Ideas for Educators
  • Home
  • Idea Blog
  • Professional Learning Topics
  • Books & Videos
  • Free Resources

Brain Bursts

7/18/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Keep students actively attending during read aloud or lectures with these Brain Bursts! 


Combine a brain image with a burst image, print, laminate and adhere to a wooden craft stick. 


Explain to students that their brains have bursts of electricity when they make connections and think about new ideas. 


Then give each student a Brain Burst and ask them to use their dry erase markers to write the concept of the day on the brain. In this example, students were learning about similes.


 They kept the Brain Bursts on their desks, and were encouraged to raise it high whenever they heard a simile. During read aloud time there were several, but the teacher also used them in her conversation throughout the day. 


Students were paying attention and excited to have the opportunity to share their brain burst with the class. 

0 Comments

Building Sentences

4/13/2012

0 Comments

 
This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
Picture
This week my colleagues asked me to help students with their understanding of parts of speech. What an abstract concept this is! To kick off the lesson, I decided to use boxes of different sizes as a metaphor. I went to my local department store and begged several boxes of varying sizes that would fit within each other. On the top of each box I taped a piece of plastic that I had cut from a page protector. This allowed me to write on the box, and be able to reuse them for another part-whole concept.  

  1. On the biggest box I wrote STORY
  2. On two boxes inside this I wrote PARAGRAPH
  3. On three boxes inside each of these I wrote SENTENCE
  4. Inside these I placed colored unifix cubes to represent words. Unifix cubes, usually used as a math manipulative, are wonderful for building sentences because you can color code the words by part of speech.
  5. Inside the Unifix cubes I placed tiny alphabet beads that spelled words.

All eyes were on the boxes as we slowly unpacked the concept! The students really grasped the idea that each 'thing' was a part of a bigger thing, and that each whole had smaller parts.

My boxes will be easy to wipe off and use again for another concept in the future.

0 Comments

Props and Predictions

2/23/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
Today I had the wonderful opportunity to co-teach English with Mary. Students are in the middle of reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. To start class with a novel hook, I showed them an orange and asked them to predict what an orange might have to do with the play. We were greeted by some puzzled expressions at first, but then students began to buzz with each other about possibilities. I tossed the orange around the room and we listened to their ideas.



“If you stab an orange, juice will spurt out, like when they stabbed Caesar and he bled out.”

“You can peel back the skin of the orange, kind of like they were trying to peel back the layers of power in Rome.”

“In The Godfather, an orange always meant someone was going to die. In JC there are predictions of someone dying.”

“If you go deeper than the skin you see something different. This is like the characters, one thing on the surface, but different deep down.”

Neuroscientist Judy Willis (yes, I am a fan!) tells us that novelty grabs attention and helps information to get past the RAS (Reticular Activating System.) Once information makes it past the RAS, the brain begins to make predictions. We can direct this impulse to support our content objectives! Students were engaged and thinking in creative, connected ways.  So grab a food item from your kitchen or pantry and give it a try!

0 Comments

    Anne M. Beninghof

    Anne's mission is to improve instruction through collaboration and the sharing of creative, practical ideas for educators.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    October 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Categories

    All
    Accessibility
    Accommodation
    Acquisition
    Activator
    Attention
    Automaticity
    Collaboration
    Connections
    Cooperative
    Co Teaching
    Co-teaching
    Differentiation
    Engagement
    Higher Order Thinking
    Inclusion
    Literacy
    Math
    Memory
    Metaphor
    Movement
    Multi Sensory
    Multi Sensory
    Multi-sensory
    Novelty
    Organization
    Planning
    Questioning
    Reflection
    Review
    Special Education
    Special Education
    Summarization
    Technology
    Visual Supports
    Visual Supports
    Vocabulary

    RSS Feed