Start with a Question

I had the amazing opportunity to be part of an Ignite session with 9 other ASCD Emerging Leaders this past weekend at the Empower 2019 conference in Chicago, Illinois. Each of us focused our talk on one of the five Tenets of the Whole Child from ASCD . My tenets were SAFE and HEALTHY. According to the official Ignite organization , an Ignite talk is defined as: a series of presentation that happen one after another without breaks each presenter uses 20 slides each slide auto-advances after 15 second the result is 5 minutes and high energy! Watch my 5 minute Ignite below. Let me know what you think in the comments. And contact me if you want me to visit your school to work with parents, students, and teachers on health, wellness, and technology use.

This post was first published on the St. John's Prep GOOD to Go blog and was authored by Chad Konecky. It’s a classroom technique that goes by a number of aliases—peer-to-peer, small-group and team-based learning, to name a few—but at its core, the concept is rooted in  cooperation —a classroom priority at St. John’s Prep that’s been proven to work. A synthesis of 168 studies conducted over the course of 73 years by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that  cooperative learning is almost 150-percent more effective than instructor-focused learning in terms of greater academic achievement, increased persistence throughout courses and programs, and more favorable attitudes toward learning in general .  Another Harvard-published study showed that students working in teams ask more questions and are more engaged than non-grouped students.  Kerry Gallagher , St. John’s assistant principal for teaching and learning, knows the research well, but says th...