Hopefully you are all enjoying a restful break! Over the next several days, you will likely start to get back into the swing and routine of things. As we prepare to return to school, you might find it helpful to know about simple, easily-accessible resources that you can use to enhance your practice with your students and collaboration with your colleagues.
Did you know that Classkick has a professional development resource center? Click here. It is short and sweet, and will likely be developed further as Classkick expands. The best part is, teachers don’t need an account to experience Classkick during a professional development session or training!
For any of you involved in – or hoping to be involved in – a professional book club, Classkick would be an easy and simple way to have colleagues reflect, try out, and share strategies and new learning. For example, Classkick has created questions slides for a discussion to follow a reading of Spatial Reasoning in the Early Years. Slides have discussion starters, quotes to respond to, and embedded links to prompt conversation. There are so many ways to use Classkick slides and templates to spark discussion, encourage collaboration, and document thinking!
In addition to discussions you might have with colleagues, the professional development resource center also has slides that can help to foster positive and effective conversations within classrooms that fall more in the social-emotional learning space. The slides help to lead students in a brainstorming session (what kind of classroom environment helps you to learn?) and sample activities to promote a positive classroom climate. A similar activity helps students understand what it means to give feedback to their peer, and practice giving responses. As always, Classkick shares these activities as templates, so they are easily customizable for your audience.
BITS AND PIECES 