Week 2/3: Anticipation

I'm Jeanie and I'm a BT3 and a 7th grade Social Studies teacher.

What is working: I have implemented a new strategy this year to help the students kind of sum up their learning. I am going to base every unit on 5 strands of Social Studies: History, Economy, Government, Culture, and Geography. They are my "Building Blocks" and I have a one page summary sheet that we will do after each unit. We just completed our first one for our first unit, "Social Studies 101," which basically just sums up each of the strands. I think it's going to be a very useful tool. It's also a way for kids to have something from previous units, without having to keep EVERY classwork assignment we do.

Challenges: I never had problems with classroom management until now. I am very proud of my classroom dojo rewards system with simultaneous "watch list" consequences, which culminates in loss of a team-wide Fun Friday reward.
It's really only bad in my last block. There are several ADHD students in that class, and by the end of the day, they are all done. It's difficult to get them all focused on the task, and not talking when I'm talking. I hesitate to reprimand them (with an actual consequence, like lunch detention), because I know it's largely due to their attention deficit. I honestly am not sure what to do with that class. Would love any suggestions!

Whoo-Hoo Moment: Today is the day before the unit test. Vocabulary is a large part of the test, and I tried Quizlet Live for the first time ever. IT'S AMAZING!!!!! The kids were totally into it, even with no real prizes. Just the simple competition did it for them. Each student had an iPad and I shuffled the teams every time, which helped the class camaraderie and also paired low-levels with ESL with high-level with average. They seriously did it for 40 mins straight, and by the end they were all experts on the vocab. I never had to worry about someone getting on something else, because every team member on Quizlet Live is essential to win. Try it, it's awesome!

Hope everyone's semester is going well.