Tag: Dave Burgess

Education, K-12, Motivation, Teaching Tools, Videos

The 5 Word GPS Challenge

Terri Eichholz

When people say, “Begin with the end in mind,” I tend to take that suggestion to the extreme.  I picture a chaotic world where I have just given my life in a failed attempted to save our planet, and people mourning over a tombstone hastily erected in my honor that says, “She cared.”

Dave Burgess (author of Teach Like a Pirate) has a slightly less morbid take on, “Begin with the end in mind.”  Building on an idea by Michael Matera, Burgess suggests that teachers imagine your students using 5 words to describe your class at the end of the school year.  If a word cloud was made from all of those adjectives, what would be the ones that would stand out the most?  

Correction.

What would be the ones that you would want to stand out the most? That should guide you through your year as you make choices about how to present the curriculum to your students.

Here is a word cloud my 2nd grade GT students made about our class at the end of last school year.  (We made a class word cloud, and then they inserted it into a Pic Collage with photos of their favorite memories of the year.)

WordCloudI loved that “challenging,” “create,” and “imagine” were included.  I thought it was amusing “sudoku” was a favorite activity, and slightly surprised that “grit” made it in there (one of those things I emphasized so much that I thought they were just tuning me out).

For a motivational video from Dave Burgess himself regarding this great way to “begin with the end in mind,” head on over to this link.  “Passion” should definitely be one of the words in his cloud!

 

 

Careers, Education, K-12, Motivation, Teaching Tools

Arrr Ye Ready to Make This a Great Year, Matey?

Terri Eichholz

mediocrity

You might think this is a post to remind you about Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is scheduled for September 19th.  But that would be a frivolous use of this blog space, right?  I mean, what does that have to do with education?

So, I am not going to try to convince you to talk like a pirate, but I would like to recommend that you Teach Like a Pirate – at least if you can do it the Dave Burgess way.

I first saw a reference to Teach Like a Pirate, by Dave Burgess, on Vicki Davis’ blog.  She referred to his Play-Doh activity, and I was immediately curious about what pirates have to do with Play-Do, much less teaching.  So, I downloaded it to the Kindle app on my iPad (because I wanted it immediately and Amazon told me I would have to wait 4-6 weeks).  And I have to say that I like this guy, Dave Burgess.  Apparently, I’ve been kind of trying to advocate for pirate-teaching for awhile without even realizing it.  Who knew?

In Dave’s case, “pirate” is actually an acronym for: passion, immersion, rapport, ask and analyze, transformation, and enthusiasm.  Dave asks two questions about your teaching: “If your students didn’t have to be there, would you be teaching in an empty room?”  and “Do you have any lessons you could sell tickets for?”

Hmm.  Excellent questions.

Don’t worry.  If you answered, “No,” to both of those questions, Dave has a ton of suggestions for changing things up.  His book includes 30 “Hooks” for engaging minds, including “The Mission Impossible Hook” and the “Reality TV Hook” among others.

I love Dave’s passion and I can’t wait to incorporate some of his ideas this year.  I even found this great video trailer on YouTube for a school that actually hosted a “Teach Like a Pirate” Day, which I would love to see happen at more schools.

Coincidentally, I happened to recently read Kelly Tenkely’s post about “De-Tox Week” at her school, which referenced this Pinterest board of activities that I also think would help me to Teach Like a Pirate.

I am ready to make this a great year, and to make sure my students don’t ever want to “walk the plank” right out of my classroom.  (Sorry, I know that was bad, but I couldn’t resist.)  What about you?