Participants will introduce themselves including name, content area, school and how long they’ve been teaching. They will then give the one thing they are looking forward to most about this summer that in no way involves school.

We have to make decisions, large and small, every day. This strategy invites students into the content by requiring them to take a strategic approach to making a decision. These skills extend beyond the lesson to other courses, taking a personal stand on controversial events, and life decisions.

*It is personal and engaging. The first phase is intended to get the students interested in the situation.

*It deals with real world situations that students can relate to. It builds good decision making skills that students can use in the real world (systematic).

*allows students to practice making decision and evaluating results in a safe simulation (the classroom)

*Jimenez-Aleixandre and Pereiro-Munoz (2002) show that ʺlearning through decision making leads to higher levels of conceptual understanding becuase it lets students access and manipulate content through the lends of their own personal value systemʺ

here’s what we want of all classes in FCS:

Teachers expect each student to learn at high levels. They support each student so that s/he can learn at high levels. They require each student to demonstrate learning at high levels. (Barbara Blackburn, 2008)

· Teachers promote thinking that goes beyond recalling information and performing procedures. They create learning experiences that require students to create their own meaning and integrate knowledge and skills to solve real-world problems, even when the “correct” answer is unclear.

as we learn this strategy pay attention to how this strategy supports this idea of rigor/academically challenging environments.

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