Starting the School Year Out

Hey guys, it's been a while since I have had the chance to blog. This year while keeping up with my two year old little boy, I have also graduated with a masters degree as a reading and writing specialist, and I decided to transfer schools too. So needless to say, I have been busy busy busy.

We started school back on August 6th this year and the start of school just happened to fall on my birthday. I teach two classes of fifth grade and one class of fourth grade and they all loved that they were able to share my birthday with me. I have a really great group of kids this year and I am super excited about all of the activities that I have planned for this year.

This year, our district is really pushing Kagan Cooperative Learning strategies. If you haven't heard of Kagan you really need to research it! Out of all the new initiatives, Kagan is actually one that I think has benefitted me and my students. The students love working cooperatively and I love it because all of the students are excited about learning, they are all accountable, and they are learning from each other. So the very first day, we started class-building and team-building to lay a solid foundation for cooperative learning while learning about rules, procedures, and expectations.

Some ways you could use Kagan Structures on your first day are:

• Use Mix-Pair-Share or Round Robin to share about what students did that summer
• Rally Robin Procedures or Rules to review information
• Fan-and-Pick or Quiz-Quiz-Trade to review questions for rules and procedures (my students absolutely loved this)
• Find-Someone Who to allow the kids to get to know each other
• Find the Fiction to allow the students to get to know each other
• Plus, you can't forget the Silly Sports!

Does your district use Kagan cooperative learning structures? If so, how do you incorporate Kagan into your classroom? I'd love to hear from you! Just leave a comment below. 

Chasity