The Time Traveler

“A good question can…force the uncomfortable but transformational cognitive dissonance that can help create thinkers.”

Apart from intelligence and effort, researchers claim that curiosity—“a hungry mind”—is actually one of the three key predictors of academic achievement. We spend a lot of time pondering our students’ ability levels and whether they have the capacity to persevere in school, yet curiosity, the least-studied ingredient in the mix, may be the most vital.

-The University of California at Berkley

The greatest advantage of curiosity lies in its power to motivate learning in areas of life and work that are meaningful to the learner. Teachers can stimulate students' curiosity be encouraging valuable questions and tinkering, looking for teachable moments, and building lessons around current events and critical thinking.

Click here to access the How to Cultivate Curiosity in the classroom and complete a Google form reflection on how that would look like in your classroom.

Please register at this link. The Google form [Click here] must be completed by Friday, October 28th to receive credit.

For more Professional Development Opportunities, please check out our website. Click Here.

With creating curiosity in mind, the C&I team has added the following lessons into our instructional playbook.

The 8th grade History team at Rushing is committed to building curiosity with their students! Branson Clements, Brian Savage, and Katie Johnson have been working to create extension opportunities that allow their students to explore content in a deeper way. For their first unit, they created a digital breakout over the lost Roanoke Colony, where students were able to explore different theories about the lost colony and then decide for themselves what happened. For Unit 2, this team created an extension menu full of choices for students to further explore key people and events of the American Revolution. From the team "We want to give our students a choice in how they explore US History. There are so many people, perspectives and events we do not have time to cover in class. Our extension menu can address ths with student-led projects and discussions."

Since creating a bypass on 380 is causing controversy in the community we hoped it would cause questions in the classroom! We wanted to create a task that involved geographic literacy basics but took into account the way geography can be used to explain and eventually solve complex real world issues. Students had to research the effects of proposals from TxDot and ultimately determine which solution would make the most sense moving forward.

Click on the hyperlinks to learn more: Directions and Student Product

Team Members: Elise Bruns and Amber McWilliams

November 3rd is Father of Texas Day, in memory of Stephen F. Austin, the great pioneer patriot and the real and true Father of Texas. Father of Texas Day shall be regularly observed by appropriate and patriotic programs in the public schools to properly commemorate the birthday of Stephen F. Austin and to inspire a greater love for this beloved state. Gov’t Code 662.045

Click here for the one pager.

If you need ANYTHING, please do not hesitate to reach out! We are here to support YOU!