I know your pain
Activity - Make Questions & Activities from Don't Quit Teaching. Holistic Thinking required to create Q & A's for the following games. Speculate on possible procedures and outcomes for each:
1. Answer It - Short Answer format - Teacher
2. Act It - Improvisation - Actor
3. Draw It - Artistic Representations - Designer
4. Spell/Define It - Vocabulary - Lawyer
5. Question It - logical, linear thinking - Doctor
6. Speak It - Word Smith - Politician
7. Move & Groove It - physical or musical challenge - athlete / entertainer
Thoughts on being a Teacher
To be, or not to be, that is the QUESTION.
a SMART WAY to Learn is:
1 - Three proposals to improve the way teachers teach, students learn and parents participate in lifelong learning.
2 - A resource for prospective teachers. Go in with eyes wide open with a set of Tools that work.
3 - Fun and Games for all.
4 - Skills and Drills in the morning, related to projects in the afternoon.
Being Canadian, and understanding the disruption a SMART WAY to Learn will bring - Sorry!
Students got me off track all the times, or so they thought. I had stories to tell, ninety percent had purpose and a message.
This is a true story, it just happened as I was sitting in my sunroom/office around 9:30 in the morning, there was fresh snow on the ground, as I watched my neighbor and his dog come home from their morning walk. I've never seen this before.
I've been fortunate enough to back onto a green space. My office is our second floor sunroom, so I have a good view of a wetland and river beyond. We back on a Provincial Park and we get a lot of wildlife, I've had the following in my backyard: deer on a regular basis, coyotes, porcupine, skunk, racoons, bobcat, the occasional mouse, owls, eagles, hawks, mice and voles.
We built our home here twenty seven years ago, at the time we were on the edge of Calgary, south of us was mostly farmland. We went from the city outer limits to mid-city limits.
But I digress, it's called. Squirrel. It happens all the time. Knowing this helps define my learning style, which is another story altogether for a guy who failed grade eight - twice.
So I'm sitting here writing when all of a sudden this coyote runs full speed out of a revine right behind my neighbour and his dog. This coyote ran full blast, like five feet behind my neighbour, down into the ravine. I went out to talk to him, he never even saw it and the dog either didn't see it, or didn't react.
I've never seen that before, then it came to me, that coyote was luring lunch. This coyote was the smaller one of a pack of three that have been hanging around. [My neighbour's dog has chased, I'm thinking, that particular coyote before.]
Animals will migrate in back of our place; it funnels you into a wetland with bullrushes and a creek meandering through it. It defines the beginning of an escarpment. It's the perfect place for a doggie ambush. The lesson is, leash your dog in places where coyotes are - they're getting smarter. Are You?
How as a teacher could you use this Blog Post. The Post talks of 'Place' make Q & A's based on this story and Place. AI can't replace personal stories told by passionate people.
A challenge I face is how to communicate with Teams and Players?
For most of my teaching career, I spent hours writing comments on student assignments. Comments may be read but hardly internalized. There had to be a better way. Pardon the pun. I can't remember where I first heard the idea, but I expanded upon it and share it here to save teacher's time.
A fear is that once a SMART WAY starts, how will I communicate and be respectful with those I serve? It's just me, and time is limited, so I will use the same strategy I used with my students when correcting their work. I used a highlighter to define areas of concern. No comments are written on student papers. When going through student work, anything I'd write to advise students would be written 'on the board.' As you know, I used SMART Notebook to digitally plan my lessons so I could easily share my work.
When evaluating, I'd end up with a wide range of concerns. You can't fix everything all at once, so define what you are looking for and include students when you do it. Negotiate with students about what is essential and how much it is worth. Create a Rubric together. Train your students to think like teachers.
Working with the highlighted mistakes in students' work, they would look at the list I created when evaluating their work and determine what comments applied to them. Students would identify and write comments that applied to them.
Teachers determine the final score with the aid of Rubrics and how well the student can identify and correct the mistakes they had made. Papers are returned to the teacher, and a final grade is given.
What if a teacher has a bank of comments that they cut and paste in work handed in digitally? If you do that, once again, the teacher is doing more work than they should; students don't use higher-order thinking skills when reading other people's comments.
This evaluation process is logical, effective, inclusive and empowering, and you're welcome to it.