Shout out to our fearless leader, Mrs. O’Neal, for coming into Leadership and Service today to talk about how our class can help with our school thrift store, Threads 150! Over the course of this trimester, Ss will be helping to organize and update our store to get it ready for opening!
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We do ZERO language arts activities the first week of school. What do we do instead? Community building! Today, Ss worked in teams to complete the marshmallow challenge! They had 15 minutes to build the tallest, free-standing structure they could. The winner was 17.5 inches in height! 😎

Leadership and Service students kicked off the year with a team building activity! Their mission? Work together to build a bridge that can stand on its own using 25 straws, two rubber bands, and a yard of painter’s tape! The catch? They had to do this in 15 minutes! They killed it!

Collaborating with the Ohio Department of Education as a member of their Teacher Leader Network has been such a bright spot! I get to work with the most amazing teacher leaders in the state on understanding policy, driving initiatives, and working on best practices for classrooms and kids ❤️

You can find me leadin’ those staff meetings ✊🏻✌🏻

They’ve gone from me having to call their parents freshman year, to eating whatever was in my snack/candy drawer, to growing up and signing to play college football today. Oh, and they’ve gotten kind of tall 😂 I couldn’t be more proud of you two. Go do big things 🏈✊🏽👏🏻 #gang

After learning about non-fiction signposts & Extreme & Absolute Language, Ss completed stations over The Mona Lisa Vanishes where they read excerpts from the book, identified where they saw examples of the signpost, & then completed a “Note Swap” in which the collaborated w/ their peers 😍

Whole-class reads can be both engaging AND informative! This week, we kicked off our third quarter non-fiction unit by beginning The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day! Ss were hooked from the beginning, asked SO MANY great questions, and made a TON of great connections! 🤓📚💡

This week, Ss entered the da Vinci training academy to see if they could create a masterpiece worthy of the Louvre! They were led through art by a description I gave them that included only verbal descriptions & no visuals. Little did they know they were drawing his most famous work—The Mona Lisa! 😍

Before beginning our next while-class read, The Mona Lisa Vanishes by Nicholas Day, Ss worked in small groups to complete station work that helped them to develop background knowledge on the text and time period! They learned about the Renaissance, da Vinci’s life, and who inspired the painting! 👨🏻‍🎨

Student choice in note taking, learning, and mastery can be pretty neat when we give up control of what it looks like 😍📖📝

How do you get Ss to invest & engage in reading? Today, Ss completed Question Trail races to measure comprehension & foster collaboration over the end of our whole-class read, Projekt 1065! The trail provided us both with excitement AND immediate feedback regarding understanding. It’s a win-win!

It’s been a connections kind of week! Yesterday, Ss created open-thinking hexagons while reading the next section of Projekt 1065. Today, they collaborated with classmates on their ideas and made connections to each other using our hexagonal thinking wall to display their thought processes! 🗣️🤔👫

Sequencing events in a story—group choice style! This week, Ss worked (unassisted) in teams to use choice in their learning. They created a plot mountain together based on what they’d learned in class and what worked best for them! Today, they worked to check answers and defend their ideas!

It’s fitting that my first post is not about me—it’s about my kids! They made pure magic yesterday during our interactive “note swap.” Lots of movement, choice, and great ideas taking place 🤩