Teacher Show-and-Tell

Each week, Instant Meeting presents an idea or activity that you might use to make staff meetings more interesting, teacher-centered, educational, or fun.

Brief Description/Purpose

Focus the spotlight on "ideas that work." In this activity, principals set the theme for a 15-minute idea sharing session at each month's staff meeting.

Materials Needed

Teachers will provide their own materials; if their idea involves a student work sheet or other materials, they might come prepared with handouts of those resources.

Time Required

This activity is ideally suited for use as a 15-minute "show-and-tell of ideas" at each staff meeting.

"Instant Meeting" Idea

Many principals like teachers to play an active role in staff development. This activity provides an easy way to accomplish that. Use this activity to spread around the responsibility and to give all staff members the opportunity to stand in the professional development spotlight.

For this activity, introduce a "theme of the month." Each teacher (or each teaching team, if your school is a large one) will be responsible for sharing a 1-minute teaching idea related to the theme. The choice of themes is wide open and can spread across the curriculum or focus on a specific area of school-wide focus.

Possible Themes
Share an idea you have used successfully that

• employs the use of a graphic organizer.
• teaches one of the five themes of geography.
• uses technology in a way that all teachers can do easily.
• is part of your Morning Meeting program.
• employs a "primary source" to teach history (or language, or science, or)
• instructs students in developing good study or research skills.
• involves parents in an assignment or classroom activity.
• involves students in using higher-level critical thinking skills.
• engages students in writing in a way that was fun.

The list of potential themes is unlimited. You might even ask teachers to brainstorm ideas for the monthly "show-and-tell" theme.

Read More

You might appoint a teacher or a teaching team to serve as the moderator of each month's show-and-tell session (once you have modeled the session in the first meeting of the school year). That person will be responsible at the end of the session for collecting ideas shared (and ideas not shared, if time runs out) and packaging them into a "mini curriculum guide" for distribution to all staff members.