PREPARING LIFELONG LEARNERS

A Quick, fun, NO PREP way to review content!

5/7/2022

I found myself with a few extra minutes of class and a room full of restless seventh graders who were wiped out from a day of NWEA testing when I came up with this great idea to quickly and competitively review content. The best part is there is ABSOLUTELY NO TEACHER PREP INVOLVED!

SET UP

None - like really, absolutely none!

STEPS

Divide your class into two equal teams and have them line up on opposite sides of the room.
Give each team one whiteboard marker (or piece of chalk if you have a blackboard).
Explain the rules:
1. When the teacher says, "Go!" the first person in line writes down a fact about whatever topic you choose.
2. When the first person is finished, they give the marker to the next person in line and so on until everyone on a team is done.
3. The first team done wins! (But both teams need to finish)
4. ALTERNATE SCORING - Once both teams are finished, review the responses as a class and subtract errors from each team's list. The team with the most correct answers wins. Whichever team finished first would be the tiebreaker.

TAKEAWAYS

Students get to demonstrate their knowledge of a topic.
Your class bonds through competition.
It gives you, the teacher, an insight into what your students are remembering.
If you review and evaluate their responses (ALTERNATE SCORING in step 4), you get to eliminate any misunderstandings or misconceptions.

So, that's it. That's my quick, fun, no prep way to review content with your students. If you try this out, please let me know how it went in the comments, and if you liked it, look through this blog for more quick and easy ways to review with your students along with a lot of other great stuff. And if you are looking for interesting, interactive or inclusive Social Studies resources, please consider checking out my TeachersPayTeachers store.

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Another Quick, Low-Prep Way To Practice Vocabulary!

4/23/2022

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I like to play games in class, and I LOVE teaching content area vocabulary, so here's another quick, easy, low (or no!) prep way to review vocabulary terms with any slush time you may find yourself with!

SET UP

Have a word wall. I use my vocabulary word wall tiles (click the link to check them out!) for all the topics I cover. Throughout the year, I post them and leave them up so that by the end of the school year we have around eighty or so - we're currently up to 58 words. It doesn't have to be my tiles though - any words will do.

STEPS

Assign a student to keep track of the number of words used.
Select a "starter word". It doesn't matter which work you pick, but it should be one that everyone knows.
Ask for a volunteer to pick another work on the wall that is connected to the starter word, and explain their connection (EX: I pick ziggurat to start, and a student might say, "Colosseum is connected to ziggurat because they are both large buildings.")
If it's a logical connection, say, "Great! Who can connect a word to that one?
Repeat the process until your allotted time is up.
At the end, see how many words you used. The next time you do this, the goal is to make more connections.

TAKEAWAYS

Students make great connections.
Competitions = high levels of participation.
You get to see what connections your students are making.
This gives you another Marzano aligned tool for your teaching tool box!

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Add Some Inquiry To Your Learning Targets

4/2/2022

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For years I have approached learning targets with my students in the same way. We look at the target and the attached Marzano scale and I help them decide where their starting point is, then we start learning. It works fine, but I thought I could do a bit more with it. Then I tried adding a touch of inquiry...

SET UP

The set up is very simple. All you need to do is project your learning target (or have it written on the board).

STEPS

Once everyone is in class, direct your students to read the learning target.
Re-phrase the target as a question (EX: "I can identify what caused the Fall of Rome" becomes "What do you guys think caused the Fall of Rome?").
Clarify any definitions (EX: "What does the Fall of Rome mean?").
Give your groups of students 30-40 seconds to discuss the question and come up with possible hypotheses.
Once the allotted time has elapsed, ask for volunteers to share some of their hypotheses.
Ask some probing or clarifying questions to understand what they might be thinking or to clear up any misconceptions.
Record their hypotheses on the board and leave it until the end of class.

Commence your lesson as normal.

At the end of your lesson, revisit their hypotheses and determine which if any were correct, incorrect or partially correct and briefly discuss why.

This is an example of what my students came up with the other day when we were discussing the Fall of Rome. They did a great job!

TAKE AWAYS

I've been doing this for about a week now, and I love it. I think my students do too - they like seeing when their hypotheses wind up being correct and do a little, "Yes!" and point it out to their neighbors, and I think that's really the point - students getting interested and invested in their learning.

So, if you try this in your classroom (or do something similar), please let me know about it in the comments. And if you are looking for lessons with pre-made learning targets and Marzano aligned scales, check out my Interactive Notetaking or Complete Unit resources in my TpT store - each of them comes with several Marzano aligned scales along with the actual resources.

My Store

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Four Book Recomendations for Reading Month

3/12/2022

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I have a passion for books, especially books for kids. It's probably because I harbor a lifelong dream of writing them, or maybe because my wife Jen (follow her on the other half of this blog btw...) is an elementary reading interventionist. Either way, for this post I'd like to share four book recommendations for middle schoolers who are constantly saying, "I don't like to read" that I've read recently.

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson is about a young girl who has to move with her mom away from the big city to a much more rural southern town. Once there, she befriends a neighbor who is facing his own challenges for being a little different. As their friendship grows, they come upon a decades old mystery that exposes a a great injustice from the town's racist past and prejudiced present.
If your students (or kids) love a good mystery and inclusive stories of friendship and acceptance, they'll love this book as much as I did.

Grenade and Refugee by Alan Gratz are incredible historical fiction books - one about an Okinawan boy and young GI at the end of WWII, and the other about four different groups of refugees - that do an incredible job of bringing the reader into events and minds of the past in a way that makes you feel the emotions of the characters in an amazing way.

Gratz does a great job weaving together different storylines into a single narrative showing similarities between seemingly unlike people and time periods in a way that literally took my breath away. In fact, there's a page-long passage in the middle of Grenade that made me have to literally put down the book and take a breath not just because of what had happened, but because of how it was written!

The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle - I saved my most recent favorite for last! This book about inclusivity, friendship and prejudice left me at times angry, sad, happy and with a lump in my throat.

It is the story of Mason Buttle, a very sweaty, very deliberate thinking dyslexic middle schooler who everyone thinks murdered his best friend. Fortunately for Mason, he found another friend in an undersized boy who moved in down the street. They are brought together by a common foe - bullies next door whose favorite sport is hurling apples at them with their lacrosse sticks.

Mason and his friend find shelter from their tormentors and a place for their friendship to grow inside an old root cellar. Eventually, Mason's names is cleared and his tormentors get their just desserts.

What makes this book truly amazing is they way it's told from Mason's point of view in Mason's voice. You turn the last page feeling like you are saying goodbye to an old friend. This may be my favorite book of all time!

So, I wish you and your students a very Happy Reading Month (why aren't there Happy Reading Month cards btw...), and hope you check out or pass on some of these recommendations to your students or teacher friends. Also, make sure to checkout my TpT store for great Social Studies resources, and follow this blog for great teaching tips, tricks and ideas.

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Virtual Conferences Made Easy... Or At Least More Efficient

2/26/2022

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My school's second conferences were last week, and were primarily done virtually. The first time we did virtual conferences, it became a little chaotic for me - lots of tabs open, clicking back and forth between different Google Hangouts, etc. This time, I found a really easy, efficient wat to stay organized and efficient and it didn't even take that much time to set up!

SET UP

For a couple of weeks before conferences, parents were encouraged to sign up for a 10 minute timeslot to talk with all four of their student's core teachers. Once our team had the time slots scheduled, we created a Google Sheet with the time, child and one of the child's Google Hangout links. We sent e-mails to the parents telling them which Google Hangout to use for the conference.

Our list of hangouts alternated between between two teachers on our team so that early parents wouldn't "crash" the wrong conference (something we learned from last year...), and it also allowed one of us to jump over to the next conference to get it going if things went a little long. It took a little practice, but got smoother and smoother as we went.

HOW I KEPT WHAT I WANTED TO SAY SHORT AND TO THE POINT

This is where the efficiency part comes in. Our conference slots were only 10 minutes per parent, so being quick and to the point was vital. My solution was to copy and paste our conference schedule into a new Google Sheet and add columns for "Positives to be Sure to Mention", and "Concerns to be Sure to Share". Then I went through each student on the list and made a quick note of the most important things I wanted to share. I also added a column for things to remember from the conference and one to record whether or not the parent showed up. This sheet wound up being great documentation of who we talked with and what we talked about as well as a record of who attended for our administration! Below is a picture of the Google Sheet (with student names blocked out).

So, if you have conferences - especially virtual conferences - coming up, or if you're looking for a way to get organized for next year, I highly recommend this method. And, if you are interested in other great teaching tips and tricks, please follow this blog and share it with anyone else who might be interested. Finally, if you have any conference (virtual or otherwise) tips or tricks you think might be helpful, please feel free to put them in the comments.

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A Quick, fun, NO PREP way to review content!

Another Quick, Low-Prep Way To Practice Vocabulary!

Add Some Inquiry To Your Learning Targets

Four Book Recomendations for Reading Month

Virtual Conferences Made Easy... Or At Least More Efficient

MEET TIM

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