Hello and Happy Sunday! Wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, we hope that today has been (or will be) happy and productive for you.
In this final article in our three part Active Engagement series, we’ll be exploring:
How outstanding teachers can often be rather eccentric by using action and movement to make their lessons fun, compelling and effective
Some simple actions you can take to turn mundane questions such as “Is sodium hydroxide an acid or a base?” into an opportunity for action, movement and full sense-perception
This article is slightly shorter than the previous two and, as it is the final section for this series, you’ll find a very useful summary at the end. As always, please feel free to share this post with anyone you feel would benefit from it, and please do comment with your own ideas in the comments box at the bottom.
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!
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.
Are you keeping your students engaged all year-round?
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.
Working with parents should be a productive and enjoyable part of your job.
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 yourkey customers.Without parents; all parents, you wouldn’t have a job.Make sure that youtreat 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.
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?
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
Every good lesson should end with some form of plenary. A plenary offers the chance to review the concepts, information and skills covered in your lesson, as well as providing a fun way for students to end a session of learning.
Let’s take a look at some of the best plenaries out there – all of which have been tried and tested and have been found to work with any lesson and any subject area. I’ve tried to include those activities that draw out the most cognitive output from the students, and therefore have the greatest benefits. However, if you’re looking for hundreds of quick ideas, then both the University of Southampton and the University of Essex have published documents outlining, briefly, some great plenaries that you can try.
#1 ‘Splat’
This is such a simple game and it’s tons of fun! Any lesson you teach, no matter if it’s playing football in P.E. or writing sonnets in English, will involve the use of specialist vocabulary. Why not review this vocabulary with a fun game at the end of your lesson? It’ll provide your students with a short break and will help them to link concepts together.
#2: Use graphic organizers
Do you know what graphic organizers are? They are becoming increasingly popular in schools and offer a great way for students to link ideas, concepts, information, skills and background thinking in a visual way. Take a look at these examples below, kindly shared by Doug and Melissa over at Write Design. How could you use these (or others – please check the website!) to provide meaningful conclusions to your lessons?
Examples of Graphic Organisers
#3: Play ‘corners’
This is so much fun that you often have to calm the students down half-way through! It’s a very competitive game, and lends itself well to both closed and open questioning. When you couple it with your schools rewards system (e.g. merits or house points) it can really get your kids motivated and thinking. Perfect for a Friday afternoon (trust me – I know).
#4: Cartoon strip
Students create a cartoon strip that goes through what they learnt that lesson. You can even print out a three or six-box grid for the kids if you like. Really gets the creative juices flowing! Students can do this by hand, or can even create comic strips online. The one below was created at http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ and it only took five minutes!
#5: Bingo
Can be used with words or numbers. Takes some setting up, but is great fun and really helps the students to learn a lot!
#6: Mystery Word
Another simple game. Fun and takes minutes to set up. Kids love it!
#7: Who am I?
A fun and childish game. Kids of all ages love this (even at 18 years old!). Again, simple, easy, fun and productive.
#8: Musical chairs
Can be used with maths problems, vocabulary, concepts or actions. Be careful that students don’t trip up or fall! They need lots of room to run!
#9: Mystery Picture
This is probably the most cognitively challenging plenary that I’ll mention today. It really encourages deep learning, but requires the teacher to have a good control over the class. Worth the effort! Give it a go!
#10: Snake or Break
You’ll need space for this, but it’s simple and fun. Again, can be adapted to suit vocabulary, maths problems, concept questions, etc.
Did you enjoy this article? Why not check out Richard’s book? Now at a discounted price until July 14th!
To celebrate the birthday and life of Arnold Lobel(Born 22nd May 1933), The Quick Guide to Classroom Managementwill be offered at a 40% discounted price for 54 days (representing the 54 years of Arnold’s Life).
Arnold Lobelwas a famous writer who contributed greatly to the education of so many children through delightful books and stories such as Frog and Toad are Friends and Prince Bertram the Bad (which appeared on the famous Jackanory TV series).
He sadly passed away on December 4th 1987, aged 54 years.
Click on the image below to enjoy Richard’s book at this special, limited time price.
This article is slightly shorter than the previous two and, as it is the final section for this series, you’ll find a very useful summary at the end. As always, please feel free to share this post with anyone you feel would benefit from it, and please do comment with your own ideas in the comments box at the bottom. 
