Teaching By Design....Teaching Buttheads Daily...Tortured But Determined...Tiny Bit Dorky...Totally Brain Dead...Too-busy Disorder. You can decide what the TBD stands for. Visit my old blog at http://tbdteacher.tumblr.com/
I’ve learned that it’s easy to get students excited for class by changing up the little things when they enter the room. Today, I loved seeing my students smile when they showed up for class. It was more fun to do it this way than to hang the sign on the door. This was the first day of our “And the Award Goes To…” speeches. Who doesn’t love to be called a “VIP”?
Everyone knows that the social and emotional well-being of a child is just as important as their academic skills. In fact, our district just put “Culture and Climate” at the top of our teacher evaluations. If a student doesn’t feel safe and loved in each classroom, they they aren’t going to learn. Period.
Sure, there many ways to build a positive culture in your classroom, such as standing outside your door while students are coming in, giving them opportunities to define the rules in your classroom, letting them choose their seats, going to their extra-curricular activities, giving them a survey, etc. However, one of the BEST ways (in my opinion), is to spend time really getting to know your students on Day 1 of the school year. That being said, you need to spend time getting to know them every. single. day. of. the. year!
For the first five or ten minutes, my class never started with silent reading or a writing prompt; it started with an attendance question. Each day, I would ask a question (you can see my list below of questions), and I would take attendance by having each student answer the question. My students told me they love this part of the class because it gives their brain time to transition from one class or subject to the next. They also explained that this was a great way to get to learn about each other…who has similar answers, funny answers, and/or were extremely creative each time. In middle school, you never know what answers you are going to get. One year, I had a group of boys that somehow worked in a Morgan Freeman answer every single time. Last year, a boy answered with something about curry each day.
Up in the front of my classroom, I have a podium with a “special stool,” and on that podium is my list of questions and a print out of student’s names. For the first week, I tell the students my question, and I call on each student for their answer. When everyone has had a chance to speak, I tell them my answer to the question. (You’ll learn that if you give your answer first, you will have at least ten other students give that same answer.) This is a great way to learn the names of students as well. It is always my goal to learn every single name by the end of the week, even when I have 170 students. There is no way I could have achieved this without doing the attendance question first.
At the end of the first week and for the rest of the year, I have a different student each day that asks the attendance question. Obviously, this would be more difficult if you teach students under third grade, but here is why I do it. The students LOVE sitting in the special chair up front with this responsibility (yes, even teenagers). It also gives me time to sit at my desk for five minutes while I am doing the attendance on my computer at the same time (yay, a chance to sit down), or I am spending that time passing back papers and handling individual student needs.
Some of you may question whether you can give up those five or ten minutes of class. My answer is yes! When you build a positive culture and climate in your room, you are saving yourself time from discipline problems later in the year. Maybe you have that one student that makes you want to poke your eye out, and then you learn that you both share a love of horses. What better way than to connect with that student. I have also learned that the students start to feel like a family and become protective of each other, as long as you don’t allow negativity or snickering during the attendance questions. I stress that there is never a wrong answer; every one gets to feel how they feel. Kids are vulnerable, and it’s important to set up that safe place for them. If you allow students to make fun of an answer, you are actually killing the positive culture in your room, and NOW you are wasting your time in the beginning of class. Have you ever met a person who doesn’t like to share something about themselves? No, me neither.
This year, remember that the social/emotional part of a child is just as important as the subject that you are teaching. You may find that students never want to leave the room during the attendance question. There is a reason for that. Create that classroom where kids may pause before wanting to leave the room.
Feel free to use my list of questions. At the end of the list, I also have “Would You Rather Questions” that I use when I have less time and only want a one-word answer. This list is always a work in progress, so if you have questions that you think would be great to add, please let me know. I almost have you covered with enough questions for the year, though.
Here is the link to the questions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nEwWvnacTYUvlm7i3kqGmhY0BKuOjcKxFznZxPfTHOY/edit?usp=sharing
Many teachers say that they feel like they are teaching on a “deserted island.” As the only public speaking teacher at our school, (and heck, there are only a few middle school ones in our district), I can understand that feeling. Here’s the thing, though…you don’t have to be a loner. It’s important for a teacher to find their “tribe” when it comes to inspiration, questions, and even when you just need a good laugh. One of my “tribes” is the #tlap group on Twitter, and that is who I turned to when I wanted to start gamification in my class.
As I started my quest to try some gamification in my classroom, I felt totally at a loss. I read Explore Like a Pirate by Michael Matera (@mrmatera ) and participated in the weekly chat on Twitter #XPLAP. Both were helpful, but I still couldn’t figure out how to pull it off for my own class. I only knew I wanted to put teenagers and food together in one unit. (Food is always a “hook” with teenagers.) Then, I started thinking about my #tlap tribe and who might be willing to help me. I reached out to Carrie Baughcum (@heckawesome), who is so awesome that she even did a Google Hangout to help me brainstorm on her day off. I also reached out to Tisha Richmond (@tishrich), and she generously helped me with some ideas through Voxer. The ideas started coming together. I walked away with the idea of doing “Cutthroat Kitchen.” Next, I knew I wanted to reach out to our culinary teacher at our school. I presented her with the idea of collaborating on a unit with our classes in order to create a unit that would be gamified (in a small way).
The culinary teacher, Julie Olsen, and I met on a professional development day. I am so thankful that our principal provided this time for us. Before I met with her, though, I reached out to my students. I put them in groups and gave each group a piece of chart paper. I told them my idea of doing Cutthroat Kitchen, and then I admitted that I had no idea how to make it work. You see, the students have so much to offer, if we would only let them. The class I did this with isn’t an easy to class to handle. It was 8th period, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. They got right to work and came up with the BEST IDEAS.
I couldn’t wait to meet with Julie. We set out the completed chart papers and went through the students’ ideas. We highlighted the ideas that would work and crossed off the ones that wouldn’t. Then we got out our calendars and did some backwards planning. We talked about challenges we would offer the students, how they would gain points, and how we wanted to set up the final competition. (I will write more about this whole unit another time.)
We decided that we wanted to see if we could get restaurant owners to come in to help judge, and we knew we needed prizes for our competition. This lead me to reaching out to our wonderful parent volunteer coordinator. Thankfully, she was on board. She set up a sign-up sheet for judges and for parents to donate gift cards. Can we you believe we got enough $25 gift cards to give each of the winners…just because we asked?
My last step was to reach out to staff members to see if they would give up their plan time to come in and judge the competition. I sent out a sign-up sheet to staff and luckily, we were able to fill each spot. The gamification unit worked out beautifully.
I had no idea to how to make this work. It was only because I reached out to others for help that I was able to pull this unit off. There is no way I would have done it on my own. So the next time you feel alone in your classroom, with no one to bounce ideas off of, open your door, open your computer or open your Twitter and reach out for help. You might be surprised who would be willing to help you in your quest to take a risk in your classroom.
