Student Voice: Hands on Learning

By Mark Heintz

I have been going around school stopping students at random to hear what they feel teacher's do that impacts their learning.  It is so important to continually ask the population we serve to get their feedback on what helps them master the content and skills we are trying to teach.  The responses have been so insightful into what works for each of the unique learners that enter our classroom and can continue to drive the methods we use to instruct them.  Once I captured the student's voice, I tracked down the teacher to share and get their input on the practice that was highlighted. 

The student I asked in the video highlights the way Mrs. Glosson uses Play-Doh to help demonstrate difficult topics in Biology. 

Here is Mrs. Glosson explaining why she uses Play-Doh to help students learn.  

Student Voice: Questioning and Student Feedback

By Mark Heintz

I have been going around school stopping students at random to hear what they feel teacher's do that impacts their learning.  It is so important to continually ask the population we serve to get their feedback on what helps them master the content and skills we are trying to teach.  The responses have been so insightful into what works for each of the unique learners that enter our classroom and can continue to drive the methods we use to instruct them.  Once I captured the student's voice, I tracked down the teacher to share and get their input on the practice that was highlighted. 

The student I asked in the video highlights the way Mrs. Perkins questions at the beginning and the end of each class and allows time for students to process the material from the day before.

Here is Mrs. Perkins explaining how and why she uses the questioning strategy at the beginning and end of class. 

Summer Reading 2016 Kick-Off!

By Kim Miklusak

Today we kicked off our Summer Reading 2016!

A few months ago students voted on a theme--Overcoming Obstacles.  The teacher Literacy Committee led by our API Megan Knight then went through various genres and selected several book options.  Students were invited either by various committees or randomly during lunch periods to do "speed dating" to help narrow down the choices to one or two from each genre.

Ultimately, seven books were chosen.  Literacy Committee members and students worked together to create promos for each of the books.  Students then responded to a Google Form in order to select the book they would like to read this summer.  Here are this year's promos!  As you can see we tried to focus on "If you liked..." recommendations.

1.  Positive by Paige Rawl
2.  I Beat the Odds  by Michael Oher
3.  The Book of the Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez
4.  We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
5.  The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
6.  We Were Here by Matt de la Pena
7.  The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

This year we are happy to announce two new exciting updates to our summer reading program.  First, each student at Elk Grove HS received a copy of the summer reading book of their choosing!  Additionally, we are going to host our first Million Minutes of Reading in May.  Each day in the month of May everyone in the building will "Stop, Drop, and Read."

As we did last year, many teachers are "sponsoring" a book for their team or club this year.  We hope to continue to build our committee of readers!  Also like last year we had a kick-off event where teachers stopped by to pick up their book selection, enjoy some cake, and take some photo booth photos with the books they chose.  Check out our tweets from the event at our hashtag #EGSR2016!

Student Roles in the Classroom

Written by Quinn Loch

About two weeks ago, Elk Grove, Wheeling, and Rolling Meadows High Schools attended an institute day with Eric Jensen about brain-based learning. Throughout the day we explored how the brain works in the context of education and learning. Personally, gaining insight into how the brain best gathers new information and makes connections based on state of mind has been helpful in guiding my instruction.

To be honest, when I first saw that we had five and half hours of a guest speaker on the agenda, I was doubtful of my own ability to stay engaged and awake for that length of time. When the day started, the 10 people at our table were able to pick from various roles for the day. Each role required a specific responsibility. Throughout the day, the presenter asked specific roles to engage the group in some way. I had the role of "summarizer" and had to periodically lead a discussion with the group about the main ideas of what we just covered. Other roles in the group included a leader and a someone to facilitate the "stretch breaks."

These roles not only held everyone in the group accountable and increased communication, but everyone in the group stayed engaged throughout the morning and afternoon. There was rarely a time period of more than 3 minutes in which there wasn't some break in the presentation that required conversations within the group, movement throughout the room, or back-and-forth feedback.

I decided to adopt the idea of student roles in the freshman biology classrooms later that week with hopes of increasing student engagement. We had just finished up the first quarter and were due for a change of seats. Since my biology classes are split up into groups of four, I made the following roles...

Student Roles in Biology

I gave my students the option to pick their roles within the group and made it clear that we would be switching the roles up from time to time. I made sure to have each role engaged at least once for the first few days. I'd be lying if I said that there was 100% buy-in right away. It has taken some time for students to adopt their responsibilities, but I have found the overall affect to be positive.

Like any new idea or strategy, it is going to some time to work out the details and I may change up roles or responsibilities as the year goes on. I look forward to the continued use of this strategy in my classroom and hope to shape it in a way that increases student engagement, communication, and ownership. I will follow up with my progress/struggles/thoughts later in the year.