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We cultivate an intellectual school culture for our students by allowing for student choice when giving them the opportunity to show what they learned.

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I am currently reading various literature pertaining to my grad program. A lot of the literature I am reading is regarding integrating mobile technology into curriculums to advance student learning.

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Intellect is what you learn and how you apply it in the real world. For example, in technology it would be taking the skill of text formatting elements and using it to create various digital artifacts to emphasize important ideas.

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I have created a classroom environment that has intellectual culture. I made sure that all my student's feel represented. One example that I do is by showing different pictures that represent all my students cultures of a player doing a skill. I also, have different challenges that student's can choose to participate in so they feel comfortable in the same learning environment as another student who might be more advanced in that skill.

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Readers who Struggle: Why Many Struggle and a Modest Proposal for Improving their Reading

In this article, Rasinski identified reading fluency and Prosody as  primary contributors of reading proficiency among readers within the elementary grades. To address the nationwide issue, he proposes intentional and intensive instruction that follows a predictable protocol delivered on a daily or near daily basis. Such instruction ought to include:

-Read Alouds followed by meaningful responsive activities

-Time to read and explore bokx independently

-Phonemic Awareness activities,

-Opportunities to engage in authentic writing

-Daily employment of the Fluency Development Lessons (focused on the mastery of texts).

-Extensive and intentional focus on Prosody in everyday reading and writing activities, one of which could include the focus on punctuation.

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I learn a lot from other PE teacher's techniques from different PE teacher's websites and Professional articles. I believe that the best way for me to gain more intellect in my profession is from my peers.

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Intellect is not only having the knowledge of a topic or skill by applying it to the world and situations.

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We cultivate an intellectual school culture in our classrooms by providing a print rich, nurturing and welcoming  environment that represents all students.  Our literature focuses on social emotional learning, various cultures and a wide range of topics that expose the children to a strong sense of identity.  For example, All About Me and Where we Live.

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Our Instructional Coach from last year shares literature on early childhood education on her Google Classroom. We have recently read the Teaching Tools for Young Children with Challenging Behavior Routine Based Support Guide by Rochelle Lentini, Bobbie Vaughn, Lise Fox, and Kwang-Sun Blair. This Routine Based Support Guide was developed to assist teachers in problem-solving a plan to support young children who are having challenging behavior.

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Memory, comprehension, reasoning, analyzing, and problem solving are examples of intellectual skills. The definition of intellect isn’t just about academics, but also emotional intelligence and self and social awareness.

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We cultivate an intellectual school culture for our students by incorporating their interests into POD, centers, independent reading, SEL, and stem activities. We include a variety of learning styles such as media and games to engage and stimulate the young minds of our students.

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Our team have been listening and reading a diverse collection of literature. We have been listening to podcasts on education. Our team members read articles from Cult of Pedagogy and Weareteachers.com.
We have been reading from Flippo and Lucy Calkins.

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When someone takes an interest and learns the skills to become proficient in the area.
For example, art, sports, stem, reading, etc.

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We need to create authentic lessons that awaken students' interests and genius to foster intellectual thought. Students need to be allowed to question and critique new ideas presented to them. They should feel welcomed, comfortable, and part of the learning community. There should be evidence of how we are creating an intellectual culture throughout the school community. Curriculum should be related to the children who are in front of us, not a "one-fit-all" mold.

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Grade 2 has been exploring various literature to open our minds to different perspectives on this topic. One of us has read the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. It explores stories of a hidden caste system within America. Another member of our team has read the book Blackout by Candace Owens. One part of this book portrays a different perspective of the education system in the United States. We are continuously looking for more literature to advance our minds.

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We believe that intellect means the knowledge we have about different topics and ideas and how we use it to gain a better understanding of the world. Intellect is internalizing and questioning what we are constantly learning to open our minds to new ideas.

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We have been reading and reflecting upon the information included in "Cultivating Genius" alongside the rest of the staff. We also have Glenn Singleton's "Courageous Conversations About Race" to refer back to when integrating this work into our classrooms. A text we are interested in exploring is "Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students" by Zaretta Hammond. This book focuses on information on how one's culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships.

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As teachers we need to provide opportunities for children to cultivate intellect.  That includes discussing and having lessons that tap into their genius such as social justice issues, discussing topics that allow children to critique and analyze the world, viewing students as co- intellectuals, make changes to our curriculum that limit our children to expand their minds etc.  Teachers must become intellectual beings and model that for our students.

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The book Cultivating Genius has been a great resource to help us expand our minds when it comes to executing impactful and meaningful instruction. A text we want to explore is Multicultural Teaching in the Early Childhood Classroom: Approaches, Strategies and Tools, Preschool-2nd Grade (Early Childhood Education) by Mariana Souto-Manning.

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Kindergarten interprets intellect as teachers building on student’s knowledge. It allows students to make sense of their world and the world around them. It also allows students to examine what they are learning and connect it to their lives.

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So while we are working hard to incorporate intellect and equity into the classroom, how can we now change what the state does to interfere with our progress? Specifically we are referring to testing. This needs to change. Why are the state tests even given is the main question, but why is the math state test given during Ramadan when so many of the students are fasting during their holiday?

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Classroom curriculum typically goes unchanged for years rather than transitioning and adapting to the events of the world. Students need to learn about topics that are not just important to their immediate context but also to the world. Students need to engage in texts that activate students’ intellect. Their intelligence is connected to action. When students develop intellectualism, they can express their ideas, work through justice-centered solutions to the world’s problems, and expand their mental capacities. Intellect includes what we want students to become smarter about, but also creates a space for students to apply their learning in authentic ways connected to the world.

Students’ mental culture needs to be developed. Teachers need to create a classroom environment where student intellect awakens their interest and genius. Think about who is represented on the classroom walls, if the library is rich with literature and technology that enables critical thought, if there are quotes from leading thinkers of the past and present posted around the classroom, how students are welcomed each day, if you avoid the use of worksheets that inhibit intellectual culture, and if the curriculum is designed for students’ identities.

Have students consider what is going on in the world and within media and then intellectualize the topic and connect to the skills and standards of the content area. Provide students with opportunities to put their learning into action and practice.

To cultivate an intellectual school culture we must promote an academic mindset which means we need to foster a positive classroom setting. We also need to encourage students to value their identity within their academic community.

Each of us can create our own positive  and valuable classroom culture by establishing positive classroom discipline practices. This means we maintain a safe and orderly environment for our students culturally. By doing this we can resolve conflicts which can reduce behavior problems and classroom disruptions which will improve our intellectual school culture.

As stated in the article on page 105, “Some have connected the aim of intellectualism to higher-order or higher level thinking, but historically among Black communities, intellectualism wasn’t seen as exceptional learning-it was just a norm and the way they approach learning”. Because of this way of thinking, we still observe disparities in areas such as standardized testing. With new ideas on how to create an intellectual school culture, we will be able to relieve the disparities, make adjustments that include the entire class culture.

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Intellect means to understand objectively. It is what we learn or understand about various topics or concepts. Intellect is about exercising our mental powers and capacities to better understand and critique the world. As a teacher, it is important to see yourself as an intellectual being before cultivating the same within students.

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To cultivate an intellectual school culture, first we have been finding out not only about students backgrounds but also  about their likes and wants through surveys and questioning. Then through modeling we show students how we would solve problems by explaining our thinking and connecting it to real life. By making connections to their identities, the students can then relate to how this fits in their lives. We coach the students so that they can then apply and transfer this knowledge on their own.

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Intellect is putting our knowledge into action. It's taking what we learn and understanding it. Intellect is what we want students to be smart about by applying their learning to connect to real life.

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Teachers need to celebrate personal achievements and show assets based learning as opposed to deficit based learning. Teachers can do this by taking students’ interests and cultures into account. We need to survey students to see which real world problems or issues matter to them to create opportunities to apply their knowledge to those real world problems. This also gives students and teachers the opportunity to historicize. Teachers should focus on creating a classroom environment that does not focus on test scores but developing learners who can think, create, question and solve problems.

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5th grade has been reading Cultivating Genius along with the school. We each research ways to incorporate what we learn within each subject area and modify or adjust our lessons accordingly. Going forward we want to find literature to support project based learning that incorporates social issues and can then be used across content areas (cross curricular.)

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5th grade feels intellect involves taking knowledge you learn and applying it to real world authentic problems. It is being able to critique a situation in life and apply a skill or strategy.

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5th grade noticed a big idea that is repeated is the notion that subjects should not be taught in isolation. In this chapter they mentioned historicizing, connecting a topic to history or to represent it as historical.