Teaching Ideas That
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Brain Breaks That Will Energize, Engage, & Focus Your Virtual Students
Teachers have known about brain breaks for years, but there has never been a better time to use them than now. Virtual students sit in front of computer screens all day and need opportunities for physical movement. Brain breaks are short activities that are...
Science Choice Boards: A Formula for Authentic Assessment
This post will be short on theory and long on materials that you can use with your class. We have previously discussed the why and how of using choice boards for assessment. As follows are 5 choice boards that you can use for...
Three Virtual/Hybrid Exit Tickets That You Should Try Immediately
Exit Tickets are formative assessment activities that teachers use to collect valuable data. They can answer any number of important questions including Did my students learn what I expected them to learn? Were my teaching methods...
How to Use Simile Cards Across Content Areas
Let’s acknowledge that similes are not just for English class. Similes can present creative, fun, and deep means of synthesizing information across content areas. For this response type, the teacher will provide a selection of printed simile cards that...
Exposing the Truth About On-Task Behavior
We hear a lot of well-meaning educators talk about the importance of students being on-task. Are they making eye contact while the teacher is speaking? Are their heads down and focused on their reading materials or...
How to Engage Your Whole Class with Pinch Cards
Teachers are always looking for new ways to engage and educate students. Pinch cards offer simple, but powerful opportunities for students to respond to teacher questions or discussion points. As discussed in a previous blog post, the traditional model of one...
Choice Boards: A Powerful Way to Engage & Assess Your Students
Using choice boards just makes sense! Every individual student represents a unique blend of strengths, interests, needs, experiences, and background knowledge, so it stands to reason that a one-size-fits-all approach to assessment is not ideal. Giving students some...
Opportunities to Respond That Improve Engagement & Learning
Opportunities to respond (OTR) include instances where teachers elicit answers or responses from students. Unfortunately, the traditional OTR involves teachers calling on one student at a time to answer a question. When we call on a single student, it makes it easy...
