Teaching Strategies Archives - Page 14 of 18

Teachers need a variety of effective teaching strategies. This collection of teaching strategies will help teachers with motivation and management, and engaging students in active learning.

Teacher Tricks that Help Students Remember More

January 10, 2018 by Inspired Together Teachers 2 Comments

You are working hard to help students learn. Have you ever wondered why students either forget what they have learned or don’t seem to retain as much as you would like?

The problem with retention is often in the first stages of learning. Our short- term memories are very short, and students must give attention to something before they can store it in their memory. Sometimes the problem is not a problem of memory, but of not getting the information in the first place!

Fortunately, there are many things you can do to gain students’ attention:

Try novelty– something new and different attracts our attention.
Bold colors, different sizes and varied fonts make us notice something.
Be enthusiastic about the topic- it’s catching!
Change your voice– louder or softer, lower or higher. A loud whisper usually attracts attention!
Use a variety of different teaching strategies and techniques to keep things interesting.
Ask for attention with cues such as, “123, eyes on me!”
Help students find an emotional connection to the content. When they care about something or get angry about it, they will remember!
Use cues that tell students what is important. Many students struggle with identifying important information.
Get students ready to learn by building background knowledge. Put some words on the board and ask students what they think the lesson is going to be about.
Ask a question that every student can answer– it starts students’ thinking process. Try “How many of you…” or “Have you ever…”

If students have paid attention, you have passed through to the next step. Students heard the information. Now they must do something with it! Learning is active, we must engage with new information in order to learn.

Here are some tricks for helping students to engage with new material:

Ask students to connect the new information to something they already know.
Ask students to repeat the information by saying it out loud. “Turn to a partner and explain…”
Have students write something down.
Make sure the information students need to remember has meaning. Rote learning is often effective only in the short term. When you understand something you are far more likely to remember it.
Teach students to underline, outline, and create visual maps of new content.
Use graphic organizers to help students organize information.
Allow students to teach new content to someone else.
Ask questions that require students to elaborate on an idea.
Provide multiple opportunities to practice a skill.

Try to incorporate strategies where every student must engage with the content. The classic question and answer technique is useful, but only to a point. Often, only a few students are engaged in answering the teacher’s questions. Those students who are answering your questions are learning the material, but what about the students who are not engaged?

Here are some strategies that engage the entire class:

Use journals, learning logs or notebooks to have students describe their learning.
Give students response cards, which are often index cards with “yes” on one side and “no” on the other. Have every student hold up the card when you ask a question.
Use individual white boards to have every student answer a question and hold up their response.
Use classroom response systems, also known as “clickers” or phone tools such as Poll Everywhere or Socrative that allow students to use their phones to choose a response.
Use entrance or exit tickets.
Assign “Minute Papers” where students have one or two minutes to write a response or a reaction to what they have learned.

Think of learning as something that we must actively engage in, rather than something that we passively absorb, and you will be well on your way towards helping students learn and remember more. If students are interested and actively engaged, you have set the stage for real learning to occur.

It seems obvious, but students can’t recall things they haven’t learned in the first place. Adding some new learning “tricks” is a great way to enhance your teaching and help students remember more.

Happy learning,

How to Engage Students the Week Before Break

December 12, 2017 by Inspired Together Teachers 2 Comments

It is the week before a school vacation and student energy is running high. Just when the students are excited for the holidays and sometimes unable to contain their enthusiasm, you are probably feeling exhausted and ready for your own well -deserved break. How can you possibly hope to engage students in meaningful activities?

You can make the most of a fun and exciting time of year without sacrificing classroom management or giving up on learning goals. Here are some things to consider:

Remind students of classroom rules and behavior expectations.

You’ve worked hard to establish a classroom where all students can learn. This is NOT the time to ignore your classroom procedures and rules.

Beginning teachers often make one of two mistakes during times of high student energy such as before holidays and vacations, during special weeks such as homecoming, or before special school events.

One mistake is to suddenly clamp down, and become a dictator. Teachers who resort to this method often demand silence. They try to contain student energy by giving lots of work- often in the form of unengaging worksheets. They tighten up on management, giving an increased number of time-outs, detentions, checkmarks or red lights. These teachers try to maintain order through control. Unfortunately, it often sucks the life blood out of both the teacher and the students.

Another rookie mistake is to go to the other extreme and lighten up on rules and procedures. It is often easier to look the other way, and relax expectations rather than challenge unwanted behaviors. This can quickly lead to an out of control and unproductive classroom.

Fortunately, there is a happy medium. Remind students of the rules and expectations. Explain that you understand that they are excited and you are excited too. You want to be able to do some special and fun activities with them. You know they will enjoy the activities and learn a lot too, but you are going to need their cooperation. After they agree, you can move on to explain the activity.

Plan Extremely Engaging Activities

This is the time to pull out all the stops and use your best, most fun and engaging activities. You can easily teach standards and engage students with activities such as the following:

Introduce a lesson on states of matter by playing music from the movie Frozen. Then conduct experiments with ice, snow and water.

Have students work with a partner, choose a country from anywhere in the world, and research holiday traditions in that country. Have them prepare a book, poster or oral presentation.

Another idea is to take a holiday tradition and research its origins. Where did Candy Canes come from? Why do we hang stockings by the fire? Why is the dreidel a classic holiday game?

Read a classic holiday poem, story or song such as The 12 Days of Christmas or O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. Have students rewrite the song or story with a modern twist. What would replace a partridge in a pear tree in the modern version?

Have students work in small groups to practice and present Readers Theatre presentations of holiday poems. Another idea is to use a script of a classic holiday story. The Christmas Truce tells the story of a true historical event that happened during the first world war. It is available as a free Readers Theatre script for grades 4-8. Many other scripts are available on line.

Have students create original math problems using the content you have been working on and infusing the problems with holiday words, themes or stories. Collect them and make a math review activity using the students’ math problems.

As a class, write “Write Around Stories.” Review the parts of a story. Then, each student takes out a sheet of paper and writes the opening sentences for a dramatic adventure story. When the timer rings, students pass on their story to the person sitting next to them. They then add the next part of the story. Keep the timer buzzing and the papers moving. Announce that time is up and return all papers to their original owners. Students then read the stories and write the ending. They can also edit and revise. Allow time to read the stories orally in small groups.

Use this time to continue to build classroom community.

Ask a holiday related question such as “what is your favorite holiday tradition?” as you take attendance.

As a class, work together to create cards and/or gifts for others. This might include parents and siblings, school workers and bus drivers, nursing home residents or a local homeless shelter.

Make a project of creating a special class celebration. Have every student bring in an item to make “Stone Soup.” Measure, chop and cook something together. Allow students to work on “committees” to create invitations, musical playlists, decorations, placemats and games for your celebration. Student presentations can make excellent entertainment. Spice it up by adding a microphone and sound system.

Create a tree of learning. Build a large tree out of craft paper and attach it to a bulletin board or use an artificial Christmas tree. Have students create ornaments out of construction paper. Each ornament is labeled with key ideas they have learned this year.

You likely have fond memories of special activities and celebrations you had in your years of school. Now, as teachers, you have a chance to create these special memories for the students you teach. The week before a vacation can be a fun and productive week if you take your curriculum, add a bit of spice and engage students in fun and memorable activities.

Good luck!

Do you want more engaging activities? Check out our post 4 Great Active Learning Strategies for All Content Areas.

4 Great Active Learning Strategies for All Content Areas

November 28, 2017 by Inspired Together Teachers 7 Comments

Are you using active learning strategies in your classroom? It is no great secret that students who are actively engaged in learning learn more and create fewer behavior management problems.

We love active learning strategies that can be used in any curriculum area and across different grade levels. Here are four of our favorite active learning strategies. Each strategy can be completed in 10-15 minutes.

Walk the Walls

This strategy works as a strategy to get students ready to learn new content or as a way to review what they have read or discussed. It is a good warm-up and generally takes 10-15 minutes.

Determine a set of 6-8 questions related to the day’s lesson. For example:

Which mammals have you seen in person? (3^rd grade science)

Why do you think slaves joined the confederate army? (9^th grade US History)

How do you think you would have reacted to finding an abused dog? (5^th grade reading)

What are some different ways to great someone in Spanish (1^st year Spanish)

Gather 6-8 large pieces of paper. Place one question on each sheet. Place the sheets on the walls around the room.

Instruct students to take a marker or pen and walk around the room quietly writing their answers on each sheet. When time is up, discuss their answers.

Speed Dating (or for elementary students “Line Learning”)

Prepare a list of questions for discussion. The questions can help to introduce new content or review previously learned content.

Have students stand in two lines, facing each other.

Set a time limit, such as one minute. Determine which line will talk first and which line will listen. Ask a question. Students have one minute to talk about the answer with the person facing them. Then reverse speakers. For the next question, have one row move one place to the right so that each person is facing a new partner. The person on the end goes to the other end of the line. Repeat.

So What, Who Cares? What Does This Have to Do with Me?

Students like the cheekiness of this title. In reality, it is a discussion tool that allows students to process new information and create relevancy. When students see the relevance of information, they are more likely to pay attention to it and to remember it.

After reading or discussing new content, have students divide into pairs or small groups. Given the topic, have students determine why the topic is important, who is impacted by it, and how the topic connects to their everyday life. Choose several groups to share their insight.

Four Corners

This is an active learning strategy that gets students up and out of their desks or chairs. Create a list of 5 or 6 questions based on your content. Each question should have four possible answers. This activity works best when answers can be personal reactions or responses to the content.

Here is an example from a unit on biomes;

What is your personal experience with deserts?

I have lived in a desert.
I have been on vacation to a desert.
I have read a book about a desert.
I don’t have any personal experiences with a desert.

Read the questions and assign one corner of the room for each answer. Students physically move to the corner of the room that corresponds to their answer. Once students have landed in place, briefly discuss their responses before moving on to the next question.

These active learning strategies are a fun way to get ready to build background knowledge or to process what they have recently learned. We hope you will give them a try!

Happy active learning,

Flexible Seating- A Student’s Perspective

October 31, 2017 by Inspired Together Teachers Leave a Comment

Flexible seating. Have you heard anyone talking about it? We certainly have. In fact, we wrote an article about it a year and a half ago giving a teacher’s perspective of flexible seating.

In a nutshell, flexible seating is about offering students choices in where they work, whether it is tables and chairs, traditional desks, a bean bag on the floor, exercise balls, or a standing desk.

Since the time of our last flexible seating blog post, it has become more commonplace in schools in varying degrees of implementation. We hear teachers talking about the benefits and potential drawbacks. We hear parents and administrators sharing their concerns and triumphs. Overall, the reviews of flexible seating are cautiously positive but we still felt liking something was missing.

Then it came to us…we hadn’t heard the STUDENT opinion of flexible seating. So, we found ourselves a 5^th grader in a flexible seating classroom who was more than willing to share his opinions on flexible seating.

What would we see if we walked into your flexible seating classroom?

It is neat. Maybe not “neat” in the way of a normal classroom but it is a LOT better. You would find yoga balls, a table that is lower to the ground and one that is higher so you can stand up to work if you want. There is a table that you can sit at with the yoga balls that you can bounce on…but just a tiny bit…you shouldn’t really bounce much at all. There is another table with big dice for the seats that are much more comfortable than a normal chair. There are some couches and a few carpets that you can lay or sit on. There is another rug under the low table so it is comfortable to sit on the floor. There are no desks but there are baskets to put all of your stuff in. The baskets are in the shelving area in the back corner. Everyone has their own basket. They are metal.

Can you explain why you like the flexible seating?

It helps you focus. You don’t have to just sit in one spot. You know how sometimes your head can hurt… from too much work… or MAP testing… when you are trying to concentrate too much? This classroom is better because you can sit how you want so your head doesn’t hurt. We actually have a chair that is really comfortable and meant to help your back. It is soooo much more comfortable and easier to do work in. We can’t put our computers on the ground but we can sit at the tables or other places with the computers.

What are some disadvantages to a flexible seating classroom?

Some people can mess around in it and abuse what they have. Sometimes people will jump up and down on the yoga balls. That distracts you and makes it hard for you to read. The flexible seating is meant to relax you, not to distract you.

What happens when people bounce on the balls and distract others?

My teacher says, “No bouncing.” If people still keep bouncing, my teacher says they can’t sit in that spot for a day. If they keep bouncing, it could maybe become two or three days, I guess. I don’t really know because that hasn’t happened.

What else should people know about flexible seating?

Another good thing is that you can sit wherever you want. You don’t have assigned seating. You can sit by your friends. When you have to talk to someone for group work, the whole class can be talking at once with their partners and it doesn’t get loud because you are spread out and whispering.

Do you think teachers should switch to flexible seating classrooms?

Yes! It is so much easier to work in. In a regular classroom it gets a little hard and a little boring because you sit in the same spot every day for about a month or two before they switch the desks. In flexible seating, you don’t have to sit in the same spot. You don’t have to sit by a particular person 24/7. You can sit by different people on different days or by different people in the same day. You can sit wherever you want and where you work best.

It was clear by this fifth grader’s animated voice and positive description of his flexible seating classroom, that he loves the concept in theory and in action.

Are you as sold on the concept of flexible seating as he is? Do you share the same concerns about distractability? Or do the benefits outweigh the potential distractions? Has this fifth grader sold you on flexible classrooms?

Wishing you a comfortable place to work today so your head doesn’t hurt from concentrating too much (we used great restraint not to laugh during that part of the interview),

The Teacher’s Guide to Surviving Halloween in the Classroom

October 24, 2017 by Inspired Together Teachers Leave a Comment

It is that time of the year…Halloween! Students are excited, even hyperactive and the days leading to and just after Halloween can be challenging for teachers. Here are some ways to enjoy the holiday while remaining sane amidst the sugar rush.

Know your schools Halloween conventions and protocol.

Does your school celebrate Halloween or attempt to minimize it? Some schools go all out with a Halloween parade in the gym and classroom parties. Middle schools and high schools may have bonfires or special pep rallies. In some schools, teachers plan special activities for a portion of the day but follow regular routines the rest of the day. In some schools, teachers and students dress up in costumes, in others they do not. Find out the expectations and then plan accordingly. You don’t want to be the only teacher to show up in a costume in a school that discourages holiday participation.

That said, in most schools, you can incorporate holiday themed activities into your classroom.

Have fun with it.

Students are going to be thinking about Halloween, you might as well enjoy it. Play haunting music during clean up time. Dress the classroom skeleton in a costume. Tell a Halloween joke. Put fun graphics on handouts or on the white board. Decorate your door (I dare you to come in…) or let students decorate the room. The promise of some time to decorate the room is often a great incentive to get students to focus on doing regular classwork the rest of the day.

Incorporate Halloween themes and words into your lessons.

Take a cue from our friend Esmé Raji Codell , author of Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year. Among the subjects Esmé teachers are: “Puzzling” (math), “Mad Scientists Time” (Science), and “Time Travel and World Exploring” (Social Studies.)

Perhaps for a week you could teach “Mysterious Mystery Solving” or “Gory Grammar.” Could you devise a science lesson to take place in “Frankenstein’s Lab?”

Most teachers and students enjoy reading Halloween and fall themed stories. Older students might read classic Halloween literature such as A Tell-Tale Heart or “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Most students enjoy reading thrillers or mystery short stories. Build fluency by having student practice and perform a Reader’s Theater show with Halloween themed poems.

Let students learn and practice research and presentations skills by researching the origins of Halloween or on the symbols such as ghosts, vampires and bats. Students could research in the days before Halloween and share oral presentations on the actual day.

Here is a great word list to incorporate Halloween themed words into your classroom activities.

Remind students of expectations.

You don’t have to be a killjoy, but you will need to remind them and expect them to adhere to previously established expectations. Sometimes a quick reminder is all you need. Here is one possible script:

I know you are all excited and that this is a fun week. We can all still work hard and learn a lot. I have some fun things planned for us, but I need you to promise that you will continue to follow the expectations and rules we have already agreed upon.

Be sensitive to students’ needs.

Some families do not celebrate holidays or allow their children to partake in holiday themed activities. In most cases, parents will have discussed this with you ahead of time. One way to accommodate all children is to use secular themes. Rather than celebrating Halloween by having first graders count pumpkin seeds, you can talk about fall and harvesting fall foods while counting pumpkin seeds.

If your school does allow Halloween activities, make sure that activities and costumes are developmentally appropriate. Some children are easily frightened by scary costumes. Older children may enjoy a scare, but be sure it is safe for them to opt out. Make sure that there is no real violence or threat of real violence. Most schools ban costume props such as guns, swords and knives.

Use Halloween as an opportunity to talk about bigger issues.

Many students will participate in Trick-or-Treating. This is a natural time to talk about safety. Halloween also offers an opportunity to develop critical thinking skills. Younger students can discuss the difference between real and imaginary or fact and fiction. Older students might grapple with ideas such as how do our looks affect how we are perceived by others? What do Halloween costumes tell us about gender stereotypes? What is the economic impact of Halloween? Are there real things that can take over our brains?

We hope you will have a great Halloween week!

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Walk the Walls

Speed Dating (or for elementary students “Line Learning”)

So What, Who Cares? What Does This Have to Do with Me?

Four Corners

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