Saturday, November 18, 2023

22 Unexpectedly Effective Teaching Hacks: Edutopia

From: https://www.edutopia.org/article/22-effective-teaching-hacks

22 Unexpectedly Effective Teaching Hacks

Teachers across the country share the most useful teaching tips they’ve learned—everything from the utility of Velcro to the power of periodically faking amnesia.

November 17, 2023

Have you ever received a piece of advice from a colleague that made your life as a teacher so much easier? Maybe it was a recommendation that fundamentally reshaped how you deal with disruptions in your class—or something much smaller, like a hack for how to get marker stains off your whiteboard. We bet that advice has stuck with you and made you want to high-five your colleague every time you pass them in the hallway.

Edutopia wanted to crowdsource and bottle that feeling so that teachers everywhere could celebrate little changes that feel like big classroom victories. On social media, we asked our audience of teachers to share the most unexpectedly helpful teaching hacks they’ve discovered over the course of their careers. We heard all sorts of advice, from assigning pencil sharpening as homework to the benefits of periodically faking amnesia, and collected them into one list.

As you look through this resource, keep in mind this bit of wisdom from educator Coleman Bruman: Not every single tip will work for you, nor will any one individual hack turn your classroom into a utopia. For the greatest chance of success, try combining a variety of strategies. 

“That strategy from PD will pick up 5 kids, while that closing from the book you read will get 6 more, the joke you said grabs up 2, and the connection to real life brings in 10,” Bruman writes. “Everything you do helps kids grow.”

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Rephrase how you ask for questions: Educator Megan Battle says a small shift in the way she asks for student questions has worked wonders. Instead of “Are there any questions?" she now uses the prompt, “Okay, what are your questions?” A number of educators in our comments agreed that this tiny change in wording can show students that it’s natural—and expected—to have questions about newly learned material.

All kids love stickers: Want a quick motivator for students? Look no further than stickers: “All ages love stickers. *All* ages. 🤣,” emphasizes educator Christina Cawdery in a well-received Instagram comment. Eighth-grade math teacher Megan Williams adds fragrance to the mix: Her students took their time jumping into warmups “until I started handing out scented stickers to kids who finished.”

Challenge students to complete a task without asking questions: Periodically giving students problems just beyond their reach can “activate prior knowledge and motivate students, clarifying what they know and what they don’t know,” learning scientist Manu Kapur told Edutopia in 2022. Twitter user wondercentric suggests allotting five minutes at the beginning of an in-class activity when students must attempt the activity for themselves without talking or asking questions—which “builds autonomy and gives students a chance to rely on themselves before others.”

Try faking amnesia: If you want to elicit deeper responses from your students when asking them to explain or summarize what they’ve learned, a bit of playful deception might help. Educator Maliha Akbar feigns amnesia: “I walked in one day telling them I was totally blank and didn’t remember what we had learnt in math class since last week. They taught me the whole concept.”

Call on a student to repeat your instructions: Want an easy way to ensure that students are listening to your instructions? When you’re finished, “ask a couple of students to re-explain the instructions to the class,” writes educator Connie Radbourne. “They never know who I will ask! It helps them to listen closely.”

ASSESSMENT

Pair up students for peer review based on grades: “Next math test or quiz, correct and rank order the papers,” suggests teacher Denise Oh. “Grab the top and bottom scores, and pair them up” for peer review. Do this through the entire stack, Oh suggests—middle scores paired with middle—so that striving students can help struggling ones, and students in the middle can learn new approaches from each other.

Try creative reading summaries: Summaries of a text are a staple of ELA classes—but students don’t always find them particularly engaging. Instead of asking students to summarize a text like Beowulf, educator Barbara Murray suggests “reinventing” your assignment to something more engaging—like asking them to write a eulogy to deliver instead. “They write summaries without realizing it, add flourishes, get good grades, and we all have fun,” Murray writes.

Have books ready for fast test-takers: If younger students finish an assessment quickly, they can tend to become a distraction to those around them. So, during a test, “have books the fast finishers can read so they don’t disturb the others who are still working,” writes educator Louette McInnes.

REDUCING DISRUPTIONS

Use hand signals: To decrease verbal disruptions during class, teach your students hand signals associated with particular needs. For example, use distinct hand signals “to indicate restroom, tissue, and pencil needs,” suggests educator Beth Pierce. Holding one finger up might indicate a request to use the bathroom, for example, while two fingers up means a student needs to sharpen a pencil. 

Get quiet, not loud: When students get loud and rambunctious, teachers can be tempted to get loud right back. But many teachers say the opposite approach is more effective. “When they are talking too much and it’s too loud, I start whispering and they quiet down,” writes teacher Bethany Meyer.

Assign pencil sharpening as homework: Tired of pencil-related disruptions? In educator Anne Craddock’s classroom, students’ homework includes sharpening six pencils at home. “This cut down on disruptions and excuses for not working,” Craddock writes. 

CLEAN AND ORGANIZED CLASSROOMS

Give class objects human names: Several teachers in our community pointed to a post from English teacher Miss B that recently went viral, suggesting that teachers should name classroom objects: “Does a student care if a glue stick goes missing? No! Do they care if DEREK the glue stick has not been returned? ABSOLUTELY. It’s like a manhunt until Derek has been returned to his rightful spot.”

Save your knees: One of the awkward moments of teaching is figuring out how best to position yourself when interacting one-on-one with a student. Should you crouch over their desk, kneel down next to them, or what? “I carry a small folding camping stool when my students are doing independent work,” writes educator Austin Pinckney. “When they need help, I pop it open and sit next to them.” Other commenters opt for rolling stools or even yoga balls. Ultimately, use whatever helps you protect your knees.

Velcro is your friend: Are you hanging stuff this year? (That’s a rhetorical question—for a teacher, hanging stuff is kinda part of the job.) Well, if you haven’t already, consider Velcro. PE teacher Cindy Colman says Velcro makes “changing out signs, posters, etc.” a breeze. Likewise, Candyss Woodberry uses Velcro to make an easily reordered lineup chart for her students.

Use electrical tape for labels: Tired of sticky residue from labels? “Put down electrical tape on mailboxes, cubbies, desks,” or anything else that needs a label, writes teacher Bri Miller. “At the end of the year just pull the whole thing of electrical tape up and no residue or half peeled labels!”

Use a utility belt: If you’re tired of not having the stuff you need on hand, it might be time to take a page out of Batman’s playbook. “I wear a gardening belt and carry everything I need as I help students in my STEAM lab: pencils, dry erase markers, a few pens, sticky notes,” writes educator Mary Phillips. Or, instead of a utility belt, you can opt for a deep-pocketed apron, comments Elle Be Cee Zee.

TECH TOOLS

Use a “hyperdoc” to compile all assignments in one place: Middle and high school teachers have probably heard this excuse before: “Oh, I didn’t know we had homework.” To ensure that students know what’s due, compile a “hyperdoc”—“a running Google doc that everyone has access to with the day’s assignments” and relevant links, writes educator Misti Gil. Besides helping all students keep track of what’s expected of them, this document is particularly useful for students who miss class, Gil writes.

Compile a document to support substitute teachers: Teachers can make life easier for their subs, too, by creating a running document with all the key information they need to know. “It included all the info the sub would need about my room, school procedures, the schedule, resources, etc.,” writes educator Colleen Windell. When crafting this document the first time, make it reusable by leaving a blank section for the day’s lesson—then you only have to fill that part in each time you’re out, writes Windell.

Create a forum for anonymous questions: Teacher Kate Lizzie recommends “having a place where students can ask questions anonymously.” There might be some important questions (about class content, class structure, or even their relationships with peers) that students are too embarrassed to ask face-to-face; an anonymous Google Form can be a great way to field those questions.

TEACHING ADVICE

Steal from colleagues: “Theft is my best hack, like a bandit 😆,” writes Facebook commenter Rin Tin. “Walk into my colleague’s classroom... Oh I like that, I’m stealing this idea. I’m the Thomas Edison of teaching. Brilliant at theft of great ideas. 💰💡😆”

Watch yourself teach: A great way to improve your craft is to film yourself teaching and watch it back, writes educator Laura Miller. You might be surprised by what you find: “It’s eye opening to see what your habits are,” Miller says—like starting too many sentences with “So” or “All right.” “I also learned a lot about the frequency and type of questions I was asking,” Miller writes, which allowed her to adjust accordingly.

Save lesson planning for Monday night: Rather than planning your weeks in the traditional Monday-to-Friday sequence, consider planning Tuesday-to-Monday, several teachers in our community suggested. That is, rather than doing your lesson planning over the weekend, you can do it on Monday night. “It’s lessening my ‘Sunday scaries,’” writes educator Mary Beane, and the slight shift—covering new material on Tuesday—turns Monday into a helpful day to review the material from the previous week.

HELP OTHER TEACHERS OUT!

We’d love this article to be an evolving document of best practices, so please use the comments to add any unexpected teaching hacks of your own. If we see something we love, we may well add it to the list!

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8 Proactive Classroom Management Tips: Edutopia

 Original Article has YouTubes to demonstrate. 

From: https://www.edutopia.org/article/8-proactive-classroom-management-tips?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Fall+23&utm_id=Fall23&utm_term=fall+school+season&utm_content=proactive+management&fbclid=IwAR1F_opZy5MmVzvaoZQYXbXBHo56p4GlvQhEi3qCOZY1OVo2UtdnDRXADoE

8 Proactive Classroom Management Tips

New teachers—and experienced ones too—can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

August 7, 2019
Teacher and student high-fiving
©Edutopia

In the 1950s, psychologists Jacob Kounin and Paul Gump discovered a curious side effect of discipline: If a student was being disruptive and the teacher responded with strict disciplinary measures, the student might stop—but other students would start exhibiting the same misbehavior. Kounin and Gump called this the “ripple effect,” and it demonstrated that efforts to control a classroom can backfire.

“The teacher who is interested in controlling ripple effects can generally do so best by giving clear instructions to the child rather than by exerting pressure on him,” Kounin and Gump wrote.

Decades later, classroom management is still a thorny issue for teachers. Nearly half of new teachers report that they feel “not at all prepared” or “only somewhat prepared” to handle disruptive students, in part because the average teacher training program devotes just eight hours to the topic, according to a 2014 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality. This lack of training comes with a cost, as teachers report losing 144 minutes of instructional time on average to behavioral disruptions every week, which comes out to roughly three weeks over the course of a year.

Recent research confirms what Kounin and Gump discovered decades ago. A 2016 study found that while negative attention—reprimands like “Stop chitchatting!”—may temporarily stop misbehavior, students eventually became more likely to engage in disruptive behavior. Students in the study felt disengaged, had difficulty concentrating, and weren’t able to effectively regulate their thoughts and emotions—a vicious cycle that “actually amplifies students’ inappropriate behavior,” the study authors explain.

8 PROACTIVE CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

Instead of handling disruptions after they’ve happened, it can be more effective to set up conditions in which they are less likely to occur. Here are eight classroom strategies that teachers have shared with Edutopia, all backed by research.

1. Greet students at the door: At Van Ness Elementary School in Washington, DC, Falon Turner starts the day by giving each of her students a high-five, handshake, or hug. “During that time, I’m just trying to connect with them…. It’s kind of like a pulse check to see where they are,” she says.

In a study published last year, greeting students at the door helped teachers set a positive tone for the rest of the day, boosting academic engagement by 20 percentage points while reducing disruptive behavior by 9 percentage points—adding roughly an hour of engagement over the course of the school day.

George Lucas Educational Foundatio

2. Establish, maintain, and restore relationships: Building relationships with students through strategies like greeting them at the door is a good start. It’s also necessary to maintain them over the course of the school year, and to repair them when conflicts arise. “The stronger the relationship and the better we understand our students, the more knowledge and goodwill we have to draw on when the going gets tough,” writes Marieke van Woerkom, a restorative practices coach at the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility in New York.

Strategies for establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships—such as regular check-ins, and focusing on solutions instead of problems—can reduce disruptions by up to 75 percent.

George Lucas Educational Foundation

3. Use reminders and cues: “Novelty—such as the sound of a wind chime or rain stick—captures young students’ attention” writes Todd Finley, a former English teacher and current professor of English education, who suggests using these techniques to quiet a noisy class.

For older students, give plenty of warning if you need them to follow instructions. Reminders and cues are helpful ways to encourage students to follow instructions without being overtly controlling or forceful. For example, if you can anticipate a disruption—such as students getting out of their seats if they finish an assignment early—give a short reminder of what they should do instead.

Reminders are commonly verbal, but can also be visual (flicking the lights to signal that it’s time to be quiet), auditory (ringing a small bell to let students know they should pay attention to the teacher), or physical (using a hand signal to let students know to get back in their seats).

4. Optimize classroom seating: When students choose their own seats, they’re three times more likely to be disruptive than when seats are assigned. After all, they’ll probably pick seats next to their friends and spend more time chatting.

Flexible seating in a high school classroom
Courtesy of Emily Polak
For ninth-grade teacher Emily Polak, flexible seating is part of effective classroom management.

But that doesn’t mean choice is always bad. Giving students a sense of ownership in the room, paired with clear expectations for behavior, can have surprisingly positive effects. A welcoming space can reduce anxiety and boost academic performance. Emily Polak, a ninth-grade teacher in Madison, Alabama, gave her room a cozier feel by adding a couch, a loveseat, rugs, a coffee table, and posters. Her students decide where to sit—but if they can’t get their work done, they get moved back to a desk. “Discipline issues have significantly decreased. My students seem to feel more relaxed and more motivated in a setting that honors their choices,” Polak says.

5. Give behavior-specific praise: It may seem counterintuitive, but acknowledging positive behavior and ignoring low-level disruptions can be more effective than punishing or disciplining students. Instead of focusing on specific students, offer praise for the behavior you want to reinforce. For example, tell students, “Excellent work getting to your seats quickly.”

It’s also helpful to avoid using the word don’t, suggests Alyssa Nucaro, a sixth-grade English teacher in Memphis. Students are more likely to listen to instructions that include clear reasons.

6. Set clear expectations: Instead of just displaying rules for behavior, have a discussion with your students about why those rules matter. Bobby Shaddox, a seventh-grade social studies teacher in Portland, Maine, works with his students to create a list of norms—words such as inclusive, focused, and considerate—to build a sense of community. “It helps us own the behavior in the classroom,” Shaddox says. “Instead of a top-down list of rules that a teacher gives a class, these are words that we generated together. These are words that we believe in.”

George Lucas Educational Foundation

7. Actively supervise: “Presence is crucial to maintaining classroom management and to effective delivery of instruction, and it’s a skill we can develop with effort,” explains Sol Henik, a high school teacher in Pleasant Hill, California. Although it’s tempting to sit at your desk and grade papers, that’s also an invitation to your students to get distracted. Be active: Move around the room, check in on student progress, and ask questions. It’s not about policing your students, but about interacting with them.

A 2017 study found that a teacher’s nonverbal cues—such as smiling and making eye contact—can “reduce physical and/or psychological distance” with their students, boosting students’ positive feelings toward the teacher and the course material while improving behavior.

8. Be consistent in applying rules: Early in Kelly Wickham Hurst’s career as an administrator in a public high school, she was asked to discipline a black student for violating the school dress code by wearing sagging jeans. As they walked down the hallway, he pointed out other boys—all white—who were also wearing sagging pants. “Are you gonna get him, too, or is it just me?” he asked. School and classroom expectations, rules, and routines should be followed and applied fairly to all students. Don’t single out certain students—it’s the behavior you should be focused on, not the student. Correct errors when you see them and provide additional instruction or reteaching when misbehavior occurs.

 

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

How Tone of Voice Shapes Your Classroom Culture: Edutopia

 

https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-tone-of-voice-shapes-your-classroom-culture/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Fall+23&utm_id=Fall23&utm_term=fall+school+season&utm_content=voice+tone&fbclid=IwAR2Os9xjm1rhpszGWrOYWSA5-DMsQ7mYlLpzvt4yxP0GdcgsWgFW-DIE_QY

THE RESEARCH IS IN

How Tone of Voice Shapes Your Classroom Culture

It’s no easy task, but developing your tone of voice can build trust, reduce conflict, and set the stage for more learning in your classroom, research shows.

April 14, 2023

Using your voice to manage a classroom is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. Teachers vocalize to impart information through direct instruction, gauge student understanding by asking questions, facilitate transitions between activities—and also manage behavior by redirecting wayward learners and issuing directives when necessary. It’s a deceptively complex, multifaceted tool, requiring constant modulation to fit changing classroom circumstances—and it can take teachers years to hone.

In a 2022 study, researchers set out to explore the nuances of tone, and especially how a teacher’s tone of voice can shape classroom culture. Researchers from the University of Essex and University of Reading analyzed how elementary students reacted to common classroom instructions—“It’s time to quiet down” or “Get in your seats, we’re starting the lesson,” for example—which were delivered in tones varying from controlling to neutral to supportive. While the words remained the same, shifts in tonality had a surprisingly large effect across multiple dimensions of classroom health, including students’ sense of belonging, autonomy, and enjoyment of the class, as well as the likelihood that they’d confide relevant personal information to educators, like their interests or academic struggles.

The researchers concluded that controlling tones “undermined” students’ sense of competence, while supportive tones “enhanced” their sense of connection with teachers. An authoritarian disposition can erect barriers: Controlling voices “dissuaded children from intentions to share secrets with their teachers,” including whether students were being bullied, were suffering hardships, or had completed work they were proud of, said the researchers, eroding the bonds of trust that are needed to learn in the social setting of a classroom.

Yet tone remains difficult to master, and harder still to sustain in a chaotic classroom environment. That’s why it’s helpful to be mindful of how things like intonation, volume, and the pacing of your speech can influence behavior, and how these qualities of voice can be judiciously deployed in ways that are likely to reinforce learning.

CANARY IN THE COAL MINE

Subtle changes in a teacher’s tone of voice can be the first signal that something is awry in the classroom. A note of panic that slips into verbal directions, a rise in vocal register or volume, or a sudden barrage of repeated instructions may indicate to students that things are starting to spin out of control and trigger a fight-or-flight response in the classroom, ratcheting up the anxiety and leading to outbursts.

Emotions are contagious, researchers explain in a 2021 study. When teachers convey warmth and express interest in a topic, students are more likely to stay engaged—and stay out of trouble. Conversely, teachers who overreact to student disruptions or are emotionally distant can unwittingly create a combative or unfriendly atmosphere. Exhibiting passion for the topic works wonders: Teachers who enjoy being in the classroom “sustained their positive attitudes when students struggled and reported spending more time teaching,” the researchers report.

Meanwhile, developing a steady, calm demeanor in a dynamic classroom setting takes time and practice, particularly when students know how to press your buttons. Take things slowly and work from a place of empathy and compassion. One way to prepare for the inevitable tests of your patience is by running scenarios in your head or with a partner. “Think through scenarios that might happen in your classroom and how you want to respond before the start of the year,” suggests high school teacher and instructional coach Emily Terwilliger. “It will make those first redirects and interventions less intimidating.”

As always, focusing on relationships first is a bedrock principle: “Bank time” with students and get to know them better, since these deposits can help ease future conflict. Finally, it’s important to let go and start fresh; it’s easy to overreact if a student keeps pushing your buttons. Try to start each day with a clean slate.

FINDING THE WARM IN YOUR ‘WARM DEMANDER’

Managing a classroom with your voice requires deftness—use a tone that’s too strict and demanding, and the research over decades is clear: Older students in particular will read it as a challenge and rebel. Go too soft on students, however, and they’ll spend a lot of time testing the boundaries of what they can get away with.

The ideal tone is a blend of both approaches, says middle school teacher Kristine Napper. “Neither high expectations nor kind hearts can do the job alone,” writes Napper, who recommends adopting a warm demander tone that focuses first “on building strong relationships with students,” and then “draws on that wellspring of trust to hold students to high standards of deep engagement with course content.”

When students misbehave in Nina Parrish’s classroom, she sees it as an opportunity to ask thoughtful questions and look for patterns. Did something spark the disruption? Are students trying to get attention from their friends, or are they bored? “Behaviors help students obtain something desirable or escape something undesirable,” she explains. Instead of demanding compliance as a first step, meet your students halfway: Set high expectations, but also spend time trying to understand what makes them tick.

There will undoubtedly be times when you’ll need to raise your voice or speak sharply to a student, but the tactic should be used sparingly. “Developing a calm, neutral, assertive voice is part of the teacher’s own self-regulation, which allows them to help students to be self-regulated and to be secure in the knowledge that the teacher will be receptive to them, but also in control,” says Linda Darling-Hammond, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute.

A DOSE OF THE NONVERBAL

It’s easy to forget that tone isn’t just conveyed through your voice—it can also be conveyed by facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language, which “help guide facilitation of student learning,” says Samford University professor Lisa Gurley in a 2018 study. Teachers often adopt a formal demeanor in the classroom, modeling behavior that mirrors a professional environment. Yet the difference between too-controlling and just-controlling-enough often relies not on what is said, but on the accompanying nonverbal cues that can soften perceptions.

Are you inadvertently frowning or looking exasperated when a student speaks up? Do you seem dismissive? Modern eye-tracking research suggests that teachers tend to make eye contact with students in the front row and the middle section, so consider circulating in your room and making an effort to acknowledge those sitting in the back (and on the peripheries) with your presence.

You can be formal by nature and formal in speech, and still connect. Students can detect and appreciate teaching authenticity in many forms, according to recent research. And students usually “respond positively to professors who treat them with dignity and seem approachable, even if those professors are more formal in their speech and demeanor,” says Amber Dickinson, a political science professor at Oklahoma State University, in a 2017 study. Acknowledging students with eye contact or an approving nod can “reduce the psychological distance” and help build a trusting relationship without saying a single word, she writes.

THE CASE OF THE DISEMBODIED VOICE

Vocalizing is not the only way that tone is expressed; our voice continues to have influence even in the absence of our physical presence. When giving feedback on an assignment, writing emails, or having an online discussion, the right tone can be harder to pin down—but it remains crucial—when communicating with students.

“A professor in a classroom may provide succinct instructions that students understand and appreciate, but a short email from a professor may be interpreted as cold or uncaring,” says Dickinson. In her study, she discovered that attempts to be efficient by communicating in a precise manner—such as giving clear instructions on how to upload an assignment—were often interpreted by her students as harsh. Stripped of the nonverbal cues that typically accompany a face-to-face conversation, her online persona became stern and distant, and she saw her students become less engaged as a result.

When writing messages to students, be sure to include personal touches, suggests Dickinson. It not only will make them feel more comfortable but also can create a more positive classroom culture and encourage students to reach out for help. “For example, I included content to offer general encouragement by saying things such as ‘Don’t give up, the semester is almost over, and your hard work will pay off,’ or reminding students I was happy to help them in any way,” she writes.