Getting kids to think has always been hard. And it’s only getting harder when our students have never lived in a world where getting anything–answers, food, clothing, friendships, dates–actually took more effort than a swipe on their phones.
Why think when they can just get?
Friday’s Wonder Walk gave us the answer. From the 4th to the ground floor, new wing to the historic, I saw inspired teachers appreciating the quality of the TGs that were posted in every room. Good TG’s, like good teachers, inspire wonder in addition to teach.
And inspiring the most teachers with their WonderWall, I present to you…
The 2017 Teacher’s Choice Human Thinking Generator Award
(and what you said about them)
205: “I thought it was most impressive how in the younger grades truly came up with such higher ordering thinking that impacts these young minds and truly relating each TG to the standards. For example, If your turn an ipad upside down is it still an ipad? HOW COOL is that, makes you think about what your actually teaching them in a hands on way that the students can relate to! MOST IMPRESSIVE!”
301:“I really liked how she had different types of TG’s: multiple choice, questions where students had to put themselves in the characters’ shoes, philosophical questions and analysis of quotes. Also, none of her questions pointed towards one answer or another. Every single one of them seemed like they would invite passionate debate. I also now want to read the book The Outsiders so I can ponder whether Johnny made a mistake when he killed Bob.”
338: “I liked that the questions were very open ended with zero room for yes or no and they are questions that I feel would be easily able to begin debates. They left me thinking even after walking away from them!”
401: “They took one idea (how religions are different that came from Judaism) and compared it to something relevant (biological siblings behaving differently. It made me think and reread the question to think about how to organize my answer and helped me to understand the concept better.”
409: “This WONDERWALL was very interesting because it had both words and images. The images could provoke students to think out of the box and come up with more inventive and creative answers. For example there were two pictures and the question was write a reaction to each of the photos. Students could come up with different perspectives and this would be a great conversation starter. I feel that this can be applied to the lower grades because you can give students to images and have them discuss something about the images. This can lead two rich conversations that can lead students to high-order thinking.”
THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
Students will not be in attendance on Monday, June 12th. Teachers will organize student folders, and teacher teams who are organizing events for the home stretch (graduation, STEAMCON, MNW, 102’s Got Talent) should get together and finalize. I will be checking in with each group in the afternoon.
Two postings will be up for summer per-session. It is important for auditing purposes that you provide a letter of interest. If there’s even a sliver of a chance for you to come in over summer, show interest now, decide later.
We will be needing teachers to plan curriculum as well as teach a 5-8 day instructional program for students who just missed the mark for June Promotion. The postings will be on the board tomorrow.
Teacher programs for 2017-2018 are just about ready to be distributed. 99% of the teachers requested the same preferences as their assignment this year, and I will have some conversations the next two days to have it finalize and ready to distribute by Wednesday.
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