One of the elective classes we offer at our school is called Strategies for Success. It's designed to help students with organizational and study skills. Carla, one of our Strategies teachers, asked my co-librarian and I to develop a lesson on note taking to teach different note taking techniques -- we ended up with an activity that could be applied across content areas or used independently by students who want to explore different ways to take notes.

We've returned to school after spring break and found ourselves knee deep in the busiest time of year. We're in the final quarter, heading into state standardized testing, and racing to finish curriculum. Teaching is hard, we've talked about that before. But it is also incredibly rewarding so we need to take moments to find joy and to remind ourselves and our colleagues, that we do in fact love this work. This week's Take5 is all about helping us all find ways to bring joy and happiness into our classrooms for our students and into our own lives.

​We're on Spring Break this week -- taking time to rejuvinate with our families and re-energize as we head into the end of the school year.

We'll see you back here next Tuesday!

-Corey & Gretchen

Aloha! If you are a regular reader of our blog, you've heard us reference our school's Literacy Committee.  This committee consists of teachers from various content areas who work together to help embed literacy (reading, writing, discussion, and critical thinking) in all of our school's classrooms. We are in charge of a lot of professional development and it can be a real challenge to keep things new and engaging. We recently developed a fun, meaningful PD session that could easily be replicated in any building for any professional development content. It's the complete antithesis of sit and get professional development, blending the sharing of strategies (by the experts: educators) and a little whimsy.  People walked away with new ideas and new energy, so all and all - a success! If you have a PD session to plan in your future, check out our Literacy Luau. We'll walk you step by step through what you need to do to make this a fantastic PD event for you and your colleagues. 

This week's Take5 explores a new approach to grades, the problems created by extremely early lunch times in some schools (9 am, really?), and compassionate ways to manage your classroom. Also, we talk about new tech tools for the classroom and a dynamic resource from TED-Ed that gets kids using TED Talks to make connections beyond the classroom walls. So Take5.