Learning in the Lou

Can you boost engagement, problem solving and critical thinking in the classroom? This is a difficult topic to summarize so we found a few articles to help shape our thinking. Guiding Students to See Themselves as Changemakers We all want to make a difference but what can we do? We expect the kids to leave our care and then start making a difference in the world so how do we start changemaking now? Following the methods in this article you can start that process today in the classroom. Here are a few BIG ideas I got from reading. The UN Sustainable Development Goals . These are all wicked problems with many solutions. This article will show you how to start breaking them down into smaller parts. This is key to any problem solving or design thinking, the problem must be dissected. Writing the challenge question mad libs style is one of the best ways to rework the problem into common everyday language. If we can wrap our heads around it, there is a chance we can start investigating. Step...

Adding some game-like elements to the classroom can get a few more kids to lean into the learning. The idea is to get kids engaged and adding in some new elements can help. In this post we will introduce and describe four different ways to approach gamifying your curriculum. Gimkit This site was developed by high school kids, it is a game within a game. Like many sites, Gimkit is freemium. The basics are free, if you want more you will need to purchase a license. There are a number of reviews that say Gimkit is like a live game show. What I like is it takes the best features of Kahoot without the idea that faster is better. I am not a fan of games like that, it puts the false idea of those who answer fastest is the smartest, speed over thinking. A kit is a set of questions. You build your own kit or use one of the ones already created by someone else. Some modes, or games, are only limited to five players. For this situation you can form teams. One great feature is this is web based, n...

We have used PowerPoint, Slides and Keynote for years. Most every presentation looks the same. Many kids read the slides and the slides are just full of words. While this was OK years ago, it isn't anymore. If we look at how the world is processing information, it is hyper visual. We need kids to be creating hyper visual presentations that are informative and beautiful to look at. Take a look at the Designing with Pods article.  I see four big ideas that are chunked into easily understood ideas. The images back up the text. The article links to some pods . This is another example of how information could be presented.  These two articles are examples of how information could be presented in a new, modern and engaging way.  Canva One of the tools people are using to present information is Canva. I am sure we see Canva as a way to create posters but have you seen their presentation tool ? This page offers a number of great presentation tips, just keep reading all the way t...

I remember asking my teachers when we would use the math we were learning in our lives. The answer was usually to take next year's math or to know how much carpet to buy. Carpet to buy? I was pretty sure I would never install my own carpet and next year was so far away it might as well be a million years from now. As a student learning math was the worst, I never was given a reason why. Without a why I wasn't interested in learning it. Rothfus and Munoz on gun 2 I was 19 when I was shown how math was used in the real world. Jon Recor patiently sat with me for countless hours teaching me how to use actual math to run the mortars. It was a lot of different types of math we had to calculate quickly and with 100% accuracy. If it wasn't perfect unfortunate things happen. This was the first time in my life that I understood math to this degree, I had a why. Having a why is critical to long term learning. How can we give our kids a why for math now so they don't have to wait f...

My fear of writing publicly goes all the way back to elementary school. For whatever reason the teachers always pushed for perfect, which is impossible. Look at any magazine, book or online site. Each one has mistakes and they usually have a team of editors!  What took me years to realize is perfect is impossible and the only way to improve is to write. We started this blog in 2007 and I was super reluctant to add any content at first because I knew my writing wouldn't be perfect, that old heaviness from elementary school. What pushed me was my coworker Angie. She repeatedly told me ideas where too important to keep in our heads, we needed to get them out to share with the world. I wish someone would have given that advice to me years ago. Ideas are too good to stay in our heads, they need to be shared. I still make plenty of mistakes. I still misspell things but it does not stop me from writing and sharing. This idea of sharing ideas with the world is easy to do with the kids. Her...