November Strategy Sharing

Many fabulous ideas were shared by your colleagues at the November Strategy Sessions. If you have a chance, I recommend checking out the resources posted on the Deepening & Reinforcing Learning Discussion board. I've included a few highlights below:

How is this picture like the law of diminishing returns?

• Brandon Wolf shared four different strategies that he uses and posted the templates. He talked about how his students find non-linguistic representations helpful in solidifying and personalizing concepts, giving the example of students who remembered the law of diminishing returns because they had represented it with a box of donuts or another who connected it to Spotify. I also really like the At Home Discussion Chart, where students summarize a conversation that they had at home about their recent learning and reflect on why they better understand the concept discussed as a result.  
• Dakota Cronin shared the Feynman Technique, which is based on the idea expressed in this quote from Albert Einstein: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." The basic idea is that the process of explaining (verbally or in writing) a concept without using complex vocabulary or jargon helps you to understand it better. Learn more about this mental model in this 4 minute video.
• Dominic Mooney shared one of his favorite tools for curating content: Pocket. With an easy to navigate visual interface, Pocket is a great way for you and your students to easily save articles, videos and other resources that are related to what they are learning about. All of the content goes to one place, so you can view it anytime, on any device. You don't even need an internet connection. I'm sure that Dom would be more than happy to personally share with you how he uses it - just drop by his lair and ask for a tutorial!
• And finally, here are a few ideas that teachers shared for grouping students: by VIA strengths, clock partners, popsicle sticks, the flippity.net random name picker, which also creates random groupings, playing cards, and multiple copies of pictures/visuals related to content passed out as students enter the room. Plus, did you know that Power School has a random student selector tool? I did not. This handy tidbit was shared by Robert Ogle. 

Thanks to everyone who has shared ideas so far! The next round of sessions isn't until February, so you have lots of time to try something new. :-)