Sarah Endecott gets her student's attention with a wind chime that she hangs in her classroom. "I use a wind chime to signal students to stop what they are doing and listen to what I need to tell them." She added that the chime gets their attention every time and they absolutely love the gentle soun [...]
Ruby Hibdon puts a drop of blood orange scented oil on a small piece of paper that she gives her students. She writes, "They are so into the oil that the test doesn't stress them!" Another cool tip! Thanks Ruby! [...]
One of my favorite strategies is using good, old fashioned flash cards. I've almost always used standard flash cards for study and have handwritten the questions and answers using color, pictures, and mnemonics to help me or my students remember. This time, I wanted to try doing them on the computer and taking advantage of colored fonts, san serif -fonts, photos, etc. Then I could print them out and enhance them by hand if I wanted to. I believe that many times students don't create flash cards to study from because they hate to write them out. So, this seems like a motivating avenue to explore.
In today's educational world, immediate, ongoing assessment has taken on increased importance. One way to assess students is to allow them to self-assess. We can do this in the classroom at any given moment in time. Once we know where students are in regards to their understanding of a lesson, we ca [...]