The Teaching Tips Machine

As I am now in full “get-ready-for school” mode, I came across this cute YouTube video that I thought I’d pass along.

Remember…teachers do make a difference!

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Hi…

I hope you enjoyed the article I posted a couple of weeks ago by Rob Plevin…

In the article, Rob discusses the importance of getting students to LOOK FORWARD to your lessons. Rob believes (and I’m sure we all agree) that when students come into your classroom with a positive attitude they are much easier to manage and teach.

Well…here are some specific ideas from Rob Plevin for getting students to LOOK FORWARD to your lessons:

* Cooperative learning activities – get students working together so that their needs for attention and support are naturally met – you then become free to give assistance when it is required rather than when it is demanded.

* Attention grabbing starters – Get them interested from the start and the rest of the lesson has a fair chance of success. If you don’t manage to do this, you’re fighting a losing battle for the entire lesson.

* Learning games – when learning is fun, it is more enjoyable and memorable.

* Relevant subject content – relevant to THEIR lives

* Ability-appropriate tasks – too hard and they’ll be frustrated, too easy and they’ll be bored

* Music – great for setting the mood in a lesson but also for marking transitions and ‘types’ of activity. Use upbeat or comedy theme music to hurry students through physical tasks and relaxing music when you want them to think. Use their favorite music as an occasional class reward for good effort.

* Energizers and brain-breaks, and novel activities – Physical energizers can get the group back on task and re-focused.

* Anecdotes and analogies – students respond so well to analogies and quirky stories. It gives them an instant way of connecting to new information.

* Role plays – If you aren’t using role play I suggest you do it NOW. Your most challenging students love role play when it is presented in the right way. This one activity can have your students queuing at the door to get in every lesson. “Sir, can we do role play again please?”

* Humor breaks – It goes without saying, we need humor, we need to laugh. But are you actively planning dedicated humor time into your lessons? If you do, your students will thank you for it and your lessons will be the talk of the school.

If you want more ideas on how to get students to LOOK FORWARD to your lessons then you must check out Rob Plevin’s lesson improvement program known as Needs-Focused Lessons.

I can’t recommend Rob’s Needs-Focused Lessons highly enough and you can still get started for just $1.

Take a look at this extremely valuable resource right now at:

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As many of you know I’m a firm believer that there needs to be some degree of fun in every classroom. As my very first professor, Barry Raebeck, once stated, “If it’s not fun a fair part of the time, it’s probably no good and definitely wont last.”

However, the classroom cannot just be all fun and games either…

I’m passing along a short article today which I found very interesting.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I’d be curious to hear if it resonates with you or not…

Best Wishes,
Adam Waxler
Teaching Tips Machine, LLC

———–START of ARTICLE———-

“Why You Can’t Rely on Fun Lessons to Solve Classroom Management Problems”

© Written By Rob Plevin
Author of the new Needs-Focused Lessons

Having a fun classroom and teaching a fun lesson isn’t enough to stop behavior problems, and it isn’t going to miraculously transform your challenging students into hard-working, diligent stars.

Without a good understanding of some other key classroom management skills, a lesson that you think is fun may well turn into a free-for-all and only serve to build you a reputation as a walk-over.

Teaching is not about “entertaining” students or letting them just “mess about,” and it certainly isn’t about demoting them to the role of passive spectators.

The truth is, even the most colorful and funny presentations can become boring (and even annoying) to kids if they are repeatedly expected to merely “be entertained” or just “have a laugh.” If challenging students are to feel truly involved in a lesson, they need to be given opportunities to develop, grow, improve and feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement.

Sure, they can still have fun in the process, but it is more productive if the fun comes from interacting with each other, finding out, working out, building, trying, experimenting, practicing and doing. They don’t get these things from just sitting back and watching or messing around.

I like to use the simple analogy of your pupils each carrying an “emotion backpack” on their backs as they enter your lessons. If they arrive with the feeling that the lesson (based on their previous experience) is something they will have to ENDURE for the next hour – something that is boring, irrelevant to their lives or perhaps embarrassing or difficult – then their backpack will be filled with NEGATIVE emotions before they even set foot through the door.

Teaching kids who walk in your classroom with negative preconceptions is the HARD way to teach. It’s tough to get students to engage when they have already made up their minds that the lesson isn’t something they’re going to enjoy or benefit from.

The easy way is to have them actually LOOKING FORWARD to your lessons. You want them carrying that backpack with a little bit of INTRIGUE, perhaps recollections of a few LAUGHS they had during the last lesson or a feeling of SUCCESS and ACHIEVEMENT having UNDERSTOOD a difficult concept for the first time.

Isn’t that what education is all about?

———–END of ARTICLE———-

I hope you found the article informative. If you want more ideas on how to get students to LOOK FORWARD to your lessons then you must check out Rob Plevin’s lesson improvement program known as Needs-Focused Lessons.

I can’t recommend Rob’s Needs-Focused Lessons highly enough.

And Rob has agreed to let you try his simple but super-effective lesson plan strategies for $1.

Take a look at this extremely valuable resource right now at:

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Towards the end of each school year I always stress the importance of allowing your students to evaluate you as a teacher.

Let’s face it…who else would be better to evaluate you than the ones you’ve been teaching for the past 180 days or so?

You have nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain by having your students fill out a simple evaluation sheet.

Here’s the one I’ve been using for the past several years:
http://www.teachingtipsmachine.com/TeacherEvaluationForm.pdf

Feel free to download it, print it, and pass it along…

Best Wishes,
Adam Waxler
Teaching Tips Machine, LLC
www.TeachingTipsMachine.com

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Hi,

Last week I sent out an email about Rob Plevin’s ‘Take Control of the Noisy Class’ classroom management resource and the feedback has been fantastic!

Well, here’s some good news for those of you who have been sitting on the fence…Rob has given me permission to give a small sample from a section in the ‘Take Control of the Noisy Class’ program titled ‘Attention Grabbers’…

Here it is…
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Attention Grabbers & Silencers

If you think about it, virtually ANYONE could stop a classroom full of troublesome students from talking and get them to listen – even if only for a few moments.

A sufficiently dramatic outburst such as standing on the table screaming would almost certainly do the job. If that didn’t work perhaps putting a huge, colourfully wrapped box (complete with colourful ribbon) on a table in the centre of the room, with a sign saying ‘I’ll open it when you’re quiet’, would create enough intrigue to shut them up long enough to remove the wrapping paper.

Or how about issuing everyone with a raffle ticket and writing ‘There is a mystery prize up for grabs – when you’re quiet I will draw the winning ticket’ on the board.

Or … well I’m sure you get the idea.

The point is, getting their attention is not the problem.
Getting their respect, getting them to respond positively to your instructions and getting them to engage in the rest of your planned activities – they are problems. We’ll deal with these topics throughout ‘Take Control of the Noisy Class’ but for now here are a few tried and tested ‘silencers’…

Attention Grabber #1: Use the ring leaders

Many of the most challenging and difficult to manage pupils in school tend to be those with leadership potential – the ringleaders. You can use this personality trait to your advantage and get them on side by giving them a responsibility such as setting up/taking part in a demonstration, quietening down a particular group of students etc. They respond well to responsibility.

Here are two things to remember when giving responsibilities to students (particularly challenging students):

i) Always speak to them out of earshot of the others…

“Ryan I’m going to need you this lesson. The other kids look up to you so I’m counting on you to help me get their attention.”

ii) Make sure you give them clear instructions as to exactly what their job will entail because it would be counter-productive for you to award a responsibility only to have to then challenge the student for doing something wrong.

Give them a brief ‘action point’ checklist or a list of ‘dos & don’ts’ for their particular job. Better still, spend a few minutes demonstrating exactly how you expect/need them to behave in their particular role. The Needs-focused Approach is about giving kids every opportunity to do things RIGHT – give them clear tracks to walk in and they are less likely to stray off the path. Sometimes they need more guidance than we might think.

Attention Grabber #4: Start with a choice

Choices are powerful motivators. They give students a sense of autonomy and a feeling of increased possibility of success. By simply changing our language and offering pupils a limited choice we take some of the pressure out of our requests and create more willingness in them to take part.

On test papers, for example, the questions which give a choice – “answer two from section A, two from section B, and two from section C” are less threatening than those which offer no choice at all.

Instead of saying “Turn to page twenty and get on with the exercises; when you’ve finished those you can complete this worksheet”, try “I’ve written some choices on the board. You only have to do five from the ten choices, and in any order you like.”

The choices could include all the exercises from page twenty and all the questions from the worksheet, together with some extension activities. The difference is the way they are presented to the students.

Attention Grabber #5: Start with a challenge

I’ve often heard it said that there are two ways to get disinterested students engaged – bet them or pay them. I don’t want you to be out of pocket so let’s rely on the first one. Challenge is a universal motivator.

To use challenge in the classroom effectively we have to get both the context and the level of challenge correct. In terms of context, the challenge has to appeal to the students. A physical activity will only appeal to physical students, a sports challenge will only appeal to sporty students and a technical challenge will only appeal to technical students. Finding the right context to motivate disengaged students requires getting to know them so that you can base the challenge on something which interests them.

Silencer #8: I’ve got my ‘Eye’ on you

Bags of toy plastic ‘eyes’ can be bought very cheaply in craft and hobby shops. They move, they look silly and your students will love them!

One eye on a table = “I am keeping an eye on you”

Two eyes = “I’ve got both my eyes on you – be careful”

Third eye = a consequence.

IMPORTANT:
Always remember that any attention-grabbing strategies will have, at best, a temporary effect on the group. While they will certainly get most of the group’s attention, it might only be for a few moments.

During those few moments it is crucial that you have an activity planned and ready to roll, a demonstration set up, a video ready to play or at the very least some clear instructions written on the board or fixed in your mind as to what you will do once they are attentive and listening. If you don’t, you’ll lose them again and getting them quiet a second time will be much, much harder.

You can’t wait for things to go wrong before deciding what to do about them. As you read all these ideas, ask yourself two important questions … “What would I do next?” and “What will I do if this has no effect?”
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This classroom management resource is a MUST for any teacher who struggles with the problem of settling very difficult groups of students and controlling noise levels/constant chatter.

Please remember this is a strictly limited offer and the price will go up as soon as all the places have been filled – this may be your only opportunity to get access at this low price.

For more information on this great classroom management resource
go to:
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=3728833

Best Wishes,
Adam Waxler
Teaching Tips Machine, LLC

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