Try It On Friday

Last night I attended pypchat for the first time. The hardest part for me was trying to remember to put the hashtag on the end of my tweets. I am going to have to see if there is a way to get those automatically put in.

One idea put forth by DwyerTeacher was to have the students draw the Central Idea at the end of the unit. Fortunately, he works with me so I was able to ask him some more questions before the day started.

This Friday was the final day of the unit, and it was a wrap up day. I had some students who were finished with their work before the other students. I told them to think about the unit's Central Idea, and draw a picture about it. After brainstorming and talking about it a little, they turned the units CI from "The natural features of the Earth have been formed over time and are still changing," to "The Earth is changing every second".

The three of them worked together on it, which I encouraged, but they ended up all creating the exact same thing. I will remember to tell them to brainstorm together and then do their own work next time. Actually, next time I am going to change several things next unit.

The point is that I joined in a conversation for an hour and got several new ideas for my teaching. Where was this a few years ago?

The Japan Chapter of the ASCD has weekend technology workshops called "Try It On Monday". I might start calling pypchat "Try It On Friday".