Weeks 15 & 16 - Holiday Festivities

We made it! Winter Break is finally here! Rejoice! 

Let's rewind the week...
Our 7th graders worked on gingerbread house themed activities in preparation for building actual gingerbread houses today. We spent a lot of time using drill and repetition with equations and inequalities. We also incorporated a lot of movement and hands-on activities to reinforce the solving process. Our favorite activity (aside from actually building the houses) involved the kiddos rotating through stations where they solved a problem and were given a part of the gingerbread house to decorate and attach to the house. 






Then we surprised them today with building real gingerbread houses. Take a look at the creativity!!






We've talked a lot about the ease in which we can do stations in our new active learning center. The tables, the chairs, and the verb boards have become vital teaching tools... after having this classroom for only 3 months, we already can't remember how we ever taught without them. Steelcase's grant is currently open. We strongly encourage you to apply. Never, ever did we think we would win and here we are! It has transformed our teaching and the student's learning and engagement. Click the link and apply, you've got nothing to lose! 

Week 14 - We Are Official...

It finally feels official! Our Active Learning Center sign was posted outside of our classroom and it looks awesome! Can you imagine being so excited about a sign? WE ARE!! 

I don't think our students even noticed... nor did they notice the day the maintenance men came to install it. Our kiddos are so used to us hosting visitors in the classroom that they aren't even bothered with the drilling and all that took place to install the sign. It's a good thing 😊

This week the 7th graders continued working on 2 step equations. We decided to take it back to the old school days and play some bingo. I think we both forgot how much kids love bingo! Overall, they are doing a great job with equations. 

The 8th graders are knee deep into our functions unit. We've done 2 rounds of mini-stations with them so far (3 stations per 1-hour class).  We both agreed that this unit was a little easier last year since we looped with our students. But we are making our way through it. 

We want to take a moment to discuss our seating. After having the classroom for a few months now and seeing the impact that flexible seating has on students, we really want to change things up a bit for the second semester. We are currently in the process of trying to get the couch and the campfire seating section front and center. It is proving to be a bit of a challenge to make sure everyone can see the board at all times (even though the board is not used daily for instruction, it is still used for the morning message, to do list, etc.). Luckily everything is easy to move. We will hopefully be able to share some pictures of our newest set up after winter break. 

Weeks 12 & 13

Long time, no see! Week 12 was a short week for us due to fall break. We hope everyone had a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving with family and friends!

On to Week 13... Oh my goodness! This week has been so hectic. Not only did we have to plan and prep for stations for our kiddos, record videos for our blended lessons but we also hosted a visiting county in our classroom on Wednesday AND prepped and led three different sets of PD trainings for our staff on Thursday and Friday. Whew!! But, it was all SOOOOOOO worth it. The PD trainings went so well. Melissa and I lead three one-hour sessions on active learning strategies and we made sure to make the content relevant to our audience.  We trained the science, English and history departments (we trained the Math department a few weeks ago). Making three content specific trainings was a lot of work but we got it done and it totally paid off. Teachers were engaged and excited! We left the trainings feeling positive and hopeful that teachers would step out of their comfort zones and implement some of the strategies we shared. 

Next week we will the blog will return to student focused activities. Hopefully (fingers crossed) we will have a surprise to share with you towards the end of December!

Week 11 - Pear Deck

We are so excited to share with you our new best friend from google... PEAR DECK! Some days (few and far between) you really just need to do some direct teaching. Well, pear deck (from google) allows you take a boring old powerpoint and turn it into an engaging and interactive lesson so easily. If you have a google account simply open up google slides and click on the "add on" tab... search for pear deck and install. If you've ever used Kahoot - the format is similar but it isn't set up to be a game. However, it is set up to give you real-time feedback on whether or not your students are understanding the material you are presenting. Let's walk through it...

Once you've assembled your google slides presentation (and added in assessment slides), you'll need to present it in pear deck mode. The students will log in and go to peardeck.com/join and enter the code. 

Upon signing in, students will rate how they are feeling... we've found this really helpful in knowing who is having a bad day and might need a little extra cheer. 

There are many features including a lock screen, which prevents students from moving ahead and draws their attention to your screen. As you move through the presentation, students interact with the slides. You can use multiple choice, drawings responses, drag items, short or long answer questions.

Here is the really cool part. You'll be able to see the responses in real time! You'll get immediate feedback on how well your students are understanding the information being presented. There is also this cool feature called "temperature check" where you can ask the students how they feel about the material (thumbs up/thumbs down style). 

This is an example of how the responses can be displayed. You can also see each individual student's answer. 

Our students loved it! They were active participants in a lesson that normally might have been kind-of drab. It also gave us the ability to spot check and problem solve with students immediately. We were able to clear up any misconceptions, correct any mistakes, and answer individual concerns immediately! If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to us! We'd love to help 😊

Week 10 - Active Learning Symposium in Michigan

There's so much to say, we don't even know where to begin! We were greeted with gifts and personalized notes in our hotel rooms. We felt so welcome from the moment we stepped off the plane.


We spent the morning catching up on some much-needed sleep before heading over to Steelcase University for dinner and keynote speaker, Jeff Selingo. Jeff's message was so eye-opening.We spent the evening talking about all the questions that his speech raised within us regarding education. 

Steelcase was also nice enough to provide us all with Jeff's new book, There is Life after High School,  which he personalized to each of us.


We spent Friday touring both of Steelcase's campus buildings, networking, sharing ideas and hearing inspirational stories from grant winners. 

Julie enjoying some private time

The walkway down to the cafeteria. 

Our only regret is that the symposium was only a day and a half. We could have easily spent 3 days! The symposium was unlike any other professional conference we have ever attended. We were given the top treatment! We all felt like mini-celebrities. We are so grateful for the Steelcase team and for all the grant winners we were able to connect with. 

Dr. Julie Marshall, so inspiring!

Graphic note taking

We spent two days feeling so excited and inspired. We can't wait to go back next year!

Week 9 - Tom Turkey & Battleship

I have to start by giving credit to Lindsay Perro on TpT. We used her Building Frank activity a few weeks ago with our 7th graders and it was so engaging and full of content! The kids loved it! So, we used her activity as inspiration for our Building Tom Turkey activity that we created this week.The activity will be available in our TpT store next week. 


Each student received a paper plate. We had all of the other supplies (scissors, glue, coloring supplies) for them at each station. They rotated through 8 stations where they solved a word problem involving fractions, decimals and percents. The answer to the word problem determined the color of the feather they used to attach to the paper plate to build Tom. There was a station to determine the color of his body and his nose, also. We used the last station as an extra decorating station so that the students could personalized the turkey. They had so much fun! We took a topic, word problems with rationals numbers, that is typically pretty bland and turned it into a hands-on station activity that resulted in high engagement and energy! They worked so well together in their small teams and their turkeys turned out great!


In 8th grade we continued working on solving multi-step equations. We added the next step to the process of moving the variable to one side. We spent a lot of time doing example after example. We ended the week with a game of Battleship. The students worked in teams to solve the equations in order to get a chance to reveal a ship. This game is always a huge hit with our students. The template is a smart document. We simply insert our problems and rearrange the ships for each class/period. We weren't able to get through every problem but each team was able to reveal at least one ship. One of our favorite things about these games is seeing the students come together and help each other. We will definitely use this game again in the future with a different topic. 

Week 8 - Math, Art and Food

The 7th graders participated in blended lessons this week to learn how to compare and order rational numbers... WITHOUT calculators! One of the reasons that we are such huge fans of blended lessons is that every student is engaged in the instruction and note taking. Look at the picture below, EVERYONE is engaged! They have the ability to pause the instruction (video), rewind and rewatch until it makes sense. This is also a great way for our students to practice note-taking, at their own pace. 

One of the follow-up activities included artwork. We have some very creative students this year that really excel with creative projects. Students were tasked to create a picture using a variety of colors. Then they had to determine the equivalent fraction, decimal and percents for each color (number of squares) they used in their pictures.

Food was the theme this week with the 8th graders. We started our unit on solving multi-step equations. When I say multi-step I mean MULTI step....6, 7, 8+ steps. In the past, this has been a unit that students typically struggle with due to all of the steps and the exceptions to the procedure. We decided to break down each step, spending a few days on each step to really reinforce each small part of the process. We started with learning how to combine like terms. In order to make it memorable, we incorporated "Lucky Charms' into the lesson. The students sorted the marshmallows in order to identify like terms, determine which marshmallows could be combined, etc.

After mastering combining like terms, the students moved on to the Distributive Property. For the intro, we used everyone's favorite fast food restaurant McDonald's (truth be told I much prefer Chic-Fila or Chipotle but McDonald's works better for the lesson and all the students are familiar with it).We used value meals to help show how numbers are distributed. Breaking down the steps seems to have helped. Now we just have to work on making sure the students avoid careless mistakes (those pesky negatives).  

Week 7 - Steelcase in the House!

The past two weeks have been super busy. We have been hosting guests in our classroom each Thursday. Last week, I forgot to mention, that we had the superintendent visit us! This week Steelcase and Creative came for an observation. It went so well! We had such a great time chatting with Kevin after the observation. Our kiddos were super and showed off all of their skills!


The 8th graders did a fun activity with lock-boxes... our take on a mini break out room activity. The students solved inequalities in order to figure out the combinations to the locks. The last box that they opened revealed a special treat. We did this activity as part of stations so it was timed. The students really got into it and definitely felt the pressure of having a timer. We will definitely be incorporating more of these activities into our lessons. The students rotated through 3 stations during the class period.



The 7th graders got into the Halloween spirit by building "Frank" (Frankenstein). We found this activity on Lindsay Perro's TPT site. The students evaluated expressions to determine how to assemble Frank. One student didn't even want to go to lunch because he was having such a good time with the activity. We set it up as centers. The students enjoyed moving from center to center to complete the task and add a "body part" to Frank. We will definitely work on developing some of our own activities that follow the same type of set up.

Week 6 - Finally Fall!

Algebra links from Didax Education.

Fall is finally here! We kicked off the week with a round of mini-stations for the 8th graders. We figured we might as well join in on the candy season and incorporate it into a station. The 8th graders worked on replacement with variables and order of operations by using M&M's to determine variables. They used algebra tiles/links from Didax Education to play a domino-like game. Lastly, they used formulas to practice substituting variables. I know I sound like a broken record when I say how easily stations are to set up with our rolling tables and chairs, however, IT IS JUST SO EASY! We save so much time setting up stations and it is super easy for us to transition from 8th grade to 7th grade in the three minutes that the students have to change classes.

M&M substitution - everyone needs a little chocolate now and then.

In 7th grade, the students participated in individualized instruction by watching videos of the lessons on order of operations with integers. I know I'm probably repeating myself again but having a collaborative class with VERY diverse learners it is often difficult to address everyone's needs with a traditional lecture. With a video, each student has control over the pace of the lesson. They are able to practice their note-taking skills because they are able to pause and rewind the video as needed. Also, for students that may need additional time or extra practice, the video provides the needed flexibility. We ended the week with a game of "trashketball," Halloween style. Students answered questions to earn paper balls to throw into the trash/bucket. Points were awarded for the number of baskets made. The students really liked this game and I see us playing it again in the future.

Week 5 - You guessed it! More Stations!!

Our station rotations complete with transition music.

QR code hunt with ipods

Using versatiles with integer word problems. 

Whew! It was a fun filled week that went by quickly. The 7th graders spent a few days rotating through six review stations. Again, I can’t express how nice it is to be able to easily set up for stations with our new furniture.  Chairs and tables are on wheels are such a time saver! In previous years, we would spend about 30-45 minutes after school setting up stations, moving heavy furniture, hanging signs, etc. This year stations take us about 5 minutes to set up.Through stations we were able to see new students emerging as leaders. It is always interesting to watch the different dynamics within the groups. There’s always a few students that break out of their shells and surprise us! We’ve done stations many times in the past but this was our first time doing them with 7th graders in quite a while (we taught 8th grade last year). So, we both realized the importance of assigning roles to the individual group members… something that is typically not an issue for us in 8th grade.

Integer models!

8th grade spent the week evaluating expressions. We utilized a blended learning approach for notes and instruction. We are a 1:1 classroom, students were able to use the chromebooks and headphones to watch a video and take notes. This approach provides individual assistance to students and allows them to learn at their own pace. They can pause, rewind, or even fast forward the video as needed. After the video we have the students complete a google form which provides us with immediate feedback on how well the students are grasping the material. If we see that a student is struggling with the content (through the google form) then we pull them in for on-one-on remediation right then. The instruction was followed up with a differentiated leaf activity tailored to the student's ability.

Week 4 - Stations Galore!

The 8th graders spent the week rotating through several stations. Each station was set up to be interactive and hands-on. The stations included the real number system, square roots, and ordering rational numbers. Setting up stations was a breeze thanks to the rolling tables. Additionally, having the large mobile whiteboards on wheels helped to divide the stations and display directions. We also used the verb boards as dividers by snapping them into the tables.

Students enjoyed moving from station to station with transition music (Justin Timberlake). Using music makes station rotation fun (they dance and sing) and provides a clear time frame… when the music stops they know they are to be at the station and reading directions. Since we did these stations as a culminating activity to our unit, students were self-sufficient and we were able to walk around and monitor groups as needed.

Students estimating square roots with a number line. 

In 7th grade, students continue working on integer operations with models and word problems. Students participated in blending learning lessons where they were able to work at their own pace to complete notes and practice problems with direct, immediate feedback. Afterwards, we played games to reinforce integer rules. Once again we were able to move the tables to the sides of the room and utilize the floor to play with integer rules. To prepare for a quiz on Friday, the students did a QR code hunt around the room on Thursday. Students were able to use the ipads/ipods to complete the code hunt. Having the thread system in the floor, with the ability to plug in devices anywhere in the room, made it convenient to have the technology located in the middle of the room.

Week 3 - Tables on the Move, Kids on the Move

Our 7th graders continued working on absolute value and perfect squares during the first half of the week. Having the large tables made it easy for the students to spread out their game pieces for a memory game. There’s also plenty of room on each side of the table for two students to sit comfortably.

Students playing Memory

By midweek we introduced integers. The students participated in a blended learning lesson on adding integers. Students were then asked to create their own videos showing how to model adding integers with color chips and numbers lines. Having the verb boards be able to snap into the table provided each group (partner) with the ability to create their own white board where they could stand and model/teach the lesson to be recorded. They did an excellent job with using math appropriate vocabulary (zero pairs). The students enjoyed being the “teacher” and were super creative with their video/lessons.

Using the verb boards to record videos

Using ipads and verb boards to record videos

Our 8th graders spent the week ordering rational numbers. We were able to use the verb boards for individual and group practice. The week ended with the students rearranging the classroom for a game of Around the World with twist. The tables were arranged in a horseshoe manner with all of the chairs pushed to the sides of the room. Students were able to stand at the tables, complete their problem, and then easily move to the next spot. The competition style activity had everyone engaged and up on their feet moving around every few minutes.

Verb boards and ordering rational numbers

Horseshoe arrangement for a game with lots of movement

Week 2 - We're Just Getting Started

We spent the first part of the week establishing classroom guidelines and coming up with the various table arrangements we would be using this year. The students practiced moving the tables to the different layouts. We discussed the benefits of having different classroom layouts.

Students participating in a real number sort.

Hot Seat on the floor with tables pushed to the sides.

By midweek we started our first units. The 8th graders spent the rest of the week working with the real number system. They worked on sorting numbers into the correct subsets. We ended the week playing a super fun game called Hot Seat, where students race to identify real numbers.  Having the ability to roll the tables and chairs out the way made it so much easier to play the game on the floor. The competition was fierce. Everyone was engaged!

Students ready to play Hot Seat.

The 7th graders spent the remainder of the week investigating perfect squares and absolute value.

We both noticed that students seem to be much more productive in the new space. Having the ability to swivel in the chairs is a huge bonus for students with attention/focus issues.

7th graders using Cheez-It's to investigate perfect squares.