I feel sometimes like I keep the Halls people in business.
First Week of School, every year. First day my voice is gone by the end of the day because I read the syllabus out loud 6 times. It’s predictable, and it’s not good.
Maybe there’s a better way? Like, maybe I could pre-heat the grill a little?
I’m taking my cues from the EduProtocol Field Guide this year – taking time at the outset for building culture and workflow. I want my students to summarize, and collaborate, and create, and communicate. I also want them to know how class is gonna work and what we can expect of each other. That way when I build all those skills into math, I’m not asking them to do something they’ve never done before. It’s not a new idea, obviously, just me trying to get better every year.
Plus: open house is early this year. Day Three, in fact.
Taken as a whole, this seemed like a good opportunity to use the Iron Chef model to dive into the syllabus. The first day homeroom session featured a 30-minute recorded presentation of the student handbook. I for sure didn’t want to use my 30 minutes with my algebra kids reading them the same rules they heard from all the rest of their teachers that day. Not that the rules and procedures aren’t important, just: maybe there’s a better way.
So I had them take 5 minutes to read it in groups. We crowdsourced the big ideas and wrote them on the side board. Then I revealed a starter slide deck with a rudimentary title slide (which they could customize) and had a team lead for each group do a file – make a copy and share the copy with me and with their other group members. (Snuck in a quick refresher on Canvas and GSuite there, too!)
I introduced the group roles, students selected a job and away we go.
Day Two – I intro’d the “secret ingredient”, kids finished their presos, and then they presented their slide deck. Students got to show off their work and polish their presentation skills. And we were able to do some quality control for spelling and grammar. We caught a doozy of a misspelling, BTW. Like, the “a” and the “u” aren’t even close to each other on the keyboard, right?
I steered students away from the cookie-cutter PowerPoints they are used to making. The secret ingredient was a word limit of 40 per slide (still too many but it’s a start, right?). And they rose to the occasion. My second hour in particular absolutely crushed it. Like, I’m not sure I would done a better job making the slide deck myself.
And as you might have guessed, the parents were suitably impressed by the work of their kids when I ran the slides by them at the Open House. Not just the presentation, but their kids’ ability to take a document and boil it down to its essence, and especially in thinking, “OK, what in this page are my parents gonna want to know about?” They nailed it.
So we got them working together, creating things, thinking about communicating to an authentic audience, and they dug deep into the course expectations. Not a bad couple days’ work. So in case you were wondering if your students will rise to the occasion, well, you’d be surprised.
In a good way.
Three years ago I followed through on a commitment to begin blogging as a way to reflect on my practice. I’m not really even sure that blogs are a thing anymore, but I’ve got a handful that I read on the regular (Blogroll is over there to the right).
My online PLN is blogging their way thru August in the #MTBoS Blaugust2018 challenge. Check out the complete list here. While you are there, sign up to join in the fun. I’m waiting to read, learn, and grow with my Teacher Twitter people.