Hump Day goodness

In 18 days I am off to Denver for Spring Thinking Strategies Institute!!  Is anyone else out there in blogland that is going??  Please contact me if so...I would love to meet up.

I cannot rave about Inquiry Circles enough!  The thinking that I am seeing applied is A-MAZ-ING!!  It fits in with the Common Core so well.

Here's a little inspirational note about Inquiry Circles.  A child in my class has been very dejected.  Life at home isn't great....his parents are fighting :(  It has really shown itself at school.  He is a high level kid that has just been making it through the day...not learning fervently.  This child is in the group researching turtles.  He knows the inside and outside of every turtle book stored in the group's basket.  I sit down to do a mini-lesson with the group (the difference between reading with a question in mind vs. tracking your thinking while reading a book) and this kid just blows me away.  I decided to show the group what I mean and start with a question, How do turtles have their young?  He rips out four books flips to the pages and starts telling me all about it.  The other two students didn't stand a chance for keeping up.  So the two of us, him and I, laid it out for them successfully. He is smiling more often and told me after school that he loves to learn {be still my heart}!

Another little chickie told our intern that she has never done so much thinking!  Gotta love it :)

Tonight I have a few little organizational notes.  We just jumped right in and are learning some valuable tools.  First, your lesson plans for what you think they will need are great but in the process you will see it needs to be authentic.  Lessons will develop each day and you will know what the next day holds.  Second, we do a short mini lesson at the start of the time and then meet with individual groups and confer. We tried full blown lessons for all but it just wasn't personalized enough. We made each group a file folder with paper stapled inside for our own personal notes.  We thought this would suffice BUT it just didn't.  We have to get in there quick and dirty....so we need a quick organized way to take notes.  In comes our inquiry circle conferring form! 

Inquiry Circle Conferring form

My last advice is to show students over and over again how to stay organized!

I have a few other things that I have been working on but didn't bring home everything I needed to in order to post them. I will get to them tomorrow!

Have a lovely evening :) I hope you enjoyed your hump day as much as I did.