The Curse of Knowledge

"A strong base of content knowledge makes us blind to the lengthy process of acquiring it." This Edutopia Article contends that content knowledge is far more difficult to retain for our learners than we expect it to be. The short article elaborates about how to integrate 7 core ideas into pedagogical practices. 

1. Emotion: 
2. Multi-sensory Lessons
3. Spacing
4. Narratives
5. Analogies & Examples
6. Novelty
7. Teach Facts

Nuts/Bolts - Week of 2/2 & 2/9

TODAY, MONDAY 2/1 - Positive Behavior Reward Schedule

Check-in/Check-out - Students who have been on the program are officially eligible for exit, provided grades / behavior improved. Horizontal leaders can suggest new names on 2/10 after PLC.

Saturday School 2/27 - Looking for a little extra $$? Want to teach something outside your normal role? Join the Saturday School team! You can teach 1, then be done. Talk to Mike about how to join!

Formal/Informal Eval - Don't forget to calendar your formal observation ASAP with your primary evaluator. Also, if you have a lesson you would like informal feedback on, let us know and we'll try to make it in!

2/2 - Team Leader Meeting
2/2 - 3rd Quarter PRIDE Card distribution 1st Period Classrooms
2/3 - PLC Vertical Teams
2/8 - NO SCHOOL
2/10 - Horizontal PLC
2/12 - MS Dance

Shout Out! - Science Team

Within 1 week, I observed the entire Science team demonstrating true Trailblazer style!  

• Mary / Gina - Organized a "Shark Tank" themed 8th grade project presentation with guest judges as their culminating piece to the Mars Rover project. 
• Paola - Finished organizing WE Club's clothing donation to OC Rescue Shelter -- 900 items! 
• Cari - Recording lessons using screencast software, uploading it to Google Drive, and pushing it out using Google Classroom for students who are absent, or for those who need this additional support at home. 

Amazing innovation, teamwork, and service! Thanks for representing us well team! 

Tech Tip - Music Transitions

You can easily embed musical queues into your lesson to signal transitions, or certain routines / procedures, or as a discussion timer. If you have the music file (mp3, wav, etc.), you can upload and crop it directly using https://mp3cut.net/.

If not, find it on youtube, then download it for free using: http://www.youtube-mp3.org/. Then, upload and crop away.


For some pre-made cropped music, download this Resource Pack I made for ActivInspire flipcharts.