Traffic School Fun

So, a couple of years ago I got a speeding ticket. 

I know, I know. It was the beginning of summer, I had just dropped the kids off at the one, only week of camp where they both were gone all day and I was FREE ... and feeling good and cruising along, jamming out to some great song on the radio ... about 10 miles per hour more “free” with the gas pedal than I should have been.

I tried keep the points off my license so I did online drivers school. 

If you have never done online drivers school, there are a lot of options — including one hosted by a stand up comic. 

I chose the stand up comic. 

Why? Because when learning is more fun, it “sticks” better. 

Nobody goes home on the weekend and does worksheets or reads textbooks.

But we do play games, solve puzzles, and talk with friends. Some of us act or make art or do other creative things. Some of us compete in sports or other competitions. Some of us read interesting books and watch movies or documentaries. 

I know y’all. I know a lot of y’all. 

You are some AMAZING teachers. But you are amazing on your downtime, too! You all lead the scouts, work part time jobs, do stand-up, bartend, teach Sunday school, sing, dance, act, paint, build, climb, paddle, run, mentor, hike, volunteer, camp, cook, travel. (This is why I’m friends with y’all)

We continue to learn even when we aren’t at school. 

As adults, we learn through fun things. 

Kids learn better through fun things, too.

I don’t mean entertainment. There’s a difference. I mean actual learning - that happens to be fun and enjoyable, not miserable. 

 I mean when you are enjoying your learning, you experience a little bit of endorphins. When your brain releases a little bit of endorphins, it learns a little better. 

It sounds overly simplistic, but when you can smile through a learning task, you learn better. When you grumble and frown and argue and groan through it, you don’t learn as much 

(No comment about some PD or meetings being more conducive to learning than others)

It’s why I actually learned more from the online Drivers School hosted by the stand up comedian than the plain, dry, boring one, where someone just clicks through slides and narrates them. He wasn’t hilarious. But he was way better than just the slides! 

I believe that adult learners (that’s YOU, the teachers, in this case), learn better with fun and enjoyment, too.

I’m hoping our DWT next week is full of fun and enjoyment, too. We have some cool things planned.

Your colleagues who are presenting and facilitating sessions have some cool things planned. 

I hope you enjoy your learning at DWT. Relax and enjoy learning something new. And then I hope you can take the spirit of that fun and enjoyment and bring that to your classroom so your STUDENTS can enjoy THEIR learning. 

It’s so easy to forget about the fun and enjoyment part. But it can make a huge difference in making the learning “stick”. 

What makes learning enjoyable for you, as an adult learner? How do you make learning fun and enjoyable for your students? More importantly, how do you NOT FORGET, like I do half the time? 

And how do you make sure even something like traffic school can be fun?

I always love to hear from you! Email me your fun and enjoyment teaching ideas! 

-Tracy

Previews for Curiosity

I love movie previews. I have seen the previews for EVERYTHING and then they make me WANT to watch the movie!

A good preview can catch you in and make you want to see a movie you thought you had no interest in. It can make you say “Wait a minute! I DO know something about that movie! It’s the one that has so-and-so in it. It’s the one about such-and-such! That’ actually looks cool!”

While a lesson is not ALWAYS as fun as a movie (Although,  I have seen some of your lessons. They are pretty dang fun), but sometimes, we have to get the kids interested with a preview. Sometimes, they’re not automatically interested on their own. Sometimes, we have to drum up a little interest.  

I have seen three quick and easy ways to preview a lesson that take little to no preparation. You can do them at the beginning of a lesson or you can do them at the end of the day before to get the kids curious about the next day. 

Curiosity is a powerful tool. It gets kids engaged. And we all know that kids who are engaged are learning while kids who aren’t really engaged are just going through the motions, which means they aren’t really learning. They’re just doing busy work

1. Have them skim a text or reading to find the one or two most used words that are going to come up. But give them a super-short time limit so they’re not actually reading. Give them 30 seconds and make it a game. They’re just skimming. Then, based on their skim, ask them what they’re about to read about. Now they’re curious. Why are we going to read so much about the word “states”? Or about the word “nobles”? Or what’s a “silk road” going to be all about?

2. Give the kids 3-5 words from the upcoming lesson and have them work with a partner to put the words in a sentence. They should not be entirely unfamiliar terms, because the kids can’t do much with a pile of unfamiliar words, but mostly familiar words. For Post-classical china, I’d use “silk, trade, great wall, paper, ideas”. For the lead-up to the Civil War, I’d use “North, South, Slave, free, election”. See how well their sentences explain what they’re going to learn. Then, if you want to get FANCY, have them return to that sentence after the lesson or unit and fix up that sentence. They can even do a “I used to think ___ but now I think__” to reflect on how much they’ve learned”

3. A third way is to just ask a big question and have kids turn and talk. “How can you get silk from here to there? What if it’s something heavier and breakable like porcelain?” What should we do if Texas wants to leave the USA? Should we let them -- or make them stay? How does the government try to guarantee our rights? How can it do a better job?

Let’s continue to be intentional to build curiosity and engagement in our students so they WANT to learn!

How can you use previews to build curiosity and engagement in your lessons? How do you already do this? I’m SO curious!!

Email me! Newmantr@pcsb.org 

The Hook

What are you doing this weekend? And what made you want to do whatever it is that you do on your free time?

I mean, what makes you want to watch that movie, go to that event, show up at that party? What makes you pick up that book or call that friend to do dinner.

Someone has to grab your attention and hook you in.

Sometimes it’s a trailer for a movie. Sometimes it’s an advertisement. Sometimes it’s a personal invitation. Sometimes it’s an article you read or a flyer you spotted or a word-of-mouth recommendation or an email from me looking/stalking for NHD judges (please! We still need some for saturday morning!)

But you and I are not immune to getting hooked into things.

So why don’t we plan explicitly to “hook” our kids into our lessons?

We know that some of our students struggle to get “into” school. Some struggle to participate. Some struggle with motivation. Some struggle with relevance.

Sometimes we treat these issues as something we can get to maybe when we have time. Something we would tackle if we didn’t have so gosh darn much content to teach. Something that sounds like a good idea but not our main jobs.Something that’s not our problem; it’s the kids’ problem.

I would argue that motivation and engagement are MORE important than the details of our content. These things are not secondary to the content. Without engaging kids, the kids will never LEARN the content!

Does that make sense? Kids can’t learn content if they don’t have a reason. They can’t learn it if it doesn’t catch them and relate to them.

I sat through a training recently that wasn’t relevant to me. You better believe that I struggled to be engaged and learn the content because I didn’t connect or see a reason for learning it.

Why don’t we use quick hooks to get our kids interested and engaged -- so that we can increase motivation and increase participation and increase student success?

In plain speak, why don’t we do something to get our pique our students’ interest and then see if that makes them more likely to participate and actually learn?[

A hook doesn’t have to take long. It shouldn’t take long! Somewhere between one minute and five minutes. It might be part of you bellwork. It might not.

One of the easiest, quickest hooks I ever saw was an ELA teacher teaching about suspense. He had piled a bunch of books precariously on his desk that were going to fall at any moment. That was a fantastic hook that required less than one minute of class time.

So what can we do to hook our kids? There are a million ideas. Here are just a few

• Relatable Questions: Ask a relatable, discussion-worthy question. Kids can turn and talk or can do one-minute, timed quickwrites and share.
• If an 18 year old decides to run away from his/her family, should the family make that person come back? What about a 17 year old? (to introduce the Civil War)
• Artworks: Art is created to make people think and feel. Period. If you can find art to hook kids, you can engage them in a non-intimidating way.
• Nothing like the “American Progress”  painting to get kids thinking about Westward Expansion. You can do “I See, I Think, I Wonder” pretty quickly and get the kids thinking.
• Surveys/Continuum:  Ask your students what they think about whatever. Or, have them place themselves on a continuum.
• Survey them about whether they would rather stay home on the farm or move to a factory town for work during the Industrial Revolution. Ask them to make a human continuum of whether they think stronger federal government or stronger state governments better protect people’s rights.
• Prior Knowledge: Sometimes, the kids don’t have any prior knowledge. But sometimes they do. Instead of assuming one way or another, find out. If they DO know something, it will make them feel more successful and likely to participate that day.
• Ask them to “braindump” everything they know about World War II (or think they know) or about the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
• Card Sorts: A card sort is a great way to get kids engaged. Give them cards with different terms from the lesson and have them sort them into categories that “make sense”.
• Give the kids cards with amendments and have them sort the amendments into categories.
• A Video: A quick  video -- with a higher-order question that ties to the point of the  lessons is always a good way to catch your students’ attention. But make it a useful video that it quick. And then don’t ask your kids to take notes. Try asking them to link the video to the benchmark or using five words to describe the event in the video or asking them to explain the connection
• Try a video of the Berlin Wall coming down on live TV or a Brain Pop or Flocabulary or any of a million great lesson hooks. Just keep it quick and relate it to the lesson.
• Adolescent Perspective: Get inside the brain of a teen or kid at the time and see if you can get your modern kids to think about being a kid in the past.
• Try a quote from the Tinkers (of Tinker vs. Des Moines), a quick story about the Children’s March in Birmingham, or the perspective of a younger sibling of soldier in war.

How do you purposefully hook your kids in at the beginning of a lesson? How to you intentionally grab their attention? If you think you don’t have time, how can you make time to catch the attention of more students? How do you already do this?

If you don’t regularly use “hooks”, I challenge you to try one on your next lesson and see how it goes. Maybe you can increase your student engagement by 10%? Maybe by 20%?

Let me know how it goes! I love to hear! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy