All teachers want to increase student engagement. When your students are engaged, the lesson sings! It is like magic, seeing alert faces, excited about the topic at hand. Time flies by! You do not even want class to end.
Continue reading “One Simple Way to Increase Student Engagement”A New Way to Turn Notes into a Game: The Notes Race!
Turn your notes into a game with the Notes Race! This is a super fun way for students to fill in a set of skeleton notes or to label a complex diagram. The method is simple, and includes movement, teamwork, and competition!
Continue reading “A New Way to Turn Notes into a Game: The Notes Race!”4 Ways to Build Relationships During Distance Learning
Many of us are starting the school year doing virtual classes. It is a tough situation – for a lot of reasons. I think the worst part is how difficult it will be to connect with my students. This blog post came out of a deep need for ways to build relationships during distance learning. It is also a sincere invitation to offer your own ideas that we can all benefit from.
Continue reading “4 Ways to Build Relationships During Distance Learning”ClassTag: New Favorite Tool for Teacher Communication with Parents & Students
Teacher communication with parents and students is always important. Somehow, though, I imagine that this coming year communication will be even more essential. There will likely be (many) days that I do not see my students in person. Parents will need to be in close connection with the workings of the classroom and the school. I need a communication tool that can do…a lot.
Continue reading “ClassTag: New Favorite Tool for Teacher Communication with Parents & Students”Remote Learning Using Padlet to Teach Digital Lessons
You and I are probably in the same boat – trying to figure out how to take months of instruction and make it available to students for Remote Learning. There are many ways to do this, the learning curves of some ways are steeper than others! That is why I love Padlet. Padlet provides a simple and easy way to give students notes, videos, links, and instructions – with their responses – all in one place, and all online.
Continue reading “Remote Learning Using Padlet to Teach Digital Lessons”Best Way to do Test Corrections: Simple & Engaging
We all want our students to learn from their mistakes. Tests are not just a grade, but a measure of where a student’s understanding is. We want to help fill in the gaps. This usually includes going over the test, or some form of test corrections.
But what is the best way to do test corrections? I was searching for a way that truly helped students learn from their mistakes, but did not take up a lot of time. I needed a test correction method that was meaningful, and motivated even hard-to-motivate students.
And I found it! It even works for Distance Learning!
Continue reading “Best Way to do Test Corrections: Simple & Engaging”Increase Learning And Save Time Grading!
We all want to save time grading. But is it possible to give assignments that not only help your students learn more, but reduce the time it takes to grade them? Yes it is!
I often feel overwhelmed by piles of student work. While I use Google Forms for quick and frequent formative assessment, multiple choice does not show the depth of student knowledge (or misconceptions) that you need to know in order to help your students.
Giving assignments that require reflection and critical thinking are crucial for student understanding and growth. The only trouble is grading those assignments! They are so time consuming!
But they don’t all have to be. Here are a few quick tweaks you can make to assignments you already have that will lead to both greater learning and save time grading!
Time Saving Ideas for Teachers
Time is a four letter word for some teachers. It is the one thing we all wish we had more of. We need more time to get to the end of our to-do list – the daily tasks of planning, grading, and paperwork. But even more than that, we want time outside of school, with our family and friends, or just by ourselves and a good book (or Netflix!).
The clock does not have to be our worst enemy- use a few of these time saving ideas for teachers and you can get a lot of that time back, and use it however you want!
Five Easy Meals for Teachers (or anyone else)
Its been a long day, molding young minds, making big differences, encouraging and inspiring. You have taught hard, graded tirelessly, and planned lessons for eight plus hours. You are ready to go home and relax.
But then the dreaded thought crosses your mind (or one of your offspring asks), “What’s for dinner?”
Making dinner is the last thing you want to tackle right now, but don’t be tempted to hit the drive through!
With these fast and easy meals for teachers, you will make a dinner you can be proud of, without spending the whole evening in the kitchen.
Each main course has just five ingredients (just one exception), and takes 30 minutes or less to make.
Plus, the total grocery bill for this whole week’s worth of meals is under seventy dollars! To feed a family of four – with leftovers for lunch the next day!
Continue reading “Five Easy Meals for Teachers (or anyone else)”
Google Forms as a Super Easy Progress Monitoring Tool
Information is important! Data about student behavior is so helpful when deciding how best to help our students.
But, to be honest, when I am in the middle of teaching, or helping other students, it is hard to stop everything and record student behavior.
Google Forms makes data collection a breeze!
Continue reading “Google Forms as a Super Easy Progress Monitoring Tool”
Collect Digital Work with Google Forms: Digital Classroom Idea!
My teaching life changed after learning this super simple way to collect digital work from students. Organized and all in one place, so easy to access and grade!
My students used to send me an email with links to their digital work, but that meant me constantly searching though my inbox to find missing assignments!
But no longer! Google Forms to the rescue again!
Continue reading “Collect Digital Work with Google Forms: Digital Classroom Idea!”