Four Lessons: Team Building, Quizzes with Movement, Buzzfeed and Class Management

Here are a few ideas from the lessons I've taught this week.

I've had the privilege of spending some time in various classrooms this week.  It was awesome getting to know students in some academic and non academic ways.  I incorporated educational technology, but I also focused on my teacher pedagogical knowledge and best practices to deliver the lessons.

Lesson 1 - Team Building with BreakoutEDU in Homeroom

I had asked some students earlier in the week what type of team building activities they prefer or don't prefer, and they made one thing very clear. They do NOT like activities where they are put on the spot to share about themselves in a group.  So, I decided to put together a BreakoutEDU escape room puzzle for the students to work on as a class. It took a very short amount of time for students to get drawn in to working on the clues and trying to break into the locked box. This activity was a huge hit and the students worked  really well together and we learned a lot about one another during the exercise.

Lesson 2 - Digital Citizenship Quizzes with Movement

The homeroom I was in a Senior homeroom for this lesson. We used a presentation with resources from Common Sense Media. Throughout the presentation there were short quiz questions. I had the students move to a corner of the room to represent their answer. Adding movement worked like magic. Visually students could see the results and because we were all standing and looking at one another, it promoted conversations and reflections on the questions. The students seemed to truly enjoy this type of participation.

Lesson 3 - Buzzfeed to Set the Tone

To start out a lesson for promoting useful technology options for inquiry based learning, I decided to use this BuzzFeed survey with students to find out what type of learner they are. BuzzFeed is very popular among high school students and is also visually appealing to most people.  After students took the survey we shared our results. The results displayed were visual, auditory or learn by doing.  I tied the results back to the idea of including something visual, something with audio and something people can do during a presentation to engage all participants. The students truly enjoyed doing this opening activity which set the tone for the rest of the lesson.

Lesson 4 - Managing Technology with English 1 Students

Here are some great management tips I used in a Freshman English 1 class. The teachers in the classroom are so very good at structure and expectations.  I learned so much from them!

1. Use name tags (this made teaching so much more personal for me since I didn't know the students' names)

2.  Begin with the goal or learning objective (Today you will be able to. . . )

3. Go slow when giving directions and be patient

4. Set very clear expectations (give the dos and the don'ts)

5. Be organized and totally prepared for the lesson. Test out everything technology wise ahead of time.
6. Redirect, encourage and praise desired behaviors

Teaching is such a rewarding profession. It is not easy and it takes a lot of thought and preparation, but it is so worth it when we can have an impact on student learning and growth.

To all of my colleagues and all of the talented teachers teaching in classrooms today, "Thank you for all you do every day to deliver quality lessons".