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Promising Practices Collection

Connecting Students with their Community

Laurie King

Every year, our school and community collaborate together to create thank you cards for local veterans. These thank you cards are given out annually at the Veterans Day Celebration in Anthem.

Submitted by: Ryan Donovan, Boulder Creek HS, Deer Valley Unified School District

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Student Engagement Starts with Connections

Laurie King

Student engagement is a key factor in effective education and can significantly impact a student's achievement, motivation, and overall learning experience. Engagement in the classroom refers to students' attention and participation during lessons. Building strong connections and an understanding of the students will help increase engagement in the classroom.

Submitted by: Jennifer Spector, Desert View Elementary School, Washington Elementary School District

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Reaching Resilience

Laurie King

Developing resilience in students means helping them build the ability to cope with challenges, adapt to difficult situations, and bounce back from setbacks. It fosters emotional strength, problem-solving skills, and a growth mindset that equips students to handle stress and persevere through adversity. Resilience is built from a foundation of safety through self-expression, skills, and self-efficacy.

Submitted by: Tori Anderson, Carl Hayden High School, Phoenix Union High School District

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Utilizing Role-Playing in the Classroom

Laurie King

Role-playing has been used intentionally and unintentionally in the classroom. When students take on a specific role, especially if it is career-related, they take accountability of the classroom activity. Incorporating play in the classroom provides students a venue to showcase their creativity and make use of their innovative skills. Utilizing the RAFT and GRASPS techniques, the students are able to take on the role while targeting various standards that are specific to a certain level. This is a fun way to incorporate all the topics that the students have learned in the school year.

Submitted by: Jeremie Gallardo, Aguila Elementary School, Aguila Elementary School District

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Thinking Boards

Laurie King

Thinking boards is a variation of Peter Liljedhal's VNPS (vertical nonpermanent surfaces) practice. Two to three students per board are randomly assigned to vertical whiteboards (aka Thinking Boards) to work. Students are standing, thinking, writing, and solving together.

Submitted by: Lori Rogers, Harris Elementary School, Gilbert Unified School District

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Museums Galore

Laurie King

We use Virtual Field trips to visit museums and take a walk through history and science. But, rather than just the teacher clicking through the app, we send the Virtual link to the students’ Seesaw account or Google Classroom and allow the students to roam the museum. To create a focus, there are some follow-up questions that allow the teacher to lead them to items that support the topic being studied.

Submitted by: Teresa Crosno, Peralta Elementary School, Cartwright Elementary School District

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FinCap Fridays

Laurie King

I use the FinCap Friday mini lessons from Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF) in order to engage my students on relevant, real-world topics in the financial sector. Students engage in a variety of financial topics that prepare them for life after high school.

Submitted by: Nicole Smith, Chaparral High School, Scottsdale Unified School District

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Design and Reflect in PE

Laurie King

In one of our PE units during each Jr. High learning year, scholars are asked to create a game play for the unit they are in (Pillo Polo, Football, Hockey). They must create the play, draw and explain what will happen in it. They must assign a position to each member of their team and explain in detail what that teammate will do. After testing their play during a game in class, they will then reflect back on if it was successful or not and explain their answer.

Submitted by: Konnie Bonini, The Odyssey Institute for Advanced and International Studies

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Anticipation Guides

Laurie King

Anticipation Guides are a pre-reading strategy used to activate a student's prior knowledge about a topic and build feelings of anticipation or curiosity about a topic to be studied more indepth.

Submitted by: Stacey Shannon, Rainbow Valley Elementary School, Liberty Elementary School District

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Lead Out Loud

Laurie King

I co-sponsor a group on campus called, Lead Out Loud. We select students from 4th-6th grade that are leaders or have the potential to be leaders on our campus. The students collaborate on projects such as: Socktober (collecting and donating socks to a local homeless shelter), an interactive bulletin board where students can share positive messages with others, writing appreciation notes to teachers on Thankful Thursdays, working with our entire school and district leaders to use stipend money for school enhancements.

Submitted by: Jennifer Waddington, Frances Brandon-Pickett Elementary, Queen Creek Unified School District

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Pair it Down

Laurie King

Pair It Down is a strategy I use with my Middle School students to build self-confidence and leadership skills. Once we have learned a new standard, students are asked to create a 5-10 minute demonstration of their learning to share with a younger student.

Submitted by: Melissa Potts, Estrella Foothills Global Academy, Laveen Elementary School District

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Day of Service

Laurie King

During one day a quarter, my honors juniors and seniors, help improve our schools grounds. Teachers sign up with a project and the students work together to schedule times and appointments for the "jobs". This is the second year we've done it and it gets bigger and better every time. We are a small school, but have pre K-12 grades on our campus, so there are a lot of opportunities for the "big" kids to help with and mentor the "little kids".

Submitted by: Amy Smith, EDUPRIZE Gilbert, EDUPRIZE Schools

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What Would You Do?

Laurie King

Scenarios help students be proactive so they respond rather than react to conflict for improved self-management, responsible decision-making, and maintaining better relationships.

Submitted by: Michele Balsamo, The Traditional Academy at Bellair, Deer Valley Unified School District

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Circle Time

Laurie King

Circle Time is used to prevent interpersonal problems between students by building relationships.

Circle Time happens at the beginning of the day and involves every student and the teacher in being greeted by name and answering a question about themselves or a classmate.

Submitted by: Ashleigh Sudman, Scales Technology Academy, Tempe Elementary School District

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STEM Shark Tank

Guest User

STEM Shark Tank is a fun activity that promotes student collaboration, problemsolving and shared learning. Students are divided into small teams and given an item to research and then “sell” to their classmates. Like the show, each team will have to present and persuade their fellow classmates to invest or buy their item. The team with the most “sales” wins.

Submitted by: John Carlo Tulinao, Amberlea, Elementary School, Pendergast Elementary School District

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Building Community Engagement through Mus

Guest User

Holding an evening music concert for every grade level over the course of the year is an exciting and engaging way to grow your community involvement. These events can become student projects where multiple content areas such as: Math, English, Reading, Writing can be incorporated.

Submitted by: Alyssa Weed, Acacia Elementary, Washington Elementary School District

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