Inspire 180 Days

Inspire is defined by Merriam-Webster as to influence, move, or guide. Inspire means to me instilling high expectations, influencing and impacting students lives, invigorating students, and providing imagination and inventiveness into my lessons. This post will discuss how to transform your classroom to inspire your students every day.

Why I Inspire

Have you ever videoed yourself to see if all of your students are engaged? Dr. Michael Schmoker author of, Results Now, found in his research of 1,500 classrooms, only 15 percent of the classrooms had more than half of the class at least paying attention to the lesson. Wow! Only 15 percent of classrooms had their students engaged. Article: How do we know when students are engaged?

The following are influences that help to inspire your classroom and their effect sizes provided by John Hattie who wrote Visible Learning: 

• Teacher credibility .90
• Classroom discussion .82
• Teacher Clarity .75
• Teacher-Student Relationships .72
• Student Expectations (relevance) 1.44

What do those numbers mean? It means you would show over a years growth if you implement these influences into your classroom. Love me some data! I'm such a data nerd when it comes to research and best practices! 

Are you convinced yet to inspire 180 days?

The I's of Inspire

Instill a classroom culture that has high expectations, feedback, classroom rules, and questioning. To create this culture it takes modeling from you and what you expect from your students. It also takes your students knowing what they expect from each other. 

Inventiveness and Imagination creates intrigue and adds surprise to your classroom and lessons.  To accomplish this get to know your students and what they enjoy.  Create lessons based on a theme, holiday, or favorite tv shows. Think outside of the box. Take a boring standard and add imagination to engage all of your students. I have set up construction zones to teach area, archeological digs to teach rocks, minerals, and rectilinear area, cooking Thanksgiving dinner and an airport theme to teach elapsed time. 

Invigorate your classroom with energy, excitement, and enthusiasm. If you aren't excited about teaching then your students will not be either. It is ok to laugh and be silly with your students! 

Influence and Impact your student lives. Empower them to work hard, to persevere, and to believe in themselves. Set up a red carpet, student-led parent conferences, student-student feedback, and honoring a student's work are all ways that influence and impact a student's life. 

To accomplish all of this you have to find the perfect balance for your classroom. 

The first step to Inspire 180 days is to decide What does inspire mean to you?

Next, think about your classroom are all of your students engaged? Don't know video yourself using 2 ipads. Put one ipad on you and the other on your students. Take a look at the results. Were your students inspired?

Last, start your planning. You can create an atmosphere that inspires your students to learn and grow every day. The posts that follow will be full of ideas on how to transform your room, themes, and lessons that will engage and inspire every student in your classroom.