Workshop on Block 8 Schedule

I was asked to go to Illini Bluffs Middle School and lead a roundtable discussion on Block 8. It seemed to have gone pretty well. The result was that they were all looking for tips on how to teach in the Block and the problem was that we had nothing new to tell them. The bottom line is multiple activities. This is a chance to use the multiple intelligences, the various learning styles, and group work or cooperative learning. Anything goes to keep their attention and to keep them on task. I did mention that this would be a good place for us to do more social networking activities and some of the teachers seemed to be interested. Mostly I had to reinforce the idea that the Block offers more time for quality at the sacrifice of quantity. Teachers have to decide what is important to cover, then cover it in depth in various ways for mastery. I hope to get the chance to do this kind of thing again. I even managed to get a plug in about cell phones and they didn't lynch me. That was cool!