MC Squares reading response

Earlier in the week I read The Secret Shortcut by Mark Teague to the class.  I then asked students to  independently create their own shortcut from home to school.  They needed to show their shortcut by making a map, including a map key (missing from some on the initial attempt). Students then had an opportunity to act out the shortcut for the class.

MC Squares to Solve Math

Yesterday my students worked in groups of 3 to solve a math problem.  We used several of the steps that make up CueThink (what do you know, what do you need to find out, what strategy do you want to use, solve, check work, does answer make sense).

Students created a final set of information to share with the class and this was done with the MC Squares.

MC Squares Just Out of the Box

A 24 pack of MC Squares arrived for me yesterday, purchased as a pilot by my district office.  MC Squares are individual whiteboards about 1 square foot in size that snap into mounting frames.  Students can easily take down a square, draw/write on it with a dry erase marker, and hang it back up again.  Check out their website here.

The mounts won't be installed in my classroom until the summer, so right now the students will lean them against the wall at the front of the room.  Based on a session about vertical learning that I attended at the FutureNow! conference in San Diego last month, I plan to hang the squares in 6 groups of 4 at standing height for my students.

Since I wasn't sure exactly when they'd arrive, I hadn't planned any lessons for this week. However, we had a few minutes at the end of the day and had just finished PE, so I asked students to draw and write a caption showing their favorite PE activity of the year.