One of my favorite (and quick) ways to get students to do some higher level thinking without realizing it is a game I call, “What Doesn’t Belong and Why?” I typically use this as a thematic or unit review so that students have the academic knowledge to flesh […]
Disclaimer: I know bell ringers and exit tickets aren’t for everyone. I started my teaching career not using them and now they are part of my middle school and on-level high school routine (for time reasons I don’t use them in APUSH). My first year teaching I wasn’t […]
My students love debating each other, LOVE it. However, they usually need practice at the start of the year defending their stance, especially if they’re middle schoolers or freshmen. Too many times I’ve heard, “because I said so,” or in an academic debate they don’t use the right […]
Have you heard of Symbaloo yet? I learned about it this past school year from our librarian and I love it!!! Symbaloo is a website that allows you to save and organize websites into clickable boxes. You can then email your students the link to the specific Symbaloo for […]
As a history teacher, images from the past are vital to my classes every single day. Kids need to see the past and make connections to it to fully understand, and hopefully appreciate, it. I almost always use images (whether real or political cartoons) to introduce and review […]
This review competition is NO PREP and can take as few as 5 minutes or as many as 15, it depends on if you ask follow-up questions and how in depth the students’ responses get. I start by writing the main topics we studied on the board. Each is […]
I learned about word clouds a few years ago, but for some reason didn’t use them until this year. It is such a quick and easy informal assessment (especially if it’s one of those days where you need to shake things up, or you finished sooner than you […]
I imagine most of us have been in this situation before: you plan a great lesson, it is engaging, challenging, and every student completes the work. Then you look at the clock and there’s 15 minutes left to class. Well that happened to me not too long ago; the […]
One of my favorite first week of school discussions is about perspective. Because of this particular map (which I found at a map store in Seattle a few years ago), it always ends up being a student generated conversation (which I love!!!). After about 3-4 days in class, […]
Starting the year off organized is key to many teachers’ sanity. For me, that includes planning ahead. With those two things in mind, this right here is one of my FAVORITE teacher organization tips/tricks/tools/methods (NOT an affiliate link). It has worked for me no matter how many students/preps/periods I have because […]
