Happy Fall Yall!

Swinging into September!

A New Year

End of the Year

Wow!! We can't believe the end of the year is here already! 👀  The second half of the year ended up being just as busy as the first. Time flies when you're having fun, right? 

So, let's wrap up our first year in an Active Learning Classroom with a few highlights: 

• Presented at the Virginia Council of Teachers of Mathematics (VCTM) and a tri-district STEM Summit. This summer we will also present at the Virginia School Boards Association (VSBA) Conference on Education
• Attended the Steelcase Symposium in Michigan. This summer we will also attend the Virginia Middle and High School Principals Conference and Exposition (VASSP)
• Held several professional training sessions on active learning strategies. 
• Hosted several guests in our room from within the county and state.
• MOST importantly, we had a great group of kids that we were able to connect with and grow!

This year was such a huge learning experience. Just when we thought we couldn't possibly take on one more thing, we did and we rocked it! We can't lie, there were times when stress levels were at an all-time high and it felt like we spent 80 hours a week at work. In the end, it was all worth it. We've grown more as teachers and professionals this year than any other year. We stepped outside of our comfort zone and tried something new. And it was a great success. Our students learned AND they were happy & safe! We feel like we were really able to connect and form lifelong relationships with our students. We are so excited to loop with our 7th graders next year. 

Thank you again Steelcase and Creative Office Environments! We can't wait to see what next year holds! 

Don't forget to check us out on Twitter and Instagram  for summer updates.

The Amazing Race

With Spring Break so close we knew we wanted to do something super fun and engaging this week. We teamed up with a science teacher to create an Amazing Race style activity. Let us say up front that this took A LOT of planning and prep but it was totally worth it. So, let's break it down step by step...

Our recording sheet. 

1. We knew we would need extra help with supervision since the students would be "racing" throughout the school building. We sent out emails to all of our parents asking for volunteers to come in and monitor each station/location (about 2 weeks prior to the activity).
2. With the science teacher, we discussed our students and how we should group them. Together we decided that it would be best to have two different paths in order to incorporate more challenging questions.We colored coded the paths. 
3. We decided on the various locations around the school that the students would need to visit. Then we created the clues for each location. 
4. The questions were actually the easy part! We made the questions and laminated them. 
5. We really wanted to make sure that each group (4 students) had a unique path throughout the school. This was challenging... we came up with 12 different paths throughout the school. 
6. Then the real organization came with setting up the clues. This where our parent volunteers were a tremendous help! We numbered each clue and put it into an envelope. Then sorted the clues based on locations, using bins/tubs. 

7. We created u-turns (if they didn't get the question right the first time then they had to go back and try again) and roadblocks (if they didn't answer correctly on the second try then they had a 30 second time penalty). 

8. Our parent volunteers set up at each station to check student work, monitor, and pass out the next clue. 

On the first day of the activity, we combined classes (about 48 kids) and went over expectations and directions. Then each group came up with their individual team names and created name tags. We had the students wear the name tags while racing so that other teachers in the school would know why they were in the hallway without passes (we are a hall pass school).

On race day, we met in the foyer of our school to give out the first clue... and the race was on! It was so much fun and the perfect activity for the week before break. We were so impressed with our students! We will definitely plan another activity like this in the future.