"GET YOUR GENIUS ON" --may seem like an over ambitious goal for 850 middle school students but when you begin to really study and understand the geniuses of the world, your eyes are open to the fact that anyone can become a genius with deliberate practice and determination. I believe that educating our students is not just a push to reach the basic standards, we need to push our students to excel and motivate them to become "Exceptional" in all that they do.

Our school recently participated in a school-wide reading of the text "How to Think like a Genius", this text is linked below.  Each class read this text in their ACE/ Homeroom class and then held discussions about why they believed that every person on this world had the capacity to "Think Like a Genius" or not. Next, students made goals to try out one of the ideas about becoming a genius in their own lives through using one of  the strategies listed in this article.

School-wide we are moving into teaching reading through the use of expository text and focusing on Annotation as we read. This text was a great example of how to ease into this type of thinking and created many interesting conversations in our classrooms.  We ended our activity with the YouTube video linked below just to exemplify that not every brilliant person was genius on their first try.

So, GET YOUR GENIUS ON TODAY!  Show every person on your campus that brilliance is a habit that can be learned and mastered with deliberate practice and determination!


 http://www.wikihow.com/Think-Like-a-Genius


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yetHqWODp0

Writer Workshop in Progress

Relationships are EVERYTHING!

Kindness matters!

Why? Explain? Show what you know....

Odyssey, consumption or production?

After reviewing, techchef4u iPad Consumption vs. Production: the Great Debate
Lisa Johnson, 2007Jul 6, 2011, how would you rate our school's current technology use? Are we stuck in the consumption phrase? What would "production" look like in our classrooms and at our school?

Education

Technology 1.0

What use are blogs? Why would I spend one hour of our precious collaboration time having you down load an app that enables blogs, articles, and videos to be housed on its site?

The reason is pure and simple. When you become familiar with the resources online, you open the world to your classroom. You can visit another classroom, see a lesson in action, learn how to implement a new skill or strategy, or read a viewpoint of a teacher across the ocean that is dealing with the same issues in his/or her classroom, as you are.

We are lifetime learners and we must work to keep our own learning alive. Don't fear technology-- embrace it! Don't avoid it-- use it! Once you get the basics down-- you might surprise yourself and actually enjoy your journey into the 21at century.

School-Wide Writing Program

For the past year, we have worked to explore and implement a school-wide writing program. There have been many bumps in the road of this journey but in the end all roads are leading to a common language around writing for the staff and students. As we conclude this year, we have developed a new understanding about the writing demands and how it will look a little different with the Common Core Standards.

During our last collaboration we discussed how each trimester will focus on one text type per trimester: Opinion/Argument, Informative/Explanatory, and Narrative. We also decided that we would try to fit an on-demand writing assessment into those time periods, as we reflected on the work that was shared from Sue Kaiser. Lastly, it was reiterated that writing with the Common Core Standards in mind is more about informational writing that is accomplished across the content areas with a huge emphasis on text dependent evidence or support.

Although rolling out a new writing program is not easy, I am proud of the work that our school has accomplished this year towards this goal. I will be posting examples of writing and writing lessons from the classroom for the remainder of the year. We need to celebrate this work, learn from our colleagues and then work to make it better!