Friday January 30, 2015Edition 10

THE TITAN TELL-ALL

The Titan Tell-All is a bi-weekly newsletter highlighting the awesome instruction and events going on around TSMS. There are SO many great things going on, it is hard to catch them all! If you, or someone you know, has an outstanding idea that should be showcased, please let Ashley Roberts know! UPDATE: Thank you for all of the emails, IMs, texts, and phone calls, telling me to get my camera to your neighbor’s room asap! Keep them coming!!!

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMS

In Mrs. Simon’s resource math class, she differentiates for the various types of learners by providing a hands-on experience relating to the picture book she reads and math concept she is teaching. Check out this Accommodation Checklist and this list of quick links for more special education resources and ideas!

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMS

Coach Shera brings math to life by creating life-sized coordinate planes in the hallway! Students collaborate in groups to “become” points and shapes on a grid. Just how important is physical movement to learning? Check out this article by ASCD.

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMS

Speaking of the importance of movement on brain development and cognition, Mrs. Crow’s Spanish students play Twister to practice color, direction and body part vocabulary.

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMS

Paper bags

aren’t just for

making

puppets

anymore!

Who knew a brown paper bag could be used in so many different

ways?!?!Art: collaboration books Science: body

systems

7th ELA: poetry book

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMSTECHNOLOGY

Tired of your students playing Trivia Games on their phone during class? Try KAHOOT! You make up the academic questions, they play against classmates from their own device! Click the image to the right for more details:

Students in Mrs. Ruiz’s class are already playing and LOVE it!

Mrs. Surbaugh utilizes student devices by having them complete individualized lessons on Think through Math.

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMS

AVID students are filming commercials to advertise for the AVID program. The counselors will be presenting these commercials to TMI students during recruitment week. If you know of a 7th grader that would make a great AVID student next year, there are applications in the lounge. For more information about the AVID program, visit here: AVID.org.

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMS

Mrs. Winkley’s 7th grade students create the jacket of Houston. Individual products included a written report as well as symbolic representations. 7th grade scientist complete Know,

Wondering, Leanred chart to tap into background knowledge about body systems.

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMS

To learn more about her students, and to promote metacognition, Ms. Ennis asked her ESL students to complete a learning style inventory and post their results. The follow up activity included summaries on sentence strips.

Interested in having your students take a learning style inventory? Click here or here

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMS CONTINUOUS

IMPROVEMENT

Mrs. Wachowiak combines a status check with a radar chart to get feedback from her students while giving them a target goal about interest calculations.

Mrs. Espinal uses a Status Check to gage student understanding of Surface Area. She says it makes a great formative assessment.

SHOWCASE CLASSROOMSCONTINUOUS

IMPROVEMENT

After completing a recent class assessment in Mrs. Jones class, students reflected and helped to create class PDSA cycles. This required students to Plan a goal, set up action steps, monitor their progress and plan for future tests. Need a blank PDSA template or more information? Click here.

QUALITY TOOL OF THE MONTH

Have you tried one this month?

Need an idea or help? Let a CIT member

know!

January: Radar Charts and Scatter Diagrams

Next months quality tool is the Bone Diagram! Training coming up on Friday, February 13th.

A FINAL THOUGHT FROM ALL MATH TEACHERS…

Keep up the awesome instruction, and have a great weekend!