Gaining Students Attention Back if off Track!

Everyone knows there is a difference between Elementary Education (K-5/6) and Secondary Education (5/6-12). They are different in many different ways including content, what the school day consists of, and how to gain back the students attention if off track. Today I will be talking about the different type of strategies used to gain the students attention back if starting to get off track. 

Starting with Elementary Education, which consists of Kindergarden-5^th/6^thgrade. The different types of strategies that I have experienced/seen are as follows: 

·     Repeat the clap rhythm 

·     Saying then answering 

·     Announcing that he/she will wait for the class 

            I’m guessing we all know what the repeating the clap rhythm strategy is from either our days in Elementary or from us seeing younger classrooms. For this strategy, the teacher comes up with a clap rhythm and the students then repeat the rhythm back to the teacher. This is effective after a couple second after the claps are done. Sometimes it takes a couple rhythms for them to understand what is needed to happen or they like to talk/laugh about the rhythms and continue to clap them. 

            The saying then answering strategy has to be implemented at the beginning of the year so the students understand what it is used for. For example, the teacher says, “Class, Class” and the whole class replies with “Yes, Yes”. This strategy is effective immediately because the students know once they reply with “Yes, Yes”, or whatever saying you want to use as a teacher, that you want their undivided attention and for them to turn on their learning ears. When said once, doesn’t have to be said again until they start doing something different and explanation is need to be given to the students. 

            Announcing that he/she will wait for the class is another strategy used for the younger group of children. If the students are not listening and talking while the teacher is explaining something he/she will just announce, “I will wait”, maybe repeat themselves a couple times, then sit without talking for the students to understand what he/she wants. This again is effective after a couple of seconds because the younger students may not understand right away that they need to stop talking immediately. 

Next is Secondary Education, which involves 5^th/6^thgrade through High School. The different types of strategies that I have experienced/seen are as follows:

·     Silence till student’s listen 

·     Talks at the class as a whole 

·     Singles out a specific group of students 

·     Singles out a student 

            The silence till student’s listen strategy is when the teacher just stops talking till the students start to listen and pay attention to what he/she is trying to teach them. This strategy is affective after a while because not all students notice that you’re not talking right away but after a while if everyone goes silent then they will notice. Doesn’t really solve the problem right away and may have to occur a couple times if the group of kids don’t get the point that is trying to be said by this strategy. 

            Talk at the class as a whole is a strategy that involves telling the whole class, “Class pay attention please”, “Everyone please listen this is important”, ect. Not as affective since its needed to be repeated a couple times right away and then a little later will have to be repeated again to get them to understand. Can be affective for certain classes depending on the students. 

            The singling out a specific group of students and singling out a student individually are both pretty much the same. This type of strategy has the teacher single out a group or an individual in front of the whole class. It’s an effective strategy that gets them to be quiet right away but not a good strategy in the long run. In reality, it just embarrasses them to the whole class to the point where they stop talking.

As shown above, the types of strategies used to get the students attention in the two different age categories are significantly different in their own ways. Personally, there are some strategies I agree with and others I don’t. Each teacher will have their own personal way they like and find effective for the students to come back to learning if starting to get off track. As teachers, we just need to find the strategies that work for each class since each and every class will be different from one another! 

How do you want to help

Through some of my classes I've noticed that some of the teachers wont give help just answers. And while the answer is nice to have just giving it and nothing else doesn't help with trying to understand the material. I haven't experienced this in any of my math classes but in the ones that I have the teachers are confused that the test don't go as while as they planned.

And on the other end of the spectrum their are the teachers that move so fast through the material expecting the students to understand right away because that teacher understands it already.

So what I'm saying is as a teacher you need to find a middle ground for explaining your material. But that middle ground is going to change from student to student, because in some cases if you give the answer the students might be able to see where they went wrong and some of them might be able to understand it with a quick explanation.

The importance of Notation

I want to talk about something that I have seen in my classroom observations, notation. I have seen a few teachers who put little to no emphasis on proper notation. I've even seen a teacher evaluating an expression without using any equal signs! So, the question should be if we actually do need to stress the importance of notation. I think that the answer to this question should obviously be yes.

There are a lot of different reasons that we should emphasis the importance of notation while teaching math. First off, it makes learning a whole lot easier. When I observed the teacher who hadn't used notation, I was genuinely confused as to what the goal of the lesson was. I would consider myself very strong in mathematics, and I think that there might be something wrong if I don't understand what is going on. 

There is also the issue of your students wasting their time doing a lot of work that means nothing if it has bad notation. Bad notation can lead to total misunderstanding, so students will put in a lot of effort and not have any of it make sense to someone else.

We should also talk about the benefits of teaching your students good notation. With good notation, students will be able to make work that makes sense to their classmates, teachers, and the rest of the world. Good notation will help students understand more complex topics and it will also help them understand the math when they attempt to prove something. 

Do You Want to Teach Like a Pirate?

       One of the biggest questions I have asked and hear a lot is how to improve student’s engagement. Even for longtime teachers, it can be something they want to improve. Thinking back on my own experiences when was I most engaged? I think several of these very engaging classes can be found with the teachers that still make me want to come back after all these years. Some of the best memories from school were from teachers that may have taught like a pirate. From my Latin teacher reenacting Pompeii with a miniature city and pop volcano to my English teacher that made us act out Romeo and Juliet. Both were able to bring the lesson to life and we took a stronger hold to it because of it. Here I am going to take a bit about the book Teach Like a Pirate and what you can do to be an engaging pirate teacher.

       In Teach Like a Pirate, Dave Burgess talks about teaching in three circles. The first is content, this is what you as the teacher know and what you bring to the students to learn--you must have it. The second is methods and techniques, these are the tools or ways you use to bring the content to your students--these are essential as well. The third circle is presentation, this is the way you present your content and methods so that students are drawn in. I agree with Dave that often the third circle is not brought up as much as the first two.

       There are two big questions Dave proposes when you want to see if you are teaching like a pirate “if students didn’t have to be there, would you be teaching an empty room?” and “Do you have any lessons that are so amazing you can sell tickets for them? Would students willingly pay to be in your classroom”? If you can say yes to either of these, you may already be a bit of a pirate. Sometimes putting on a bit of a show is what you need to get engagement out of students. This does not mean you should only entertain them. Use this pirate method as a pathway for engagement as you see fit.

       How do you start teaching like a pirate? The book talks a lot about this but here are some traits you should encourage in yourself. 

Passion, remember what brought you into your content and teaching. You are not teaching lessons, you are teaching students. Bring your passion and students into your lesson planning. 

Immersion, let yourself go when teaching. This is not to say to forget what you planned for a lesson but be free to explore the topic with students, and to submerge into a presentation, showing the passion you have. 

Rapport, build the relationship you have with your students and learn about them. Learn their names, what they think about themselves, and include what they like as much into your lessons as you can. For this, I would recommend starting strong on the first day by using the class time to learn about your students. 

Ask and Analyze, make sure to ask questions and encourage your students to question as well. One rule Dave includes in his classrooms is that it is a no meanness zone, he wants everyone to feel comfortable asking questions and speaking up. 

Transform, change up your classroom and keep things new in how you teach. Keep students wanting to come to class to see what’s going to happen tomorrow. Can you have class outside or in the hallway, do you what the work you do in class to always be worksheets, what can you do to make things interesting. 

Enthusiasm, bring your passion and light the fires of your students. This sounds close to passion, but I feel enthusiasm is more contagious. The more energy you show towards your lesson the more students will be open to be a part of it. 

These traits together will help you become a P.I.R.A.T.E teacher.

       There are many ways of teaching and not all teachers teach like a pirate. But adding on to the circle of presentation can help any teacher. When I watched and read about how teachers have started teaching like a pirate it reminded me of the Chasing Einstein presentation. Mainly because it changed how the material was presented to students. So, gamification  can one of your “hooks” you use as a pirate. Don’t feel like you can’t do this--every teacher has it in them to be creative and make a pirate lesson. If you are having a hard time thinking of pirate lessons: start with one of your own, look online at what other teachers have done, and take inspiration from everything. I would like to also talk about how often you need to do this. Which is as often as you like. Dave recommends at least making the first day unforgettable and then trying to make one lesson out of a chapter/unit “the big show”. So don’t feel overwhelmed and try to do a big pirate lesson every day. I’d say start with some ideas for introducing a new topic that’ll hook them in. See how it goes, then make notes on what worked and didn’t work. Don’t be afraid of looking silly, sometimes that’s what you may want. Keep it professional but don’t let that hold you back from making an engaging lesson. I know the content, I’ve got a growing number of tool/methods to bring to students, and I think teaching like a pirate could lead to many ways of connecting it all to students

       I think another big part of this post is: don’t be afraid of reading weird sounding books or articles. When I first heard about Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess, I thought it was a gimmick book but now I feel it has something for everyone. The worst that can happen is you won't like it and even then you still got some reading in. Teach like a Pirate is an easy read and If you want to learn more about this you can pick up Dave’s book or follow him on twitter @burgessDave. He also recommends a lot of other books I am interested in picking up there as well.

Skylar Halverson

Flipping Out About Flipped Classrooms

As a freshman, I attended the South Dakota CTM Conference in Huron; at the very end of the last day, I attended a session by Sheila McQuade, a teacher at O’Gorman High School in Sioux Falls, in which she described her experience of flipping a classroom. 

While each teacher has their own style, in general, a flipped classroom combines teacher-created videos and interactive lessons with help on homework during the hour of class time. Students’ homework is to watch the assigned video lecture and take notes; when they come to class the next day, they are to work on assigned problems, worksheets, etc. and ask any questions that may arise.

Sheila had a presentation prepared about the ups and downs of flipping her classroom. She went through the process of creating the videos, pointing out which software and programs worked best for her. She found that her biggest obstacle was keeping up with making all of the videos for her students to watch and take notes on. The biggest thing that I took away from her presentation was that flipping a classroom takes a LOT of preparation; not only do you make lesson plans, but you have to get the materials necessary to make and edit the videos, and then actually make them (and then maybe remake them if they don't turn out as you expected). 

She advised against flipping a class that you're teaching for the first time; if you made a video lecture without having taught the lesson, it would be hard to anticipate students’ questions and spots of confusion. So, when you’re comfortable with a lesson and how to teach the concepts in it, then you can consider creating a video lesson. She also recommended not flipping an entire year's worth of lessons at once, but rather doing it unit by unit. This allows you to make sure students are comfortable and familiar with material they are learning through video lectures. 

Once the videos are made and available to students, it is important to have students take notes and follow along with any problems worked out in the video. Sheila said that she would check students’ notes and ask if they had any clarifying questions before the start of class, and I thought this was a good way to connect what they learned in the videos to whatever medium of classwork was given to them that day.

 A benefit that Sheila mentioned was that videos allow students to go at their own pace. So, while a video may be 10 to 15 minutes long, a student may need to rewind and re-watch a certain step to the problem in order to fully understand it. This is a huge advantage for flipped classrooms; they allow various kinds and shapes of learners to follow along and understand in a way that better fits them.

After attending this session, I was so intrigued by this idea of flipping a lesson. It is most definitely something I can see myself, as a learner, enjoying, and so I know that I’d like to try it within my first couple years of teaching, even if it’s just one lesson at a time.

A Focus on Learning

Suppose you ask a question to a classroom full of math students. Two students raise their hand. One is a little black boy, the other a little white girl. Which one do you call on? If you call on the boy, you may be accused of discrimination for not allowing the minorities to have their voice. If you call on the girl, you may be accused of being sexist, not allowing women to have their voice. Now say you choose the girl, and she gets the answer wrong. Students could then use that to support the false idea that woman cannot do math. The same is true for the boy; if he gets the answer wrong, one could use that as evidence to support the false idea that minorities are stupid and cannot do math.

Now suppose you ask a question to a classroom full of students. Two students raise their hand. Now which one do you choose to answer the question? By stripping the question of all the racial and gender information, one can think about alternative factors. Which student is more likely to have the correct answer? Which student offers to answer more questions? Which student is more eager to answer it?

Now it doesn’t matter what race, creed, sex, religion, ethnicity, nation of origin, sexuality, age or any other factor that does not affect intelligence the student identifies with. All that matters is learning, and whatever factors go along with that. It is important to be aware of these differences, but by obsessing over them and telling everyone not to notice [insert long list of differences here], people automatically start to look for the differences then tell themselves not to see them. Why don’t we focus on learning how to teach, rather than focusing on all the differences our students have? This will lead to a greater America.