Meeting Students Where They Are: Tiered Assignments and Activities

I was told by an amazing administrator years ago that, "Parents send the best kid to us that they have." They can't send us what they don't have and we have to work with what we have. We, as educators, like to some times play the blame game, myself included, and we must do better. We can not control what students come to us with and how involved parents and/or guardians are outside of school so we have to, for a lack of a better way to put it, "work with what we have" and ensure that all of our students are successful. Small wins and big wins are still WINS. I'll take it! That's where my inspirations for this blog post comes into play, Tiered Instruction. Tiered Instruction is a way to differientate for your students. It allows you to provide leveled assignments and activities that meet the students where they are in an effort to bring them up to where you need them to be.

Embracing the Fidget Spinner Fight

This is a combined blog effort with English Middle School Mania! 

The 2016-2017 school year is officially over for us! We are so beyond ready for summer. For weeks we’ve been fighting the “fidget spinner battle” and that combined with trying to keep students engaged during the last week of school got our wheels turning. As teachers we tend to understand the last week of school is often something the students aren't going to put much time or effort into, they're "checked-out" and so are we. We were both undecided going into the last full week of school (That's the beauty of teaching for a combined total of 21 years, we could pull something together over the weekend!), then I said, "Wanna do a project about Spinners?" Of course Andi’s answer was “yes.”