Growth Mindset: Successful Students with Jot Thoughts

 

During the first few weeks back to school, it's so important to build a sense of community and belonging amongst your students.  You want them to feel that your classrom is a safe place to learn and share.  Through all the team building and classroom building activities that I engage my students in the first few weeks, I think it's equally important to place an emphasis on Growth Mindset.  We know that your mindset can change or determine your outcome and success, and that's so very true for our students as well!

Being as though we are an AVID school for many years now, one of the first activities we do at the start of the year is something called the "Successful Student." For this activity, students will brainstorm words that show what it means to be a successful student.  I copy the outline of a person onto cardstock and here they decorate the person to look like themselves and fill the poster with words that describe being a successful student.

I incorporated Growth Mindset into this activity by asing them to think of things they feel they're not good at "yet" or things they want to become better at as a studnet this year.

I used a collaboratve learning Kagan strategy called "Jot Thoughts" to help guide and facilitate discussions about growth mindset and what it means to be a successful student.  You can see the pictures I've included of this Jot Thoughts strategy as my students engaging in these discussions the first week of school!  You can also see the photos of the finished product of the "Successful Students."

This "Successful Student" activity is just one example of a very simple way to use collaborate learning (Kagan- Jot Thoughts), and Growth Mindset to help students engage in positive thinking. It's also a super fun activity, helps them to learn how to work together, and not to mention they look super cute up on the wall!

Collaboratively Learning,

Megan Brown

megan.brown@omsd.net

How-To: A Quick Guide to Using Nearpod and Great Minds In-Sync (Eureka Math) Platforms

 I'm sure at this point, a year into the pandemic, you have watched a lot of "how-to" videos and learned many many different platforms.  I just thought I'd take a minute to share with you how I use the platforms Nearpod, and Great Minds In-Sync(Eureka Math) in my virtual classroom.  So this more of how I specifially use the platforms throughout my virtual instruction, and less of a how to get started type of a thing!

Nearpod

Nearpod is a digitial platfrom that allows you to make any of your lessons interactive.  You can use any lessons you have already created (ppt, google slides, word, even YouTube vids!) and make them interactive.  You can also create lessons through Nearpod.  It really increases student engagement, especially through the use of Collaborate boards, or the Draw It board feature (like a digital whiteboard).  

I create Collaborate boards across the curriculum.  I make them for Socio-Emotional Learning (morning circle discussions).  I make them for most componenets of a Eureka Math lesson: Application Problem, Student Debrief, and Exit Tickets.  I also create them for ELA to use with our Wonders curriculum for the "Making Connections" questions that are throughout the anthology stories.  I also create them with the vocab skills in mind, such as: similes, metaphors, greek roots etc.  

Additionally I often create a collaborate board for a digital version of the Kagan strategy, Jot Thoughts.  This is a strategy traditionally done in the classroom where kids work in table groups with sticky notes.  So instead, this is done with digital sticky notes on the collaborate board. Watch the video below to see a more detailed explanation of this strategy as well as examples of the above mentioned ways I use Nearpod.

Great Minds In-Sync (Eureka Math)

Great Minds is the parent company to Eureka Math.  They have created a full digital, interactive version of the Eureka Math Curriculum called "In-Sync."  This platform has been a life-saver as they have high quality engaging lesson videos.  These encompass the full concept development component of a Eureka math lesson.  Also, all student pages: Sprints, problem sets, succeed pages, etc are included as writeable PDFs, which make it really easy to use with google classroom.  Watch my video below where I talk more about how I specifically use the different features within the In-Sync site.

If you have ever considered using either of these platforms: Nearpod or In-Sync, but weren't really sure how exactly to implement in your virtual classroom, I hope this helped! Both of these platforms have been a life-saver for online learning and have really helped me boost engagment with my virtual lessons.

Virtually Learning,

Megan Brown

megan.brown@omsd.net

Building Background knowledge with Kagan

Building background knowledge is something we often skip over or forget about due to pacing and time constraints.  Often we want to just dive right into that days learning.  However, in an effort to both provide engagement on the new topic being learned, while also providing support for your English learners, it really is an important, yet simple step that we should take.

If you're looking for a cooperative learning structure to help you support building background knowledge when introducing a new topic, there are several Kagan structures you can use.  I am going to talk about just a couple of them here.  Like with all Kagan cooperative learning structures, these support learners at all academic levels, while also providing engagement, which research shows is key to student learning and success.

Three Step Interview
This structure is super easy and fun to use during Day 1 of the ELA Wonders curriculum when you introduce the new Essential Question for that week. In our Wonders curriculum, on Day 1 of each week it has us "Introduce the concept."  This is  where you could easily take the essential question/concept and turn it into a question the students can relate to, and then implement this Three-Step Interview process.

 For instance, in Wonders 5th Grade Unit 3 Week 4 the Essential Question is, "What benefits come from people working as a group?"  You might then pose the question to the students, "Tell about a time where you succeeded at something when working together in a group."  You would pose the question, and either give students time to think, or have them quickly write their thoughts down.  Then proceed with the Three-Step interview process.  To summarize, Partner A would ask partner B the question and then visa versa.  They would then pair up with the other A/B pair at their table and go around the table sharing not their own thoughts, but rather their partners thoughts.  A very quick and easy way to get students engaged, talking, and sharing in groups!

Jot Thoughts

Jot Thoughts is another fun Kagan structure than can be implemented in the beginning stages of building background knowledge of a topic or concept. Jot thoughts is a fun and  engaging way to have students brainstorm ideas about a topic.  For instance, in Wonders on Day 1 where you would introduce the topic, you always see the word web with a word (based on the essential question) in the middle.  It asks students to brainstorm words they know about that topic.  So in place of this, I will often use this Jot thoughts structure.  If we take the above mentioned essential question, the word provided in the word web for that week is "teamwork." So I will set a couple of decks of sticky notes on each table group and then ask them write down as many words, phrases, or ideas that come to mind when they think of "teamwork."  They are supposed to announce the word they're writing as they write it to prevent duplicate words.  You can then extend this Jot Thoughts activity into many other things.  For instance, once time is up, I will often times have the students work in their teams to categorize their words and develop names for the categories.  I then might ask them to do a free write about teamwork using as many of the word they can, etc.  It's fun, engaging, and gets students ready to learn more about the new concept that week.  Its also another opportunity to provide students with collaborative talk time, which supports ALL learners at ALL levels.

Additionally, this structure could also be used as a culminating activity at the end of the learning, to summarize what was learned about the topic!

Collaboratively Learning,

Megan Brown

megan.brown@omsd.net