I found Rutherford’s book to be the most helpful to me in preparing lessons and, I feel, I will likely utilize this book frequently when creating future plans. Finding ten takeaways from this book was extremely easy. I could almost just take ten pages in a row and be comfortable calling them my favorites. You’ll note by my page numbers, that I didn’t ‘quite do that, but I came very close!

1)    Student-Led Book Discussions (Rutherford, 2012, pg56)

               Rationale: This is an excellent activity for getting students to collaborate together in groups helping each other through the learning process.

2)    Class Mind Maps (Rutherford, 2012, pg59)

               Rationale: The single hardest part of writing (or creating anything for that matter) is and always will be just ‘getting started’. Mind Maps are an excellent method for allowing free associative thinking while providing a flexible framework for organizing thoughts.

3)    Mnemonics (Rutherford, 2012, pg60)

               Rationale: Most students don’t understand that they use Mnemonics every day when they memorize songs and jingles, etc. They’re incredibly effective tools for memory retention.

4)    Numbered Heads Together (Rutherford, 2012, pg63)

Rationale: Again, this is an excellent activity for getting students to cooperate in groups. It also ensures that every student is doing the learning while only assessing one of them per question.

5)    Paragraph Predictions (Rutherford, 2012, pg65)

Rationale: I like this exercise because it engages students in higher level thinking about their writing. It also is a great lesson in understanding natural patterns of thought that we all take for granted but are, nonetheless, extremely important in conveying ideas clearly

6)    Student-Led Mini-Lectures (Rutherford, 2012, pg 71)

Rationale: This one is simple. There is no better way to learn a subject than to try and teach it to others.

7)    Invention Convention (Rutherford, 2012, pg 73)

Rationale: The Invention Convention is an excellent example of authentic assessment. It will help students to understand how, if they hope to create anything of value in this world, they will need to utilize multiple skills and abilities to reach a final product.

8)    Questioning and Prompts (Rutherford, 2012, pg 75)

Rationale: Honestly, I kind of like this one because it is a ‘work smarter not harder’ planning activity for the teacher yet the students will get a great deal from doing the exercise.

9)    Reciprocal Teaching (Rutherford, 2012, pg 80)

Rationale: Again, I love this one because I have found that one learns a subject much more thoroughly if they are attempting to help others to understand it.

10) Socratic Seminars (Rutherford, 2012, pg 86)

Rationale: Socratic seminars can be a bit difficult in the High School environment because students have been trained in a different teacher-student interaction model. However, if a teacher is able to get students to engage, they can be tremendously efficient in furthering higher level thinking.