PEAK Takeaways

Thanks to everyone who shared with me their reflections and takeaways from PEAK training. I created a word cloud from your emails and then took the 10 most popular ideas to create this list! I can't wait to work with you this year to integrate some of these ideas into your classroom! See you soon!

Launch buttons, Music Cues, One Step Directions, Repeating information, and Quiet Signals were some best practices we already know, but were reinforced during this training.

Instead of "what questions do you have?" ask "What questions would someone in the next class or next year have?" It helps prevent student embarrassment. This also included deflected directions: "Make sure everyone at your table has....".

3 keys to engagement; Safety, Success, Valued Purpose. Students need to have a valued purpose in our classrooms to be successful. We need to keep your students safe from embarrassment so they are willing to take risks for us. We start by building relationships with students and getting to know them on a personal level.

We need to manage tasks by how long we have to spend on them, not until everyone has them complete. Finishing is not learning. We can then add tasks as need to challenge and differentiated. A good rule of thumb: your slowest kid should get at least 3 right.

"DRIP" the content: the drip will gradually dig deeper and deeper to deepen understanding. Spiral content for students to give more practice.

28/3: Students need 28 interactions (within 3 weeks) with content that gradually increases in complexity to truly understand the topic.

Organize your materials and be prepared each day. If you can have material stations set up so you don't have to pass out papers, that will save time.

Teach vocabulary early on and connect to anchor charts.

Just a few...

Give and Get: Fold a paper into 8ths. Students circulate the room sharing and writing ideas from their paper.

Defend my Claim: Give the answers and students have to defend it

Vocab Power: Similar to 1000 dollar pyramid

The greatest learning comes from reflection about the learning- write about it, talk about it, draw about it. Give students time to do this!