Tuesday's Teacher Tidbit {and a freebie!}

I can't believe how quickly the school year is creeping up on me! School starts back up for me on August 1st, which is right around the corner! I have sooo many things to accomplish before then. I can't wait to get back in my classroom and set it up. I have a lot of organizing to do.

This school year, I want to be more consistent with blogging. I feel like I have had a year to acclimate to life in Delhi and also one year of teaching under my belt. I am especially excited to see my blog "spruced up" a bit. I am letting the experts at Honey Bunch Blog Design make me and epic blog design. I am SUPER excited to see them work their magic. 

One thing I wanted to start up is a Tuesday's Teacher Tidbit. Every Tuesday I will share a little tidbit of information that I have found and used, or a guest blogger has found useful. Please feel free to link up! The more tidbits of information out there, the better :)

I like to do something in my classroom called: Discover and Share. I usually do this a few times throughout each unit. I gather up all the books I can find in my classroom library and the schools library for sources. I tell the students that they have twenty minutes of discovery time. They select a book from the pile and fill out the My Discoveries Notebook (see at the bottom of post) At the end of the twenty minutes I give the students five to ten minutes to gather their thoughts and reflect on what they just discovered. Finally, we share our discoveries. This can look different each time. Sometimes I tell my students to partner up, other times I put them into groups, or I have them present their information in front of the class. During the sharing time, the students take notes from the other discoveries. 

I have found this method to be very effective! The students remember the information that they find in the books because they claim it as their own discovery. They are really excited to share it with each other and eager to learn from their peers. In fact, at the end of the school year when we debriefed together, my students told me that this was their favorite activity and that they remembered more from this activity then from the other things we did, even review games! 

Try it out, tell me how it works in your classroom :)

Snag the notebook freebie by clicking on the picture!