I am still alive and teaching...with STICKERS!

Well I know it has been a while and I am not sure I have any really good excuse for why I have not blogged for a long time other than pure laziness and grad class overload. So now that I have tried to explain myself let me tell you about my latest success: STICKERS! Now we all remember the days of kindergarten and how hard we all worked for those super cool and awesome stickers our teachers would give out, well I'm bringing it back to my high school classes. I bought these sparkly smile face stickers on sale at Staples for like $1.50 a package so I may have enough to last me my entire career but oh well. 

I use these as nothing more than rewards when my students raise their hands and answer questions or have a super answer on a JENGA post-it (see my prior blog post for how to use JENGA in your room). The students have become obsessed with these cute little stickers so much to the point that they requested a chart to track who had the most stickers in each class. It has become a challenge and a game to them to try their hardest on all the questions so they can out do their friends and get more stickers. 

This is one of the charts I have up and you can see many of them are in a tight race and others are a little less excited (Rikki, Noah and Dyllan have their own chart in a notebook that they keep them all together). I must say for the most part my students are working hard to answer better on all their conclusion questions and beg to play JENGA every day just so they can get some stickers. I had no idea when I started this that they would love it so much and I hope your kids love it as much as mine do! 

Why I do what I do

Yesterday I was blessed beyond belief to receive this incredibly kind text message from a former student of mine who has always been amazing about showing her gratitude. When I have a bad day or week and question why I am in this profession it's messages like this that make it very clear that it is worth every minute of stress, every tear, every battle and and every struggle. A veteran teacher who I admire, once told me to leave the bad days at the door when I go home and to hold the good ones close to my heart. Those words could not be more true for all teachers and I challenge all of you to hold onto the those moments and let them fuel your drive to be better every day because you will never know which lesson will be the one to make a difference. 

BREAKING NEWS!!! The tides may be changing!!

OK so today was possibly a mild break through to the naked eye but to me today was HUGE! On Monday in anticipation of no school on Tuesday I assigned homework for my animal science class which was simple, silly and easy. They were to draw out with small little pictures the directions to the lab we would carry out when we returned to school. So they came into class and began getting their packets out and waited for me and my magical stamp and then I came upon this awesomeness!!! Yes, I know I made it super large but you have to see this for its true beauty!! This girl used her time away from class to really get into these drawings and I LOVED it! I would be lying if I said this wasn't the highlight of my very very long day. We all have moments of doubt when it comes to our level of sanity and this profession and this my friends is a perfect example of that finally I am making progress with changing the tides of laziness with my students. So please help me find even more ways to help my student prepare for labs while enjoying learning at the same time. How do you prep students for labs? 

Exit Slip JENGA!

So on the SUPER cold day I got a genius idea to create something based upon an idea I saw on Pinterest. The idea I saw was for conversation JENGA with speech topics on each block. Students pull one out and then speak on it for a given amount of time. While I will be using this idea on the other side of my blocks for now I have come up with the idea I call Exit Slip JENGA (my husbands vote was for A+ JENGA and that was a no go) but you can call it whatever you want and like. So here is how this went down! 

I bought this set at the Dollar General store for $4 

Here is my finished product.

So with Sharpie in hand I sat down to come up with my questions. In total I have 10 questions all but one set are used 4 times. I plan to put on the other side in a different color the speech topic ideas and I will post that list as soon as I come up with them too! How will I use this is class? Well I already use Post-its like I endorse the darn company so I made my questions simple enough to be answered on a single Post-it. I plan to use them as exit slips out the door or to review if there is time remaining at the end of a class period. Another thought I have is to use the other side for pre-assessment questions (this just came to me as I was writing this and I actually like it way better than the speech topics!). 

Here is my list of questions: 

- What do you remember most?

- Summarize today's lesson

- How will this help you in another class

- Doodle/Draw today's key point

- How is this used in real life?

- What will we cover tomorrow?

- Create 1 quiz question and answer it

- Define 1 important term

- What is 1 question you still have?

- List 3 important points from today

So please give me your ideas on how you could use this in your classroom and what questions you will put onto your set?

The problem with so many questions

I know the old saying of there is never a dumb question but I think we are all willing to admit sometimes there are some questions that are not so... well intelligent. I struggle with this in my classes because I enjoy sharing personal experiences about the topic of discussion which leads to student sharing which I love don't get me wrong but its not those raised hands that are my problem. I nearly want to scream every time a student asks me to repeat instructions or something I just finished saying due to their lack of concentration and desire to pay attention. So while at the DuPont National Agriscience Teacher Ambassador Academy we were all introduced to the GENIUS idea of question cards. 

 

These are my question cards

 Now these simple little cards are nothing more than a little clip art man printed, glued to a note card and laminated but how ever you chose to make them they are magical!! I have one class in particular that drives me nuts with silly questions about things that can be found by simple reading their directions or listening. So depending upon the difficulty of the lesson I hand out 1-3 question cards. After we go over the activity together and answer any obvious questions I say "question cards now" and the students know that from that point forward if they want to ask a question of me it will cost them one question card. Like a ticket at the movie I simply pick up the card as I answer the question. Some students never use any question cards and some lose them all in 5 minutes. Now you may be thinking don't you want them to question things, don't you want them to be clear about what they are doing, how can you not answer their questions,? Yes, yes, and easy I force them to THINK! I give them the chance to be sure they want to use their card before I answer and I always allow them to discuss with their neighbors to find the correct answer. More times than not the students at a table will work together to determine if they want to use the card or not and if they do use it everyone within ear shot will be listening and listening closely! I love love love these things because as you can imagine students not only work together better but they listen very closely when I speak because it may save them from using one of their own cards. I highly suggest these as an addition to your classroom management toolbox for sure! What ideas or tricks do you have for weeding out the unnecessary questions and encouraging independent work?