Professional days and the Arts

Yesterday was a half day for students and the afternoon was a professional day for the staff. I was excited about this day. I had worked with our arts integration teacher to bring in Sean Layne. What an amazing and powerful day.

I have already taken a handful of classes with Sean and knew that he would be teaching nothing new to me. However, I still learned a metric boatload. We were fortunate to have Sean work with three different grade levels of kids. Seeing him work with students is awesome for many reasons. The first is you validate much of what you have seen in your class (behavior) and the second is you see the potential of your students.
However, I feel as if I need to apologize after seeing Sean work with this group of eighth grade girls. I told Sean that they have all had Tableau with me and should be able to get through the skill building more quickly than the younger grades that haven't had Tableau. Boy, was I wrong. He was not set up for success due to the day. However, there is no excuse for students to act the way they did. If you ever read this Sean, I apologize.

Enough about that. I just have to say. Read, see, take a class about and with Sean. Your teaching will be changed forever.

Checking and/or correcting homework

Checking homework can be a painful experience. It can waste time and get the class off to a slow start. However, I have a few different ways that I think are useful and present student-centered learning opportunities.

I will share one way with you today.
1. Using the cooperation challenge from Sean Layne's Tableau, I split the class into two equal halves.
2. Split the homework problems in half and assign them to specific halves.
3. Each group is responsible for correcting their assigned problems. Everyone in the group must be able to explain how to come to the correct answer. (I continue to use Layne's Tableau ideas throughout this lesson. About how you are responsible for the person next to you, etc.)
4. Walk around during this discussion time. Ask good questions and check their final answers.
5. Once each group is ready, I go back to the cooperation challenge and have the students partner up with someone from the opposite group.
6. Check the other half of your homework with student's new partner.

This activity allows students to move, talk, and most importantly explain. Conversation is so important in our learning, yet we hardly practice this in school. This also puts the pressure on students to do their homework because if they did not do it, they let their group down. It is also quick to see who did not do their homework from their discussion in their groups.