It's the season of gift giving and we're back with on of our annual posts: Our Favorite Things! You can use our list for classroom teachers, librarians and other specials teachers, or anyone else in your life! Some of the ideas here would even be great gifts from the whole class. Most importantly, we hope you enjoy the season!
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This week's Take5 serves up a little of everything, kinda like the Thanksgiving Dinner you are all hopefully about to enjoy later this week. For a main course, we're offering up discussions starters to help reluctant learners explore why school matters and teacher strategies for improving student talk and student assessment. Looking for a side dish to accompany those strategies? Explore the history of Thanksgiving (the history teacher in me couldn't resist). And for dessert, a little time with one of our favorite Sesame Street Characters, Cookie Monster. So Take5 teacher friends and then enjoy your very well earned Thanksgiving break! Last week I attended the Virginia Association for School Librarians (VAASL) Annual Conference. It's always hard to get away from school for a few days, but I think it's worth it if I am able to collect take-aways that really upgrade the work I do every day in my library program and my learning as a professional. And, as I am heading out this week to attend our big national conference, the American Association of School Librarians, I thought I'd pull together some of my tips for turning a good conference experience into a great one. Sharing love of sports is a powerful tool for building relationships with students. My town of Washington, DC is currently obsessed with the Washington Nationals and their winning streak in the playoffs. Like so many other fans, I've on a roller coaster ride of emotions. Standing in silent frustration in a hushed stadium as we lost to the Dodgers 10-4 in Game 4 to jumping up and down in my living room multiple times in recent weeks as we managed to do what seemed impossible earlier in the season, including winning the Wildcard and advancing to the NLCS for the first time ever in the 10th inning with a grand slam (Howie is my hero). For baseball neophytes, the Nats are one game away from clinching a spot in their first World Series (not that it is going to happen - I don't want to jinx it). It's been such a fun ride for fans but one of the things that has brought me the greatest joy this season is the connection that this epic streak by the Nats has allowed me to make with my students. Believe me: sports moments like these are magic for classrooms. It's lightning in a bottle for relationship building. Take5: Combating Racism in the Classroom, Talking to Your Middle Schooler, Perfectionism and More10/1/2019 Do you know the game Telestrations? Great for parties, it's as if the the game "telephone" met up with Pictionary. Each player starts with a notebook and writes a word or phrase chosen from a game card. The notebooks then get passed around the table, the next person attempting to draw the word, then the next guessing the word only based on the previous drawing, and so forth. It's fun and full of laughs. Karen, a math department colleague, came to my co-librarian and I with an idea for bringing Telestrations into her math classroom, and asked for our space and our support in making the idea come to life. Upon seeing this fun, engaging lesson and then teaching it with another math colleague, I am (with Karen's permission) excited to share this with you. 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the first slave ship's arrival on America's shores in Jamestown, Virginia. In my view, the commemoration of this tragic event presents teachers with a unique and timely opportunity to reevaluate and improve our teaching of slavery to students with a renewed commitment to truth, equity, empowerment, and understanding. For teachers who like me, are tasked with teaching this "hard" history, I am offering up some of resources. A few are designed for the classroom, others are simply resources for us as individuals to deepen our understanding of the nation's past and in doing so, in my view, shed light on our present and our future. So Take5. |
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