The Teaching Tips Machine

by Adam Waxler

One of the more common complaints about differentiating instruction is the amount of prep-time that is involved. Let’s face it, teachers simply don’t have enough time to prepare that many different lessons for each one of their classes. However, there are many low-prep differentiated instruction activities that teachers can use that will help teachers meet the needs of all of their students.

One of the low-prep differentiated instruction activities that comes to mind is the Response Card Strategy. The purpose of the Response Card Strategy is to get 100% class participation, review content, and also to use as a quick and informal type of assessment.

The procedure for the Response Card Strategy is really quite simple. All students hold up cards (hand-written or pre-printed) in response to a teacher prompt.

Teacher prompts can range from low order thinking skills that address knowledge and comprehension to higher order thinking skills that require students to synthesize, judge, and form arguments.

For example, in a lesson on World War II, a prompt could be asking students about various battles or dates and the students can use pre-printed response cards to show their answer. To save time, instead of pre-printing various response cards, the teacher could ask various multiple choice questions and have the students answer with A, B, or C. However, in order to address higher order thinking skills the teacher prompts could be asking students to agree or disagree with various decisions that were made during World War II. Students can simply hold up a response card with the word “agree” or “disagree”. For example, “Do you agree or disagree with President Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb?” This can also spark further debate on the topic.

Obviously response cards can be used in many different ways and for any grade level or any subject area.

Here are a few more ways teachers can differentiate instruction with response cards:

1. Assign peer buddies for reading and writing
2. Vary prompts by readiness
3. Let students create their own prompts

Differentiated instruction activities are an extremely effective way for teachers to address the needs and abilities of all their students. However, differentiated instruction activities do not have to be time-consuming tasks. By using low-prep strategies such as the Response Card Strategy, teachers will have much more success reaching all their students.

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Are you looking for more teaching tips?

For effective teaching tips that you can start applying to your very next class make sure read 52 Teaching Tips @ www.52TeachingTips.com

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In my last post (End of the Year Teaching Tips) I discussed the importance of allowing students to evaluate their teachers and provided the evaluation form that I used this year.

At the end of that evaluation form is an area for students to write in their own comments/suggestions…So this year I decided to take the teacher evaluation a step further and put up a list of short response statements on the board for the students to complete.

Below are the statements the students completed at the end of the form:

1. My favorite unit/project we did this year was…….because…..

2. My least favorite unit/project was…..because….

3. The most boring thing we did this year was……

4. The most important thing I learned this year was…..

5. Three goals I have for next year are…….

6. This class would be better if…….

7. The easiest thing we did in class was…..

8. The most difficult thing we did in class was……

9. I still don’t understand…….

10. If I were the teacher of this class I would……

Obviously, I could have created more, but I felt that these 10 statements would truly give me an honest student perspective of my teaching and let me know what areas of the curriculum I need to work on for next year. In all honesty, I get much more out of these student evaluations than I ever did from my administrators evaluations.

Just remember to keep it anonymous…it’s not about who is saying it, but rather what they are saying…

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It’s that time of year again…exciting, crazy, and overwhelming. Too much to do in too little time, but somehow we always seem to get it done by the time school is over.

Here in Manatee County we are down to our last two weeks!

And, with final exams, award ceremonies, textbook collection etc. it may seem difficult to find the time to do something that I think is very important for every teacher to do.

What is it?

Well, if you’ve been reading my blog posts for a while now then you know that every year around this time I stress the importance of letting the students evaluate their teachers.

This is a GREAT way to better prepare yourself for next year. Yes…I know…right now the last thing you want to think about is next school year, but by taking the time to let your students evaluate your teaching, you will easily be able to determine what worked and what didn’t work from the perspective of your students…and who better to let you know.

Here is the evaluation form I will be using this year: http://www.TeachingTipsMachine.com/TeacherEvaluationForm.pdf

(Feel free to pass it on…just click the “share” button below)

Also, here are some links to past posts I have made about the importance of letting students evaluate their teachers:

http://teaching-tips-machine.com/blog/a-twist-on-the-teacher-evaluation/

http://teaching-tips-machine.com/blog/an-end-of-the-school-year-tip-for-teachers/

http://teaching-tips-machine.com/blog/how-to-be-a-10-better-teacher/

Good luck with the end of your school year!

Best Wishes,
Adam Waxler
Teaching Tips Machine, LLC

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Do you need end of the year awards and certificates?

Every student deserves some form of recognition for good attitude, hard work, academic excellence and outstanding performance.

Classroom Awards, Certificates and Passes contains 73 colorful and visually attractive pages that make it possible for teachers of all levels to recognize and reward students, without having to design the pages from scratch.

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Teachers ask hundreds of questions a day so it is important that they use questioning techniques that challenge the thinking of ALL students.

Here are five teaching tips for high-level questioning:

1. Require ALL learners to answer the question. This is when using the “all-write” strategy is very helpful. Instead of simply asking a question and having one or two students raise their hand to answer, the teacher should have ALL students write down an answer to the question. This way the teacher has gotten all of her students involved in the question and answer process. Or, instead of having all students write their answer, the teacher could simply ask the question and have ALL students share their response with a partner.

2. Require students to defend, or back-up, their answers.

3. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to create high-level questions. For example, instead of asking, “Which U.S. President authorized the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II?” a teacher could ask, “Was President Truman justified in using the atomic bomb to end World War II and why do you think that?”

4. Differentiate questions as appropriate.

5. Promote examination of new and different perspectives. For example, instead of asking, “What happened at the Boston Tea Party?” a teacher could ask, ‘If you were a British soldier, how would you have reacted when you heard the news about the Boston Tea Party?”

By using these simple teaching tips for high-level questioning, teachers can not only get ALL their students involved in the lesson, but also get all those students to gain a deeper understanding of the content by challenging them to think critically about each answer.

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Are you looking for more teaching tips?

For effective teaching tips that you can start applying to your very next class make sure read 52 Teaching Tips @ www.52TeachingTips.com

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I am always amazed at the range of ability levels of my students within any given class. Within one 8th grade class I may have students who struggle to read and write while at the same time have students (within the same class) who are reading and writing on an upper high school level. In fact, in some cases, I have 8th grade students who are actually reading and writing on a college level.

So how is a teacher supposed to teach the struggling students without boring the advanced students? This is one of the toughest instructional challenges a teacher faces…trying to meet the needs of all of these students.

Differentiated instruction activities are designed to just that…meet the needs of your lower level students while at the same time challenging your upper level students.

There are many different types of differentiated instruction activities, but it is always good to start with Compacting.

Compacting is a three-step process for addressing the needs of all students of all ability levels.

Here are the steps:

1. Assess what each student already knows about the material to be studied and what the student still needs to master.

2. Create plans for the students to learn what is not known and excuse those students who have already mastered the material.

3. Create plans for the “freed-up” time to be spent on enrichment activities or accelerated study.

Compacting is something that can be done to start each and every unit of study. By using differentiated instruction activities such as compacting, teachers can address the needs of students of all ability levels.

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Are you looking for more teaching strategies?

For more effective teaching strategies that you can start applying to your very next class make sure read eTeach: A Teacher Resource for Learning the Strategies of Master Teachers @ www.TeachingTeacher.com

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