Just a few ideas I've stolen from Pinterest...

So, like most everyone else in teacher blog land, I live on Pinterest. I have an app on my iphone and I use it constantly on commercial breaks! This guy, who has yet to be named, was an inspired by someone on Pinterest who I can't think of at the moment! But it really helped my kids remember the parts of a letter!

Isn't he cute!? I mean, he has a big ole head that isn't really proportional to the rest of his body, but who cares! 

I actually did not find this next idea on Pinterest. I actually came up with it all on my own! =)  I gave my kids a learning style survey during the first week of school and then I turned it into a consensogram! 

This idea came to me this week when I was trying to figure out what to do with my students South Carolina landform maps. I decided I would just make a collage out of them and make one large map! 

I will post more from my world later this weekend! 

Now, if you'll excuse me, my glass of wine and I have a date!

Tool of the Week: Affinity Diagrams

So, I realize I was supposed to do another quality tool last week, but I got busy. Such is my life. Here is another example of how you can use a consensogram in your classrooms. I think it's really important to track student progress and growth throughout the year and this is a great way to let kids see their growth. We take the MAP test three times a year. It tracks Reading and Math progress throughout the year and then gives us correlations for how our kids will perform on the state standardized test at the end of the year. Anyway, the picture below shows our first MAP scores of the year in red and our mid year scores in green. Look at how all of those dots moved! Well, most...

Another quality tool that I have just fallen in love with is called an affinity diagram. An affinity diagram is a great tool for sorting and grouping things based on common characteristics. Here are a few examples.

It's important to have your kids come up with all of the information, but you guide them in the sorting and grouping. You also help them name each group based on their commonalities.

I hope everyone is well! I will try to be good and post again soon!

Quality Tool of the Week: Consensogram

Our school has recently taken the initiative towards implementing Quality Tools into our teaching. If you aren't famliar with quality tools, they are also commonly known as the Baldridge model or continuous improvement. The idea is to use these quality tools to help improve student achievement, motivation, goal setting, and ownership of student learning.

I have decided to share a tool each week for you to possibly try in your classrooms. There are so many tools you can use, so I recommend trying to implement one at a time until you feel comfortable using them in many ways.

There are various ways this model can be used in the classroom, but I won't bore you with all the details. Today, I am just going to share my favorite way. It is called a consensogram and it can be used in a variety of ways and it is the easiest one to implement into your daily routine. A consensogram is a tool used to gather data quickly to gain a group's perceptions, knowledge, effort, or understand about a particular subject.

Here are some examples:

I use it most often to have students select their reward of choice. I write several different options on a piece of chart paper, and students put their sticky dot on their choice. It's clear to see the class choice.

Other ways you can use the consensogram:

*Surveying the class by asking questions to learn about them
*Gauging whether or not students are prepared for a test.
*Behavior
*Pre and Post Test knowledge
*Learning what students favorite topic learned was
*Letting students determine what they want to learn next
*Reflecting on activities such as field trips, lessons, assignments, etc...
*Determining which vocabulary words students know
*Displaying data (grades, MAP test scores, standardized test scores, etc...)
*Assessing which skills students need more work on
*To identify student motivation (or lack of)
*For student views about classroom/school environment
*What worked well-wrapping up a unit

There are so many other ways you can use this tool. The sky is the limit! Please share if you have any ideas of how you use the consensogram or how you would use it if you never have.