers? Despite all the research to the contrary, middle and high schools usually start earlier than primary schools. Where do you come down on school starting times for adolescents? Would your students learn more if their school started later? In this powerful talk, Troxel shares statistics that show that our teens are sleep deprived and at risk for a host of problems that could be eliminated with later school starting times. How can you use this research to impact your teaching?

How to Design a Library That Makes Kids Want to Read by Michael Bierut 12:26

Could your school library use a refresh? This designer discovered something better than his logos when he opened up his ideas to create more inspirational libraries. Skip past the logos into the second half where you will see some fun and inspiring library updates. The last minute of the video is the best! We knew we loved librarians, and this librarian reminds us what is important.

A Summer School Kids Actually Want to Attend: Karim Abouelnaga 7:04

Abouelnaga made it out of one of the worst schools in the country to attend an Ivy league university. Now he is dedicated to redesigning summer school programs to eliminate the summer slide and help students gain skills during the summer. How do middle class students and students in poverty experience expectations differently? Check it out.

3 Rules to Spark Learning: Ramsey Musallam 7:05

This high school chemistry teacher wants us to increase learning by cultivating curiosity. How can we use the ideas present in a questioning four-year-old to stop “pseudo-learning” and engage students in real learning?

Do you like TED talks? Which ones are your favorites?

Happy watching,

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Will New Technology Finally Change Education?

March 2, 2017 by Inspired Together Teachers Leave a Comment

For the past thirty years or so, there has been a wave of interest, training and investment in the promise that technology will change education, just as it has changed almost every part of our lives.

If you think about schools today with their iPads, interactive white boards, Edmodo and other learning management systems as well as online parent portals for grades and communication, there is no doubt that technology has played a vital role in how teaching, learning and communicating take place in schools.

Perhaps the bigger question is, has technology been disruptive? Has in changed the playing field for all? Has it really improved the real bottom line- learning?

In his book The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future, Steve Case, lays out what he believes will be the future of technology, what he calls “the third wave.” Case is a serial entrepreneur, best known for founding America Online, which at its peak handled nearly half of all U.S. internet traffic. As a visionary, White House initiative leader and start-up accelerator, he is in a unique position to understand not only where technology has been, but where it is going.

According to Case, the first wave of technology was building the infrastructure. Those of us who have been in schools for a while, remember the and the wiring, electricity, and telephone lines that had to be built in order to create computer labs, followed by broad band capabilities that high speed internet demands. Finding the funding to buy computers and software was also a part of the first wave of technology.

The second wave, which began around the year 2000, was about building the internet. This involved creating programs for the internet. Think Google, Amazon, ebay and social media platforms as well as all of the productivity and learning applications. In the second wave, software was the focus. The apps we use in education, the games, the communication tools, and the learning management systems are part of the second wave.

Today, we are starting the third wave, which Case calls, “the Internet of Everything.” This is the era, Case maintains, that will challenge and reimagine everything, how we learn, how we heal, how we manage our finances, and even what we eat. Every industry is at risk of being disrupted- and education is at the top of the list.

We are starting to see signs of this disruption already. One of the biggest publishing companies for teachers is now Teachers Pay Teachers, where teachers sell their materials and lesson plans to others. It is disrupting the tradition formats- those where teachers and districts buy materials from traditional publishing companies.

Other examples include focus on more personal and individualized learning, programs that adapt for individual student needs and are evaluated through data. Think of programs like Lexia or ST Math. Teachers will get data in real time, not months after a standardized test, which will allow for immediate short, targeted interventions. In the future, Case says, the measure of a successful school might be in the number of minutes of individual teacher time students receive. Standardized test data will not be as important as individual student learning reports which are regularly generated and show a wide range of metrics. These reports have the ability to show progress and specific skill attainment both in the present and over time.

Technology has the power to disrupt education. Look at the success of the Kahn Academy, which brings virtual tutors to millions. Online classes in a multitude of content subjects are springing up everywhere. You can take a college class, learn to run a stock portfolio, learn how to make amazing cupcakes, or learn how to raise pygmy goats at the touch of a button. Home school and unschooling networks have become vast and powerful as more and more people opt out of traditional education. This disruption means that institutions will no longer be the only owners or dispensers of knowledge.

Third wave technology, Case, suggests, has the ability to change education as it helps answer questions we’ve never been able to answer, to explain patterns we have never before seen, and to solve problems we didn’t even know we had. Change can happen more quickly through the ability to run low cost experiments, look at the data, and accept or reject new programs, plans or materials.

The third wave of education will not only focus on content, but also on context and community. Students learn from each other, and communities need to foster sharing and exploring of ideas. We need teachers who can present content, but also those who can build powerful learning communities. That is what we are trying to do here with Thriving Young Teachers.

In the first wave of technology, there was too much focus on technology. In the second wave, there was too much focus on content.

In the third wave of technology, we will combine content with community. It is this combination, Case believes, that will usher in the revolution that has been talked about for decades, but has yet to become reality.

What do you think? Do you see technology disrupting the way we teach and learn? We’d love to hear your examples!

The Education Story that Should Be Going Viral but Isn’t

December 5, 2016 by Inspired Together Teachers Leave a Comment

It’s time for some good news in education. Here is a story that should be going viral, but probably isn’t.

A 16 year old boy recently accomplished an amazing feat. Using his school’s 3-D printer and information he learned from taking two semesters of a course called Fab Lab, he created a prosthetic hand for another local boy.

Ian Bormett of Stoughton, Wisconsin believed that he could create a working prosthetic and deliver it to an eleven year old boy born without a hand. His local public school provided training and access to top notch equipment. He used plans he found online and study hall time to access the 3-D printer. Ian used the skills and knowledge he learned at school to solve a problem and deliver a real world outcome. His work demonstrates critical and creative thinking at its best.

Eleven year old Jonah Friedrich spent two years on a waiting list to get a prosthetic hand. His mother made an adaptation for him by taping an Allen wrench to Jonah’s stub so that he could type. It was a valiant adaptation, but an adaptation that shouldn’t have been needed. We live in a post space- age era where James Bond like tools once thought of as ridiculously high tech are now not only possible, but commonplace. We can carry tiny, powerful computers in our pockets, but as a society, we can’t manage getting a child a much needed prosthesis?

Ian Bormett delivered something of value that the medical community, for whatever reason, was not able to deliver.

We often read about how our schools are failing while news of medical advances get more positive press. Press about education is often focused on Common Core or issues with standardized tests. You don’t have to dig very deep to find another story about how schools are failing.

What is much less common is coverage of the ways schools are working in positive ways to empower students to handle real world work and challenges. Schools are using tools such as maker’s spaces and power hours where students are encouraged and supported in developing ideas and designing projects based on their interests and skills. It is a promising pathway that gets little attention.

We can spend precious school hours forcing students to memorize isolated bits of information and then test them by asking them to regurgitate information. Too much emphasis has been placed on giving students information, often under the guise of “back to basics” or “having high standards.” Standardized tests have been the all important measure of success in schools.

Most educators understand that what we really need to be doing is teaching students how to be critical thinkers. We need to teach them how to access information and apply it. We need to be fostering creativity, a skill that is needed in solving problems. But in today’s climate of high accountability, these important skills are not easily testable. Achievement in critical and creative thinking cannot easily be narrowed down to a grade that can be expressed as a percentage.

Ian Bormett is an example of what can happen when knowledge, skill, problem solving and passion come together. What could happen if we stopped using scores on a test as our measure of achievement? What could happen if we empowered students to use their skills to create new ideas and solve problems in new ways?

Maybe, as a society, we could do better than an Allen wrench and a roll of duct tape.

Maybe we could change lives.

What do you think? Have you seen or experienced a renewed emphasis on critical and creative thinking and application of ideas? If so, we would love to hear about it in the comments below. We would also love it if you could share this post to promote some good news in education!

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