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.