Send in the Interactive Word Cloud!

 

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Start the year off with an interactive word cloud!

I am always looking for fun ways to generate classroom participation.  If you can relate to my quest, take a look at AnswerGarden.ch.    The site lets you create a word cloud with audience responses in real-time.  I am a big fan of word clouds as you know – remember my post on  Dreaming of September Bulletin Boards

With  AnswerGarden,  you post a question and  watch the magic happen as your audience responds.   It is a great tool for opening a lesson, brainstorming, or  a quick assessment check.  No time in class?   Set it up on your online platform.

This is a free site  with no login requirement!

Watch this tutorial and you will see how easy it is to use!

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Powerful PowerPoint AIMS

AIM. The GOAL. The “here’s what we are about to do today folks, so get ready!” moment.

When I first started teaching the recommendation from the “higher ups” was “ELICIT THE AIM”. Elicit the AIM? Spend 5 minutes and WASTE my class time having my students GUESS what we are going to be talking about. No thanks, talk about being “ineffective”!!

Instead I give them something to think about as they are entering my classroom. Unpacking their bags. Waking up from their long journey in. My AIMS have to be interesting or my students will not be invigorated to “discuss amongst themselves!” Here’s how I find success every morning. Please note: you can do emulate these ideas on a whiteboard, chalkboard, a smart-board anytime of board you please as long as you are not BORED!

  1. Try to add an icon or graphic or GIF to your presentation.
  2. Think of a question that relates to the lesson but is not easily answerable by a YES or NO.
  3. Try to draw synthesis to other lessons you have taught over the past week, month or year.

Here are some of my favorites from my US History course. What AIMS have you tried?

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Write the Perfect College Recommendation!

DONT BE OVERWHELMED! Here is an easy bundle of recommendation letters for you!

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So aside from the whole “there will be no bathroom breaks” when you are teaching revelation moment I had during my first year, there was also the “you will write 75 college recommendations a year” (and have no extra preps or paid time to do so!) lesson I learned too.

College Recommendations. They are SO IMPORTANT for our students. As a teacher of upper grades (11th & 12th) in high school, students always come to me for a recommendation. I can’t write every student a rec (as there are 170 students overall a year for me!) so I have to do a couple of things to streamline my application process.

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The Paperless Teachers Desk (It can be done!) Here’s how –

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As you hardworking teachers know, there is a tremendous amount of paperwork in teaching. Everything from quizzes, to tests, to class handouts, to collected homework.   The goal – keep it all moving!  Over the years I have been able to reduce the amount of paper I generate in my classroom which I explored already in my post on  The Paperless Classroom? Here’s how.

BUT the REAL challenge for me is to keep track of all the other paper that flows over my desk.  The one-off sheet of paper I always spend a few minutes looking for!     I am talking about the memos from administrative authorities, weekly attendance, absent notes, late homework, hand-scrawled notes about individual students, last-minute changes to today’s  lesson or the instructional gem  I collected from a talented colleague.  It used to make me crazy..

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Discuss amongst yourselves (Online that is!)

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“Hi, this is Linda Richman. I’m verklempt ! Talk amongst yourselves! Here, I’ll give you a topic: The Holy Roman Empire. It wasn’t holy, it wasn’t Roman, and it wasn’t an empire. Discuss!”

Just a little Saturday Night Live Humor for you.

Now – If you have some students who are super quiet in class, you might be surprised at how they come to life online. I have seen such a change in my students when I ask them to join in on an online discussion. Usually a week-long discussion board is all you need as a great assignment to bring them out of their shells!

Here’s how – Choose an exciting or controversial topic to motivate participation, similar to how you would choose one for a great debate, or socratic seminar in the classroom!  One possibility is to post a difficult problem or debate question and ask students to write a multi-paragraph response.

Later in the week, they can respond to two or more of their classmates.   You can also ask students to post a document or video to enhance their response.   I have found that group assignments work especially well online.  It is harder to free-ride on your group when all your work is displayed. Continue reading “Discuss amongst yourselves (Online that is!)” →

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The Great Debate (Socratic Seminars in the Classroom!)

About four years ago I decided to “flip” my traditional classroom. I moved myself away from being the center of the room. I used to stand at a podium and offered 5 lectures a week. Instead, I shifted to a more student-centered classroom. This was not something I did overnight, however my first transition into the student centered room was via the Socratic seminar.

I first heard about Socratic seminars in grad school. I had never practiced them as a student but as I learned about them I saw the value in using text and evidence to support student reasoning as opposed to issuing opinions. Interesting, often controversial texts, are required for the best seminars. Socratic seminars are a form of debate, but should be used more to clarify a text then having a screaming match of opinions. Continue reading “The Great Debate (Socratic Seminars in the Classroom!)” →

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The Paperless Classroom? Here’s how.

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What?! A paperless classroom? You’ve never heard of such a thing?! Well… guess what. It can be done. I teach 5 classes of 34 students in an urban public school. Do you know how many trees I was killing a year? Fine… thats not the “real” problem. Do you know how much time I was WASTING in the copy room a year? Now that! That was the real problem. So I made a decision. I’m going paperless. Here’s how I did it, and YOU can too!

First, create a website that is user friendly. I liked using wordpress.com for my website but my school offered Moodle and Google Classroom as options as well.

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The Great Cookie Challenge!

pablo (3)One way to keep my high school students motivated is to have them think outside the box. Literally. The cookie box! As the terms wind down for the holidays or the summer, I give my students my Great Cookie Challenge. The terms – make a scene from history on your cake! Just bring the cake and you design it in class. Then – we eat it.

The students always remember this activity as one of their favorites. Just make sure your students don’t have any allergies before you begin and maybe even swing the idea by your AP just for brownie points (get it?!). Here are some of the samples from my students. Have you ever tried incorporating baking into your lessons? Let me know your thoughts and try to figure out these scenes below:

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No HW assignments for 2016? Can it be done?

I’ve been spending a lot of time this summer reflecting on my best practices for teaching. I’ve been seeing all these apps that do students homework (see blog post below) and thinking about how much copying transpires amongst students and I’m debating – just hear me out – assigning NO homework for the upcoming school year. Now I teach history to high school juniors and seniors in AP (Advanced Placement courses) which I know are traditionally rigorous and the bane of most students homework woes BUT what if instead of assigning them textbook readings and excerpts from historical books to read out of the classroom – I assigned them healthy tasks to do.

Students should go outside and play baseball, volunteer at a homeless shelter, babysit their sibling, hold a door open. Would they become better more AWARE people by the end of the year? Would their test scores be the same anyway?

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Using Marketing in the Classroom

One of the greatest tools a teacher can have, especially on the high school level, is preparing their students for the post collegiate world. Students are often exploring their interests during this phase of their lives and teachers have the ability to open students eyes to more careers then the basic “teacher”, “doctor”, “lawyer”. One way to do that is to have students create their own infographics. Infographics make information eye catching, shareable and easily digestible. They also play a crucial role in the increasingly visual world of marketing. Check out some of my samples from Piktochart that I have used to show students how to market items (For example, try it during a Shark Tank activity perhaps – sell me your item!) or create them to advertise an upcoming class assignment. An invaluable lesson! My favorite site is http://www.piktochart.com.

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Using marketing in the classroom
Sample Piktochart Example for a college fair
Sample Piktochart Example for an economics class

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