Ask questions with lots of answers: My most favourite slide

I created this powerpoint in my third week of teaching because I needed to make a lesson quickly. The class I taught were bonkers and I needed a way to grab their attention. While this didn't make for the best behaviour management (there was a lot of shouting out answers) hey did engage entirely in the process. Asking questions like this works to capture attention because everyone can have a guess. It's a low-stakes question that gets people thinking.

Given that it was a sex ed lesson there were plenty of crude answers but my favourite is still the kid that, so excited he could barely get the words out, shouted: "Have legs! 87% of people have legs." Ah, the wonders of a teenager's mind.

The real answer? "Get married" It's really not that exciting but it proved a great way to start our discussions.

5 Key Items Every Classroom Needs #5: Tv-Head!

For plenaries, creating adverts, getting attention, doing role-plays, making people laugh, miming to songs, doing infomercials or faking a newsbroadcast.

Enough said....

Website of the Week: Puzzlemaker

Occasionally I find a teacher who has never used Puzzlemaker. How do you live without it? It's FREE (you don't need to buy the CD although I'm sure it's great) and simple. Cryptograms are an essential part of daily working life. Working with EAL students also requires a healthy dose of crosswords and wordsearches. Personally, I'm useless at Fallen Phrases but many students love them.


When you get to the page, click on the name of the puzzle you want and you will be given a template to fill out. Finished puzzles are displayed as html and can then be copied into Word/Powerpoint, etc.

Enjoy!

Text me your thoughts: Concepts in 160 characters or less

I straight up stole this idea from www.angelamaeirs.com and it worked a treat. Students often overcomplicate issues and struggle to explain a concept succinctly. The final module for our Health & Social Care class is "Independent Learning" and I knew this was one term the students would (a) want explaining, and then (b) still get confused with.

So, at the start of the lesson, I asked students to explain their understanding of 'independent learning' in one text message - yep, 160 characters or less. Immediately everyone had phones in hand writing furiously. I could hear that silence: you know, the one where you can practically hear brains whirring even though there's not a pin drop in the room.

After a few minutes, and a lot of erasing meaningless words, we shared our ideas on the whiteboard and then looked for commonalities. It was easy as most students had used similar concise ideas. Slowly we whittled it down until our final text said:

"Independent learning is studying away from your normal environment, and finding out new things that you will need to do your work. You learn."

While I don't agree with all of it the class were ridiculously proud of nailing something complicated in one sentence and felt a sense of ownership as they had created it together. Even better news is that our next lesson is about 'good writing' and one of the criteria is conciseness. I can see yet more uses for this activity.....

Starters: Read! Think! Write!

Giving students an interesting activity to start as they enter the room is vital for settling a class. A thought-provoking starter is created by giving students something to THINK about. I use the read-think-write format to do this.

First, the starter sheet (or overhead) has a THINK! question -- e.g. "Imagine that you have been imprisoned for a crime you did not do....."

I follw this with a short article about the question. I use free newspapers, internet articles, blogs, anything relevant for this part. As I teach lots of students with reading difficulties I try to pick something simple or I will pick two articles -- an easier and a hard one -- before letting students decide between them. Students must READ the article carefully.

Finally, I add questions that students answer in WRITING. The writing doesn't need to be long but it should be reasoned and in full sentences.

By going through this process students have a chance to think, read and write and we are only 5 minutes into the lesson. Whatever else happens between now and the bell at least we know we've achieved that much!

Bulletin Boards: The Skills Tree

A simple yet effective bulletin board is "The Skills Tree". I was lucky enough to inherit this from Ms. Morrison, my classroom predecessor. On each branch were the skills crucial to our study (in this case, Active Citizenship). At the end of a lesson each student takes a post-it note and writes down the skill they used most during the lesson and why. As they leave students stick the post-it note to the corresponding branch.

Voila! A neat reflective plenary and quick feedback for you as the teacher to see which skills were developed. Alternatively, if you're feeling flexible with your planning, ask students at the beginning of lessons to pick the skill they are least confident and put their post-it note on the relevant branch. You can then brainstorm skill development with students and practice during the lesson.

This can easily be extended to other subjects -- perhaps grammatical rules; with history consider comparative or essay skills; in science think about identification, description, explanation and evaluation. Any other ideas?

Revision Tips #3: Haiku Time

Haikus are an excellent revision tip for students. Their structure means it is easy to remember when you have missed a word and the rythmical nature means students pick them up quickly.

The Haiku structure is 5 syllables - 7 syllables - 5 syllables.

For example, here is my 'out of office haiku' for when I am on holiday:

Emails. Sit in my inbox (5)

unanswered. While I (7)

enjoy Easter eggs. (5)

Ask students to create these as a starter, plenary or for revision. Here are some of the best examples I have heard:

Sex Education

Condoms: check date, tear,

no nails, check right way around

roll down carefully

Sociology - theorists

functionalists are

parsons, murdock, charles murray,

think family good.

Business studies - ratio formulaes

working capital

gross profit, net profit and

solvency rating

Let your students' creativity run wild....

Website of the Week: Strip Generator

Strip Generator is a free online comic-strip maker that helps create fun resources. Using the website's ready-made figures and icons you can quickly make clear diagrams showing students how complete tasks. It's super-simple, as you simply copy-and-paste your new picture into powerpoint or a word document. This supports visual and EAL learners brilliantly.

For example, here's one I included in a lesson about University Aspirations:

Or try adding the names of students in your class for further interest at the start of your lesson....

I use these on worksheets, for starters, plenaries, instructions and -- in the future -- I plan to get students to create them in lessons to explain concepts. Just think, cartoons explaining a scientific investigation or a timeline of historical events!

http://www.stripgenerator.com/