 So I used a quick rate today with grade 9 English language arts and it was at the start of a unit, short stories, to get students to think about what they know about characterization and how characters get creative. Things in language arts obviously writing is a big part of our curriculum and it's sometimes a bit of a struggle for students so I think the more we just get them to write is always beneficial and then the second piece that's really useful is it gets them to bring in their prior knowledge, like activate what they know about a concept and we can bring that into classroom discussion. They can even bring it into assignments in the future that they do and it gives me to as the teacher just a good idea of what the students know coming into a new concept or a task. It definitely helps me get down the ideas that I want to use later. Like in my Romeo and Juliet stuff I was able to use some of those topics in my essay that I just did a few days ago. So it definitely helps me with those kinds of projects that become bigger and more important later on. Well in particular I can gain what students already know so that I can use and leverage that now in like future learning. It also helps me know like what their gaps are and also the different levels of knowledge in the classroom. Like for example today there were some students who automatically gave their character a name but quite a few students didn't and so that's interesting to me to think about okay like not everybody is naturally making that association and so I know the different I guess the levels or I can kind of scaffold around what I know their differing kind of entry points into the work are. I don't have a hard time selling the quick rate you know like we started they know the routine they do it. I try to make them different and kind of you know have some variety so sometimes I use a visual. Sometimes I have them like today they wrote creatively sometimes they write personally but I haven't had an issue in terms of just student engagement. Like they do it they participate afterwards they talk about it they seem to have a high level of interest. So if I see that happening then to me that's a sign that it's effective and it's kind of working in the way I would want it to work. It kind of helps me to think deeper and like really understand what we're learning about especially because right now we're doing short stories it's going to help me think of deeper things than just the outside stuff of the short story it's going to help me think of like oh that thing or like oh that thing that I wouldn't necessarily see just reading the material. I think it's important definitely to provide some variety and to make a quick rate fun because it is part of you know in kind of getting students to anticipate and kind of think about what's coming and you do want to activate their knowledge and you do want to engage them so I've used a meme as a quick rate to get them thinking. Yeah like you need ideas to start writing about something and so the quick rate can just help you get all your ideas out and then you can reread it and expand on those ideas even more. It's helped me with like personal responses that we've done to kind of think of cool ideas to add to my personal response and not just do the same thing over and over again or use the same example because when I look back at all my quick rates I have ideas that I wouldn't have thought of for my personal responses. When you have a quick rate everybody has an idea written down so if I want them to have a discussion with a partner they can go to a partner and they all have something that they can start with and if they're friends with that person or not it doesn't matter they have something that they can use to talk about if they're not super comfortable they can just literally swap and read what that person wrote but it always gives people an opportunity to kind of collaborate and interact and for students I think that's really important to talk and share their ideas and I've also used it even just to jump into say not necessarily a partner or a small group discussion but like a full class discussion and I find too that that's really great because if I've had everyone do the quick rate like I can call on a person who I know might be kind of reluctant but I know they've got something written down so I can say can you please share your idea and that student is able to do it and they don't feel put on the spot because they have something that they can use to say Well I think anytime you can engage students prior knowledge and get them to bring in what they know about a subject you will gain more from them in the long run and use the teacher too will get a better understanding of who your learners are and what their needs are so any of these strategies a quick rate is a great way to engage students and to also really meaningfully impact the learning in your room