This is a simple and useful tip I picked up from my mentor teacher while I was student teaching.
She was starting them on a new math unit that required the use of math manipulatives. Noisy stuff. Each student was given a pile of shapes– green triangles, orange square, red trapezoids, blue rhombuses– you know the type. And then she said, “Go ahead and play with them for a few minutes, and then we’ll get started.”
She came back to where I saw on the back table and said, “Whenever you give them manipulatives or anything they can touch and feel, give them a few minutes to play and explore with it. It’ll get it out of their system so when you actually start your lesson, they’re more ready to focus on what you’re teaching rather than to just keep trying to play with them!” We sat back there and watched them have at it.
I used popsicle sticks in my classroom all the time. I used them during math, during social studies, during reading– you name it. If there were a large number of students, I had a use for popsicle sticks. Here’s what I did. First, I wrote each child’s name on a stick, then color-coded the tip of each stick– one color for boys, one color for girls:
Then I put them all in a jar, mixed them up, and voila! I just created one of my most frequently-used teaching tools. What could you possibly do with this jar of names? Well, I’m so glad you asked!
Parents: It’s your son’s birthday party. On the invitation, you wrote that the party would go from 12:00-3:00pm. It’s 2:00pm, and you’ve already gone through all the activities you had planned. You told the kids they could just “play” until their parents arrived, and now you have twenty kids running around your house wreaking havoc on your newly polished floors and white walls. EEK.
Teachers: It’s field trip day, and the bus just dropped you off at the museum entrance. For some reason, all the doors are locked and no staff is there to greet you. After waiting ten minutes, you call the main office and are told they’ll be there in twenty minutes. Your students are entertaining themselves– some sitting in small groups chatting, others running around and playing a violent version of tag. Chaperones make a half-hearted attempt to calm some kids down, but let’s be honest– everybody wants to be the cool chaperone, so they won’t go too hard on the kids. Their behavior is already spiraling out of control, and you have another twenty minutes to wait. EEK. What do you do??
Play a game. A simple, quiet, but active and FUN game! Sound too good to be true? Read on and try it, my friend, and be won over.
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I had just started teaching a new group of students for Sunday school. After I introduced myself to the students, I immediately insisted on hand-raising. One kid rolled his eyes at me, as if to say, “Really? You’re going to make us do this?”
I shot him the look. He raised his hand.
I mean, I kind of get it. There were only six kids in the class that day– was this really necessary?
Random quick teacher tip: How to Stop an Interrupting Clown. An interrupting class clown, that is. Especially one that is clownin’ on other kids. That’s not nice.
Sometimes I’ll have a student who likes to joke around in class. That’s cool. Except when it’s mean, or when it’s inappropriately disrupting a lesson. Sure, as a first step, I will directly address the student’s inappropriate behavior. But if that’s not enough to stop it, I also pair it with a subtle second step: I give the rest of the class a warning look. A cocked head, a slow blink, and a raised eyebrow that says, What, you think that’s funny? Really? Are you gonna laugh about it? Are you?
It slices laughter in an instant.
If you lead a group of kids anywhere, they usually walk in clumps. This is fine if we’re trekking about on a field trip or headed out to the playground, but when we need to go from point A to point B in an efficient, orderly way, we need lines.
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