Month: June 2016

An article by Richard James Rogers

Illustrations by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati

In this second of our three-week, three-part series, we’ll be continuing our investigation into how outstanding teachers keep their students on-task, entertained and engaged every single lesson.

This week, we’ll be focussing on a further two key areas of Active Engagement:

• How outstanding teachers consistently create an ‘air of mystery and anticipation’ by getting the students to figure out the learning outcomes by themselves
• How an atmosphere of immense excitement, enjoyment, participation and learning can be created by using a few simple games and applying them to your subject area, on a frequent basis

The following extracts and images come from the Active Engagement chapter of my debut book: The Quick Guide to Classroom Management. I hope the information is useful to you, and don’t forget: we welcome your comments with open-arms!  If you’d like to share your thoughts with us then please do comment using the comments box at the bottom of the page. 

This week’s blog post is quite a large one, but we urge you to please read until the end as the information contained here is incredibly practical and helpful. Please feel free to bookmark this page and visit it often!

Here we go!

 

Here are some cool games you can use for any lesson!

Splat: Write a few key words on the whiteboard and you’re ready to go!

Mystery Picture: This one really gets the cognitive juices flowing and it’s a lot of fun!

Mystery Word: Simple and inexpensive. Another vocabulary-based game

Corners: I play this every Friday afternoon with my Year 9 Science class. It perks them up and is very competitive! Great for issuing out House Points, merit stickers or other rewards.

Bingo: Not just a numbers game! Read the game card below to see how it can be applied across different subject areas!

Who am I? : Despite it’s childish nature, kids of all ages love this!

Vocabulary Musical Chairs: Get ready for an exciting class with this one! Make sure there are no obstacles in the way for kids to trip on.

The Poster Game: One of my proudest pedagogical inventions. This game takes some time to set up, but once it’s ready it works like a treat! This game gives you the best of both worlds: fun and deep learning!

Thank you for reading! Please share and please come back to visit us!

 

An article by Richard James Rogers

Illustrations by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati

In this first of a three-week, three-part series, we’ll be investigating how outstanding teachers keep their students on-task, entertained and engaged every single lesson.

This week, we’ll be focusing on two key areas of active engagement:

• The personality traits and pedagogical attributes that are shared by all outstanding educators 
• The importance that a prompt lesson start has on engaging your learners, along with the best ways to implement this, practically.

For many of us, the end of the academic year is approaching, and many students will be in ‘let’s slack off’ mode right now. As teachers, we need to be more vigilant than any other time in the year right now, particularly with regards to lesson planning and keeping our students on task.

The following extracts come from the Active Engagement chapter of my debut book: The Quick Guide to Classroom Management. I hope the information is useful to you, and don’t forget: we welcome your comments with open-arms!  If you’d like to share your thoughts with us then please do comment using the comments box at the bottom of the page. 

Author note: You may wish to supplement your knowledge of starter activities by reading our beautifully illustrated (and most popular blog post ever!): 7 Starter Activities for PGCE Students and Newly Qualified Teachers.

 

 

  

An article by Richard James Rogers

Illustrations by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati

It’s parent’s evening and you know that the mother of your ‘problem child’ will be showing up, and she’s not best pleased! Or maybe you’ve been receiving e-mails from a parent who just won’t quit at nitpicking over the ‘little things’. Maybe you’ve had some personal complaints sent to you from a father who’s a bit ‘aggressive’, or maybe ‘complaints’ have been coming in to the school office and you’re finding out about them from your line manager.

First things first: If any of the above scenarios describe your current situation (or a situation you fear you might find yourself in), then please do not fret: help is at hand.

Any experienced teacher will tell you that we all face ‘challenging’ parents (although that word: ‘challenging’, conveys the wrong attitude, as I’ll explain shortly). What fewer teachers will tell you, however, is that the key to fostering good relationships with parents is this golden rule:

Parents are your key customers. Without parents; all parents, you wouldn’t have a job. Make sure that you treat every parent like a valuable customer. Every parent deserves the very best level of service from their child’s teachers. This applies especially to parents who have complaints or who grumble on a regular basis.

Once you have this attitude firmly placed in mind, the rest of what I’m about to share will be easy to apply. I wonder how many teachers reading this will be resistant to adopt this mindset!

The following extracts come from my debut book, The Quick Guide to Classroom Management. In these pages, I write about the technique of ‘detached objectivity’, and how it’s a great problem-solver when dealing with parents who have complaints. I would welcome any comments you have from your own personal experiences (please write in the comments section below), and please feel free to share this blog post with anyone you feel would benefit from it. 

Disclaimer

Here we go!

 

 

Would you like the opportunity to appear in my next book?

After the unprecedented success of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management, I’m asking teachers all over the world to write a few paragraphs that would help out a total teaching newbie.

You’ll be helping new teachers, you’ll receive full acknowledgement in my book and I’ll even give away five free books to five lucky contributors!

This is something super cool that you would be able to show to your colleagues and future employers too!

I want to know what advice you would give to a new teacher who’s getting stressed out because they’re marking too much work. What advice would you give to help them reduce their workload, improve their marking efficiency and reduce stress when marking? Do you have a story from your own experience that you would like to share?

Final deadline for submissions is June 20th, thank you! Book will be published on June 30th.

Please e-mail your advice to richard_science@hotmail.co.uk, along with your name and any other info you’d like to share about yourself (especially the country you’re writing from). Alternatively, you can comment on this blog post too (please write at least two paragraphs).

I look forward to receiving your replies!

Click on the picture below to find out about this great new book