Category: - Ideas for Educators

Learning Bands

6/4/2013

Athletic teams and charitable groups have used wrist bands for several years as a way to promote their organizations and goals. Frequently, students can be seen with several different colored bands dangling around their wrists. Here's an idea for tapping into this interest to promote your learning goals, especially with rote information such as spelling words and math facts. (Great for primary grade students!)

Obtain two different colors of Velcro ( the non-adhesive type.) From one color, cut strips approximately 7 inches in length. On the other color, use a permanent marker to write numbers and operational signs (or letters for spelling.) The written material will attach to the wrist band strips, so be sure to use the opposite Velcro structures so that they will stick together. Fnally, cut a one inch piece to serve as a clasp or connecting device to hold the band together.

At the start of the day direct your students to create a band that shows one of the math facts that they have not yet mastered (or to spell their name, or phone number, or missed spelling word.) As they wear the learning bands throughout the day they will see a frequent reminder of the key fact they need to learn!

Creative Alternative to Matching Worksheets

5/1/2013

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting Heather Newman, a high school Spanish teacher in Delaware. Heather participated in a workshop I facilitated on co-teaching and differentiated instruction. One of our conversations concerned the need to add tactile and kinesthetic instruction to our lessons, no matter how old our students are. Heather showed this photo to me and explained how she had her Spanish 1 students match vocabulary to pictures using yarn. What a creative idea! She reported that her students loved it, commenting that it was so much better than another worksheet. Thanks for sharing, Heather!

Visually Enhanced T-Charts

4/15/2013

T-Charts are a common graphic organizer to assist students in thinking about the differences between two things that are related in some way. At times they are used to show examples and non-examples of one thing. Visually, they typically look like an capital or lowercase t.

For students who struggle with language, whether because they are learning English or a student with a disability, T-charts can be enhanced by using pictures in addition to the traditional words. Here is a photo of a student-generated T-chart to show the differences between narrative writing and expository essay writing. Students worked with a partner. Each pair was given a paper with either a word or a picture. Pairs came up and placed the paper in the correct column and justified their decision.

Research is clear that non-linguistic representations are very powerful. The next time you are using a graphic organizer, whether on chart paper or the computer, consider adding simple drawings, printed pictures, or photos.

Ideas for Engagement

2/26/2013

For the last few years I have been collaborating with a Nebraska school district to improve their co-teaching practices. Through a series of workshops, observations and job-embedded modeling, teachers have engaged in analysis and reflection. I am excited to see so many teachers embracing new ideas for engagement and hands-on learning!

Last week I visited co-taught classrooms at two different middle schools, both teaching author’s purpose using the RIPE acronym (Reflect, Inform, Persuade, Entertain.)

In one class, the co-teachers used a novel approach to activate student thinking. They began class by putting on banana necklaces! Students immediately wondered what was happening, and started making predictions. What a creative, novel way to activate learning! (For more ideas about novelty, download a Novelty Schedule on this website's downloadables page.)

In the other class, the co-teachers chose to use “cootie catchers” (also known as fortune tellers) to increase their students’ motivation. The teachers made the largest cootie catcher I have ever seen and used it as a model. What I loved about this was that it was impossible for one person to manipulate – it had to be collaborative. Students then made smaller versions and paired up to practice their knowledge of the four author purposes. Watch this video clip from the BER video Making Inclusion More Successful.

Letter Bag

11/29/2012

On a whirlwind tour of classrooms in Smyrna, Delaware this week, I saw a teacher use a simple strategy for engaging students. The teacher had 10 paper lunch bags, one for each small group to share. Inside the bags she had placed 26 cards, each with one letter of the alphabet. The lesson objective was to identify and discuss the impact of the narrative elements in a story. Students were listening to the teacher read, and reading along in their own books. Every so often, the teacher stopped, directed the students to pull a letter out of their “letter bag,” and then make a connection between the letter and a narrative element. For example, one group pulled an “O” and discussed how the setting of the story was “outdoors.” Another group pulled an “E” and wondered what the “exciting” climax would be.

This is the type of strategy I love for 3 reasons:

1.     Highly engaging – it was multi-modality and had an element of unpredictability that students immediately loved
2.     Highly applicable – the same strategy could be used to encourage connections to any content discussion, as an activator, or even as a summarizing moment, K-12!
3.     Low prep – such a quick thing to put together

Planning for a Cause/Effect Essay

11/7/2012

Yesterday I had the opportunity to work with students on building skills for writing a cause/effect essay. As a thought activator, I asked students to quickly line up some Legos I provided so that I could demonstrate the domino effect. Students worked in pairs to observe what occurred, talk about it and record the types of transition words they used to describe the cause/effect experience.

Next, I provided them with graphic organizer puzzle pieces. I modeled how one might plan for a cause/effect paper, including key transition words on the bridge shapes. Because we used puzzle pieces, instead of a static piece of paper, students were able to brainstorm first and then move pieces around to cluster their ideas. As a final step, they will put them into a sequence before they write their paper.

If you would like the graphic organizer puzzle shapes, email me at anne@ideasforeducators.com and I will happily send them to you!

Symbolic Representation

10/31/2012

I love Wikki Stix for encouraging students to develop abstract, symbolic representations of concepts. At a recent workshop with 4th grade math teachers, I asked them to use Wikki Stix to represent the concept of skip counting. Here are a few photos of their products!

This photo shows three students playing double dutch, chanting "2, 4, 6, 8...." in their rhyme as they jump.

This photo shows skip counting by 3s to 6 at the top in yellow, then by 2s, then by 1.5s and finally counting by 1s at the bottom.

This representation shows skip counting in a number line fashion with a small person at the top, jumping, and colors that show odd and even numbers.

Puzzle it!

10/22/2012

One of my teammates has a student in her class this year that falls somewhere on the autism spectrum – location yet to be determined. He is a bright young man with loads of energy and an inquisitive mind. As Thomas Armstrong suggests, in a recent article in Educational Leadership, he is neurally diverse with many strengths. However, his diversity challenges teachers to think differently about ways to capture his interest.

During a recent lesson, I happened to mention something about puzzles. This student impulsively shouted, “Puzzles? I love puzzles! They are my favorite things in the whole world.” Eureka! – an insight into a possible engagement strategy.

My colleague snatched the ball and ran with it. She and her grade level partners developed an interactive approach that incorporated jigsaw puzzles. A science unit on animals became a puzzle piecing activity for all students, reinforcing the concepts of structures and connections. The targeted student was highly engaged, as were all the other students in the class. The teachers all agree that it was a successful approach that will be used again next year.

Neural diversity brings much to a classroom. Celebrate it this week!

P.S. We have also used an iPad app called JigsawBox that allows you to turn any photo into an interactive jigsaw puzzle. For more app ideas, join me at an IED seminar I will be offering in March on the Best Apps for Differentiating Instruction. Registration will begin in a few weeks for Indianapolis (3/18), Atlanta (3/19), Chicago (3/20 & 3/21) and Denver (3/22.)

During a unit on informational texts, I took photos of papers that showed the features of different types. We then turned them into puzzles using the Jigsaw Box app.

Newsy Connections

9/10/2012

Encourage students to make connections between what they are learning in class and the larger world around them.

Bring in a pile of newspapers or choose some online news sites. Give each student a section of the paper and ask them to find something, anything, in the paper that relates to the concept or vocabulary term you are learning.

For example, in a middle school math lesson on polygons, students searched the paper for something related to polygons. After a few moments, students shared their findings with the whole class. Examples included: a picture of a cell phone, a basketball court, a corporate logo and a boxed ad.

An Instructional Twist!

6/24/2012

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to meet a dynamic co-teaching pair, Nicole Martin and Jenny Tuttle, at Franklin Middle School in Franklin, NH. They had previously attended a workshop I gave in which I shared an idea for using plastic picnic plates with transparency markers. They decided to tweak and twist my idea and came up with Instructional Twister.

As you can see from the photo they took four different colors of plates and laid them out on the floor, Twister style. Using transparency (water-based) markers, they wrote vocabulary from their recycling/ecology unit. The teacher would call out a definition and the student had to find the correct plate to place a hand or foot. If needed, the teacher would provide a hint by sharing the color.

Jenny and Nicole said their middle school science students loved it! I love it because it is multi-sensory, has a game-like feel for students, and requires very little work on the part of teachers! Thanks for sharing your idea!

Do you have an idea you would be willing to share with teachers around the country? If so, please email me and add a photo if you have one. The more we collaborate, the better our instruction can become!