On days when seatwork or lecture might get intense, taking a  Go Noodle break helps students stay fresh and actually accomplish more. 

Go Noodle is a site I learned about from the early elementary teachers in my #edufam online PLC.  (Check out this link for more of what elementary teachers say about Go Noodle, but don't be put off by the younger kids, it works for teenagers too!)

Go Noodle has categories so you can choose calming, stretching, educational, or other kinds of movement.

They even have an INDOOR RECESS channel where I found this gem! 

 I wasn't sure it would be to juvenile, but I tested it out last year in the media center and the kids were into it! I think it's great for middle schoolers, too. They think the videos are hilarious and you can gamify it by creating a class and earning points for each dance you do.  The all time best earworm is probably PopSiKo

And really, how can you call yourself a true middle school teacher if you aren't letting your students get up and dance to KidzBop?!   Go Noodle is here with KIdzBop Dances to rectify that problem, stat.

Are you still not convinced? Need help getting started? I will show you my MakerSpace Go Noodle Channel, I will come to your classroom to run a brain break with your class, or you can follow this script:

1. Talk with your students about the research between movement and learning
2. Share some behavior ground rules. (Mine might be stay within a certain square of your desk, don't hit others, no yelling, when song is over, high five a frind and be back sitting in your assigned  seat at count of five)
3. Warn them that Go Noodle is ridiculous and silly and that is part of why it works (In addition to movement, brains also respond to laughter and novelty. It opens your mind so you can learn more easily)
4. If you want to give them a choice, tell them you'll try three songs at three different times today or over the course of two days and if they don't like it by third song, you will regroup.
5. Play PopSeeKo   (or let the class choose from any go noodle channel)
6. That's it. If they do say they hate it you can always use Just Dance videos to songs the class likes- they are posted on YouTube.

If dancing is just too out there for you, why not start with SECRET HANDSHAKES? If that is too ridiculous for you, you can have the students make up their own. 

If you definintely want to avoid dance, try a stretching video like:

• Be Kind To Yourself 
• Stay Focused Stretch

If you are all-in and have no limit, let them freestyle with these crowd pleasing videos:

• Happy
• Let It Go
• Everything is Awesome

Go Noodle is just one of the many ways to find a quick way to stretch, move, circulate, regroup, and reenergize.

Related Posts:
VocabBall http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/incorporating-vocabulary _
Dance Your Lessons http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/1
Many More Active Learning Strategies and Active Test Prep Strategies ​http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/category/active-learning_

What's better than a Ready-Made PBL (project based learning) that contains the promise of fame and fortune?  Here are two contests available now for students and teachers. 

Here are two examples that just started, but you can let your students search for and enter any of the hundreds out there in all content areas!

The first is for 8th graders from  Khan Academy and students -must be 13 
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/studentspace/a-challenge-for-8th-graders-from-khan-academy

The second Samsung is for any classroom  (not just science or math) and involves STEM
http://www.samsung.com/us/solvefortomorrow/home.html
Last year's winners included a sixth grade class.

This post is an archive of our old wiki

Love of Learning



As Part of Operation Pirate STEAMship, Love of Learning (see link for photos
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/6/post/2014/04/love-of-learning-at-piedmont.html
allows you the student to direct your own learning:

You decide the topic
You decide the process 
You decide how to exhibit your innovation, design, creation, and research during a Science fair-type showcase where you will view what others are working on and demonstrate, defend and discuss your personal STEAM project with classmates, teachers, STEAM professionals and the larger community at that time.

Background 

http://educationismylife.com/designing-20-time-in-education/

Love of Learning is based on the successes of the Educational applications of free design-time like the IBM program that yielded the Post-it note and Google's 20% project and is a precursor to your 10th grade IB Personal Project and your 12th grade senior exit graduation project. 

Love of Learning gives you a chance to sail in your OWN direction to design and or make something unique, either your own invention, or an improvement upon an existing one. You will have the freedom and time to work on what interests you with teachers as your mentors and facilitators, not as directors.

This product itself is not graded in order to free you from the pressure of thinking that you must succeed at the endeavor you choose and to keep the focus on the learning and growing. Feel free to try to save the world or cure cancer, but also remember there is no such thing as a topic that is too trivial or un-scholarly. Anything you are interested can relate to STEAM and you can learn big things from seemingly innocuous diversions. Speaking of diversions, we do expect you to stay focused, which may be difficult when things inevitably get tough and messy.

More Information and Details

Here are some students debriefing their projects. Note that many of them "failed" at what they tried, but in doing so, "succeeded" at learning and growing!


We expect you to take risk, to learn, to hone your presentation skills, and to grow in creativity and in scientific thinking


Here are samples of the types of rubrics we will use to assess your work as a pilot of your own learning :

1.  personal product rubric
2. scientific thinking rubric
3. creativity rubric

http://20percentatadventure.blogspot.com/p/20-rubric-and-handouts.html

Here are more rubrics at Joy Kirr's LiveBinder Site
http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=829279
Ideas and more info
http://psolarz.weebly.com/passion-time.html

Some teachers say " Don't bring your drama into my classroom"  Mr. Milligan requires it. His Pigman reenactment is a Piedmont tradition.

Over the years Mr. Milligan has honed the Pigman Trial project into a complete interdisciplinary lesson that encapsulates the best of IB,  reading comprehension, creative thinking, multiple intelligences, and real-world skills development.  That's a pretty impressive list from just one unit but it is an all-encompassing one that is true PBL, project based learning.







Even if you don't want to copy Mr. Milligan's full unit (and honestly who else could?) you can easily adapt pieces of dramatic-based learning to help your students master your content.   It could be as simple as having students perform skits to explain units of a text, vocabulary charades or as complex as putting an aspect of your own content "on trial" or having students create a character from your content area and remain "in character" through a full class of interaction. 
See Ms. Gurthie for more ideas or to plan together.

Tomorrow begins our end of year testing.  Due to outdated competitive attitudes and well-intentioned conscientiousness, many teachers use the last day for last minute-review blast of facts. I used to do that, too,  even after I knew it was not proven effective educational  practice.
But Ms. Lyttle and Ms McCarthy have what researchers say is a  better idea. You can easily adapt their lesson for your own class to help students recognize and combat the stress that has been shown to hamper test performance by shutting down thinking and even restricting blood flow to the brain. 

There are plenty of resources online for all age levels that you can cull to share with students: from yoga videos and guided relaxation music to stress-busting suggestions and rate your anxiety quizzes.

Here is a step by step of the  Pre-Test Day Stress-busting lesson their students experienced, in photos:

It doesn't matter the content, sometimes a good hook is all you need to motivate students to learn. 
Mr. Egnot recently asked his students to make Fakebook pages for historical figures; Mr. Kollar Instagrams math problems to his student followers from his living room and the grocery store;  Ms. Lyttle has had students craft tweets about their reading. 

Using modern day interests of students is a good way to motivate students to work, but much more than that it is a great way to draw out critical thought. Students are forced to think in new ways about your subject when you ask them to juxtapose incongruous things, think humorously, or work in a non-academic medium.  

Moreover, this is a way to assess learning. Here are some tools to try:

Memes 

Sites like Quickmeme allow students to instantly make a meme about their lesson. You can have students make their own meme as an opener, a vocab or topic activity, an exit ticket, or even in place of an essay question on a test.  Memes can be posted to a Google Classroom disucssion, class Edmodo, wiki, webpage, or Google Doc so that all can share and comment, laugh and learn.


Now that we have Chromebooks, there are many meme-creating apps students can get from the chrome web store.   

Fakebook

Here is a short walk though of Fakebook, including Ms. Thornburg's Fakebook for Rasputin!

Related Posts:
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/how-to-use-fakebook
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/gifted-and-ib-conference-notes includes some great social media and meme ideas from Angela and Brian Housand

You work really hard on creating great lessons. But are you open to student suggestions? That's how Ms. Callahan found out about Desmos.

Her lesson, designed by her and adapted by students is a great  example of interdisciplinary project based learning and authentic assessment that integrates student choice and technology?

Check out this video of Ms. Callahan's class today:  Students were able to draw or use Desmos for their culminating quarterly Math 2 project.  Desmos can be useful tool for 1:1 with Chromebooks or as an iPad app.  Notice how engaged students are when the project is theirs. Ms. Callahan allowed students choice in what to create with their math and even in whether or not they used tech at all. 

She also was open, as we 21st century teachers must be, to students introducing a tech tool to the class and then helping each other master it. She became the guide on the side providing instructions, advice, helping research, and guiding and encouraging learning as needed.

Thank you Mrs. Callahan and students for letting me show off your great work.

No time for the three and a half minute video below? Check out this one minute trailer:

Angela Maiers teaches us how important it is to tell students, "You Matter." everyday. 

In honor of Everyone Matters Day on April 2nd, consider teaching students that Everyone Matters. Below is a 9 page guide of activity ideas for "accepting others as they are embracing ourselves as we are" . 
If you don't have time for an in-class lesson in class, please ask students to participate with Ms. Gurthie during lunchtime and healhy kids time on Digital Learning Day or on their own anytime by via creating an IAM poster and posting an #IAM selfie on their favorite social media site.  

Sketchnotes UPDATE:

All one needs to sketchnote is pen and paper. However, as visual notetaking apps become more popular, 
Here is apresentation to introduce the concept and process of sketchnotes notetaking to students. Some students will find it superior to traditional notetaking, some will prefer the old ways. Giving them an option will help personalize their education.

The One Pager 

Tired of traditional notes and summaries? 

 Students summarize in one page. It reminds me of Doodle Notes or Sketch notes (see embedded slideshow below) and is a great visual way to remember plus a great thinking exercise in summation to solidify learning and it also forces students to make critical decisions about what to include and why.

Try this when reviewing or even to quickly cover a topic or for a bit of arts and graphic design integration. Great way to introduce a bit of visual literacy as well. 

Thanks to Ms. Adornato and her PD book discussion group for the one pager idea.

Today is Chinese New Year. Yesterday was Mardi Gras.  Monday was President's Day AND It's Black History Month! Have you connected any of these to your lessons yet? 

It's hard not to get bogged down in the day to day of moving through the content, but it is important to take time out to teach global and societal issues and make connections. If you don't have time to create your own lesson, here is easy way to recognize events your students might like - Play a Kahoot. Above are some photos of trailblazer Ms. Thornburg's students playing a social studies review she created.

There are ready made fun game quizzes for each of these on Kahoot's featured page. Click the link below for these holidays and more.  

(you do have to sign in or create an account to view the Kahoots)

https://create.kahoot.it/#public/kahoots/featured

If you can't easily think of a curricular reason why any of these relates to your class, email me what you're learning and I will connect it for you- I like the challenge!