Teaching Tip #146

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #146

Now this is something we can learn from:  How to Engage Students in the First Few Minutes

#2 - tell them not to take out their books.

More like tell them not to open up their MacBooks.

I do find this idea interesting.  In fact, for a few times last year I introduced what I called “going stone age.”  The idea was to design an intro activity that purposefully didn’t include their MacBooks.

Then I also designed a few activities (mostly in my Lit and Lang 9R class because the students in there really needed to learn how to use their computers with purpose, especially at the start of the block) that forced them to use their laptops for an assignment.

For example - usually when I walk in students are on Facebook, playing video games, or watching something mindless on Youtube.  So I began leaving an assignment on the board that challenged them to use the laptops to do something class related.  I might put up on the board “Once the bell rings, you have the first 5 minutes of class to find a video on Youtube or Vimeo related to the story we read yesterday (“The Most Dangerous Game”)”  or “Check your Gmail for the Farside cartoon I sent you.  The cartoon is missing the caption.  Your job is to write your own original caption for the cartoon.  The best caption ears Starbursts.”