How do you begin and end your class? These two times provide an awesome opportunity for you to set the stage for inquiry, to create a pattern of expectations, to revisit prior learning, to teach students to question, and to formatively assess your student's learning. By utilizing Schlechty's Design Qualities, as you create warm-ups and exit tickets, you can have a meaningful start and end to each class period. First impressions are important; when your students walk in your classroom you want them to know you care about them as individuals, learning is important, their success is your goal, and time in class is precious. You also want to frequently check their understanding and provide them with ways to self-assess. Warm-ups and exit tickets are a fantastic way to achieve this. In order for these tools to be effective the following need to be present:
Details...Digital Scattervox: Students plot responses on an interactive graph; it's like they are creating a live infographic! Nearpod: Create warm-ups, exit tickets or lessons with interactive questioning content; there is a free version and paid. The free has nice features. The paid version allows for more questioning types, AR features, self-paced lessons, and a huge library of resources. Students join via a code. Gooru: This is wonderful tool if you are wanting to personalize learning. It has a huge library of open source content along with great student tracking and formative assessment. The focus of this post is on the question feature within Gooru which makes a great beginning or ending activity. This is definitely worth looking at if you haven't before. Answer Garden: "AnswerGarden is a new minimalist feedback tool. Use it for real time audience participation, online brainstorming and classroom feedback". Share a link to have your students participate. PollEverywhere: Students can respond from multiple device types: phones, iPads, Chromebooks, etc. You can share via link or code. In the free version, responses are anonymous. The question types are extremely varied from word clouds to pin on a map! Quizlet Live: "Students work together to find the term that matches the definition - since none of them have all of the answers". This fun game uses images and word associations to help students review their learning. I love the collaborative nature of this game! They join via a code and accuracy is promoted over speed. Plickers: Use your phone, the Plickers app, and Plickers cards to get real-time responses from your students at the beginning and end of class. You can set up classes and track responses as well. Collaborative Mind Maps Google Drawings: Assign a shared Google Drawing through Google Classroom so that all students can edit. Have them create connections in their learning at the beginning or end of class a couple of times a week on their collaborative mind map. This can also be a perfect technique for launching discussions. Coggle.com is another tool that does this, but you only have 3 maps for free. SeeSaw's Activity Feature: You can now assign an activity in SeeSaw which would be great for delivering thought provoking questions at the start or end of class. Padlet: This is a collaborative posting board that you can share with your students via a link or QR code. They can add text, pictures, links, or videos. Word walls watch out! Fake Social Media Post: Finish up your lesson by having your kids create a fake tweet to summarize the lesson. Non-Digital Heads Up: Students partner up; a student pulls from a stack of cards laid face down on the desk. These cards can be terms, concepts, math problems, or various other curriculum related items. The student then holds the card on their forehead facing out, while the other student tries to get the student to say the word. Then they switch. you can add a gamified element with a timer and a class competition. You can circulate and listen to their thinking. (To save time, write the words on the board and have the first period class create the cards for the day). Student Created Popcorn Questioning: This is a great exit activity. You pass around a question wheel or question stems throughout the class period. Students create a question to ask at the end of class. The last five minutes have one student start the popcorn questioning; the student that answers their question then asks the one created and passes it on. If you don't get to each question you can start the following class the same way. This strategy is great for promoting inquiry. Square Circle Triangle: At the end of the period, students write one thing that they understand from the lesson, that "squared" with their thinking, one thing that they are still "circling" around, and one thing that they would change (delta) about the outcome or lesson. Odd One Out: If you want to have your kids analyzing and justifying this is awesome. See the examples below... Inner Outer Circle: Split your class in half; have one half form the inner circle and have the other form the outer circle facing the students on the inner circle. Give each student a question card; have them ask their question to the person facing them and have them respond. Then have the outer circle shift. Using open-ended questions increases the cognitive level of this activity. Go here to see this in action.
Discrepant Events: Find experiments, pictures or sentences that don't have an obvious explanation. Encourage your students to create open-ended questions that could help discover the answer and post them to a question wall that you can visit throughout the year. Mystery Box: Throw a little mystery and suspense into Mondays with a Mystery Box Monday. Place an object, character name, idea, picture etc. into your mystery box. Display a question or challenge that will allow the kids to not only use their inferencing skills, but also will reinforce prior learning and challenge them to discover something new. Click here for details. 1 minute Sketch and Stretch: As an exit, have the student sketch a summary of what they learned in the class period, then have them get up and find a partner to share their sketch along with an explanation (3 minute activity). Fact or Fib Showdown: Check out Lead4ward for a description of this fun activity. Students partner up and write fact on a sticky note and fib on anther. You read a statement aloud and students slap down fact or fib then argue it out with their partner. Circulate around the class to hear their thoughts. Connect 4 Thinking: Check out Lead4ward for a description of this though provoking warm up or cool down. By Jordan Folks Digital Learning Coach @Jordan_Folks www.folksforum.weebly.com www.sciencefolks.weebly.com Are you looking for a creative way to have your students infer theme and author's purpose through words in both fiction and expository texts? If so, you should try Poll Everywhere's auto-generating word cloud feature. After joining the poll, students then post words as they read the text that are necessary to inferring author's purpose and theme. Also, have them hunt for strong imagery words as well. Once they are finished, display the word cloud for the class to see. Not only can this spur discussion, but will help them have a visual of potential themes or author's purpose. See the example below from students in Ms. Skiles's class after they read an expository article on teens picking tobacco in U.S. farms. Enriching Extensions-Have students write a poem out of the words generated by the class. -Have students generate research questions to prepare for a debate on the topic -Create an original work of art tied to the word cloud Other uses...-Have students respond with words they don't know as they read; the anonymity will provide them with a safe feeling and help clarify confusion
Have another idea for uses...please share! This a great tool for formative assessment.
You provide the students with a list of ideas,items or statements. They have to pick the idea or item that doesn't fit and justify their answer. Twists on this: Provide each table with a different list. Have them complete the activity independently, then discuss in their table groups, and then jigsaw into new groups to share their findings and look for agreement or disagreement from their new group. Have a representative from each group share the findings with the class. This can be done at the beginning of the unit, in the middle, or at the end depending on your goal of this activity. Keep them guessing!There's a reason that games of chance are so popular. The unknown outcome gets the adrenaline pumping and the mind working. If you're looking for ways to increase novelty in your classroom then throw in a little random possibility, and it will get your kids engaged and focused. Today's Teaching Tuesday Twist are tools that increase perceived accountability through chance. Rory's Story Cubes
Teaching Techniques with a Twist Highlight!Project based learning is awesome, but sometimes feels overwhelming when you have to grade it. When teaching high school english, Eric Folks suggests adding randomness to assessing. He would label a SMART spinner with the parts of a project that could be graded. They never knew what might come up so all parts of the project had to be good. Each student would then spin to see which part was graded. Sometimes students would ask to have them whole thing graded...but what an awesome request! Reward Randomly...Instead of just winning a review game, create a spinner with rewards that the top players get to spin after they win. Random Assignment...Use a random number generator to assign a particular number or activity to a particular student that they will then teach to the class or their group. SMART's Random ChoosersSMART software has tons of random chooser tools that add the flavor of chance to your classroom menu. Math Game Randomizer (substituting the variable) Randomly select students, randomly create groups, random image generator, etc. with all of these downloadable tools from SMART Exchange. Be sure to sign in or create an account in order to download. App Tools for Randomness...
Want to share what techniques you use, then please be sure to post your comments...What's Working...
What's Not...
After years of hoping to truly differentiate my classroom, I think I have finally found a way!
Game-ification... I went to a training this August from a fellow teacher and she talked about the idea of trying to make class more like a game. She talked about the appeal of games to people of all ages. She was giving grades as XP points. She wanted the training to be a launching point for a dialogue of ideas. I liked the concept, but like all teachers in August, felt overwhelmed by normal responsibilities, so I filed the concept away hoping to eventually dust it off. My year started off OK, but not great. I was feeling frustrated; my normal approach was just not working. I didn't feel like the kids were as engaged or a driven as they needed to be. I also felt like I was holding some kids back and leaving others behind. Call me an idealist, but I want to teach all my kids, not just a few. I was sick at home on a Sunday when I realized something had to give. I talked with my son, who loves on-line strategy games and asked him what aspects of his game that he liked. This is what he told me.
It hit me...sometimes in the modern day classroom individualism seems to be left out. Our constant pushing of group work and time constraints make it difficult to meet the needs of each individual student. I wanted my class to be more self-paced and for more responsibility to be put on the shoulders of the individual. So began the idea of differentiation with game-ification... |
AuthorI've been a teacher for 10 years, a Digital Learning Coach, and a learner all that time...and hopefully years to come :) Archives
February 2018
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