Back to School / Wide Open Learning
by Megan Kelly · Published 09/17/2023 · Last modified 08/04/2024
At times we can be overwhelmed by all the fresh ideas we want to try out in a new school year. By narrowing her goals down to three top priorities, Megan Kelly aims to make lessons more meaningful for students, improve family engagement, and do better at tracking individual progress.
Extended teacher absences are more frequent than ever. Recently teacher Megan Kelly had to be away. Here she shares how she tweaks class organization and systems to make sure her middle schoolers thrive in her absence and her substitutes succeed in their important role.
Social studies teacher Megan Kelly and her students start each class with Canva-created Questions of the Day and continue Canva-assisted learning with topic explorations, visual formative assessments, student-made reports, infographics and more. All with the free version!
Imagine an activity that takes little class time but engages students in current events and encourages them to speak with their families about what’s happening in the world. Teacher Megan Kelly longed for just such an activity and finally found it in “fantasy geopolitics.”
Building Community / Wide Open Learning
by Megan Kelly · Published 09/19/2022 · Last modified 07/11/2024
With the goal of having new middle school students feel seen as individuals while also feeling like a part of something bigger, Megan Kelly organized group activities for all the students across her sixth grade team. The games can be expanded or contracted to fit your time.
The more students interact with the rubric, the more ownership they take over it, writes Megan Kelly. Once they feel empowered by the rubric, they can use it as a tool to accomplish their goals rather than a means of judgment, putting them on the same team as the teacher.
Vocabulary / Vocabulary / Wide Open Learning
by Megan Kelly · Published 03/06/2022 · Last modified 01/14/2026
How can teachers be more intentional about teaching vocabulary words given the limited instructional time available? Megan Kelly shares ways she has begun to add more vocabulary instruction into small pockets of class time using focus words, drawing, GIFs, and Spot It cards.
A former English teacher, Megan Kelly is eager to discover how she can incorporate the learning power of storytelling into history units. As a first step she created a transmedia storytelling experience that had summer camp students exploring where ‘history’ comes from.
In classes like social studies and science, students are expected to do complex nonfiction reading. How can we ensure they’ll process and retain the content for future use? History/ELA teacher Megan Kelly shares fun activities to help kids think more deeply about information text.
Back to School / Wide Open Learning
by Megan Kelly · Published 08/22/2021 · Last modified 08/27/2024
Sharing Identity Slides can be the first step in building a classroom community of acceptance, risk-taking, growth, and reflection. Megan Kelly is excited that she and her sixth graders can start on that path with a simple activity that also assesses skills in three areas.
