Kagan Love

Last year, my school began to really focus on student engagement, and to do that, my principal worked extremely hard to get all of our staff some sort of Kagan training. If you've never heard of Kagan, you can check their website out here. I have loved every training I've been too - I have never been bored! Last year, I was able to go to a one day cooperative leaning, a one day win-win discipline, a model school open house, and a one day brain based learning. I even got to meet Dr. Kagan himself at the brain based learning workshop {and yes, we were dorks and had our picture made}.

Basically, like their tagline says, Kagan is all about engagement. The goal is that every child will be engaged in meaningful learning and to do this, they use different structures. There are LOTS of structures, so it can be very easy to get overwhelmed at first. {That's why I love their trainings - you learn by doing structures and not just hearing or reading about them}. These structures accomplish a few things...

To clarify, these structures are a means to establish cooperative learning in your classroom - not group work! In traditional group work, one student can do all the work while others do nothing. Kagan has all students accountable during learning! 
My goal this past year was to do a really good job at 2-3 structures. Two of my favorites {because they are super easy to implement with kindergarteners} quickly became Quiz, Quiz, Trade and Take Off, Touch Down. For Quiz, Quiz, Trade, each student gets card, then they stand up, put their hands up, and pair up with the person closest to them {this is also a strategy called Stand Up, Hands Up, Pair Up}. Then, the students greet each other {this is big in Kagan}, answer the question on their card/read a word/whatever the card has on it, give praise {something else that's big}, and then go find another partner. Every child is engaged! There is no one not interacting or learning! Here's a few pictures from when we used this structure with our word cards.

These cards are folded in the middle, so that there is a hint on the back in case the students have trouble.

To check out the word cards we used for the structures above, click the picture below.

There are tons of other Kagan structures that I've used, or that I hope to try out this coming year and I plan on sharing more of my favorites on the blog. Next week, I'll be in Orlando for the Kagan Summer Academy where I'll get to attend two more Kagan workshops and I am super excited!