Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites Strategy 5

Today I am linking up with Michelle over at Fabulous in First for chapter 5 of the book study!  Thank you for hosting this week, Michelle!

Before I talk about chapter 5, I had to share the games I had my kindergarten students do the other day after posting about chapter 4 of the book!  I decided to have my students create their own math game.  We play a lot of math games so we talked about the different math games we play.  I gave them paper, index cards, crayons, pencils, etc. and told them to make a math game that we could play.  I was AMAZED!  Here are some of their fabulous ideas:

My students were excited, engaged, and motivated throughout this entire lesson.  After they finished their game, I had them play it with a friend.  At the end of the lesson I had everyone share the game they came up with.  I loved seeing how proud they were of their finished product!   Now to the actual chapter for the link-up!      "Graphic organizers, scaffolding, and activating prior knowledge are techniques that are research proven to help teachers better connect with students." (Deshler & Schumaker, 2006)   I love that quote because I really believe that activating prior knowledge is so important.  It allows teachers to see what background knowledge students bring when learning about a topic.  Every student has something different to contribute to a discussion and allowing students time to discuss their prior knowledge of a topic allows teachers to know which way to guide their instruction.   I'm already... *Using a KL (Know Learned) chart with my students where we share what they know about a topic and then after learning, they share what they learned and record it on a sticky note.  *Using main topic and details organizers.  *Creating a lot of graphic organizers on chart paper as a class (t-charts, webs, etc.). *Using graphic organizers in guided reading groups.    I would like to work on...   *Allowing more opportunities for my students to complete graphic organizers, across all subject areas, independently or with a partner.  I like the idea of having my students glue them into their Notebook of Learning.  This way they can go back and reference it.    Excited to check out the other posts!  Hope everyone has a great weekend!