September 9, 2009Back to school is always a little bit fun, stressful and crazy! Each year brings with it new ideas, goals and plans to prepare our future leaders with a lifetime love of learning and fill them to the brim with the knowledge and empowerment that they can make a difference in the world. One of the things I am most looking forward to this year is incorporating more Kagan Cooperative Learning into my lessons. This is a process that I started last year and since I looped with the majority of my class we are really ready to take off running this year. Kagan has brought a new excitement and energy to my teaching and classroom!
Today after a morning of district mandated testing we had our first differentiated professional development after school and I was really looking forward to getting together with other teachers in an "advance" Kagan workshop. To be able to pick a professional development that is meaningful to me was great. We all came ready to take our Kagan Cooperative Learning to new levels. Wendy (our fearless leader) brought a new structure, Q-Matrix, and it was great to see how we could incorporate higher level thinking into our literacy block using a structure.
I left feeling excited and energized and hope that we can make this a monthly gathering where we can share and support each other as we build our Kagan repertoire. I also hope this blog can serve as an open forum and communication tool for us as well.
Let's start it off by commenting about the last Kagan structure/activity you used in your classroom.
