BACK TO SCHOOL!

It is August, which means it's school time! I just finished the first full week of school, and I am exhausted!!
I am teaching 4 preps this semester. Which is nothing new. However, I added AP US History to my course load this year. I am pretty excited about teaching APUSH this year. I am completely overwhelmed, but excited!

On the first day of school this year, I gave my students a Learning Style Inventory (LSI). I think it is important to know how my kids learn best, but I also think it is important THEY know how they learn best! I did this last year for the first time, and I really liked having that information to form lessons throughout the year.

I found a LSI I liked online. It was a short 24 questions about how they learn. They scored the inventory on their own. Some scored equally in multiple categories. I explained to them we all use all the methods to learn, we are just determining how we learn best. I had them keep the actual inventory, they just had to tell me their top style.

As we go through the year I will use the outcomes of the LSI to create differentiated assignments for my students, create small groups, and simply to make myself more aware not everyone is a visual learner, like myself! 


Happy Learning!!

President's Day P.D.

Happy President's Day! A celebration of our founding father, George Washington. His birthday is later this week, and the government wants to celebrate! So they gave us a day off! Except ... I am working. :) Those of you not working, enjoy your day off.

The good news to working on President's Day, if we are looking for good news,  I learned about a few tools today that I can use in my classes, and to continue my professional development.
When you find something interesting - you should share it and tell someone! So that is what this post is about.

Today during a PD session geared towards using technology in the classroom, I was introduced to Edmodo.  Its a teacher facebook :) I haven't spent a lot of time with it yet, BUT the part I have found to be helpful is the PLC groups. I have subscribed to the professional development and social studies groups. Teachers can post questions, post ideas, help one another out. Pretty great. There are a lot of other perks to the site, but I haven't used them yet. I am looking forward to exploring more. Eventually, I would like to get my students signed up and we can communicate through the site for assignments / discussion boards/ reading analysis... the options are endless.

Specifically for the Social Studies teachers:  http://sheg.stanford.edu/
I have seen this site before, but haven't spent a lot of time on it. After spending some time on the website today, I found a lot of great materials to use in class on our next unit - The Cold War. This site uses documents for students to analyze. They are given an essential question - and by using the documents they are given, they form an opinion.  It is aligned with Common Core - which, of course, is awesome!

Any other good recommendations? Leave a comment, and let me know!