Sharing the Wealth

Over this past weekend I went snowboarding with my dad. We noticed a women who was walking down the slope and carrying her skis. Being concerned, I walked over to her and asked if everything was okay. She responded by telling me she was not ready for a slope like this, was frustrated and was just going to walk down. I offered my help. Being on a snowboard she was probably questioning how I would help her ski, but I walked her through it. Showed her that she could use the whole mountain, take her time, and make simple turns. In conversation with her male friend, I mentioned how good she really was and was just freaking herself out. I decided to build up the women's confidence, telling her that she was doing great and applauding her efforts in the process of getting to the bottom. The process is the scary part, once you get to the product (bottom of the hill) you realize that you can do it! The two made it to the bottom of the slope and the women was really pleased with herself. I was pleased that I took the time to help her realize that she could do it. As I rode away, the man said "Thank you for your patience."

Upon reflection I realized how important it is to couple patience with confidence building. While students are learning a new concept, it is important to be patient with the learning process and build the confidence of the students. Praise the effort, not necessarily the product. Like I said above, the process is the scary and frustrating part so this is when we need to provide support. Teachers should be asking their students to focus on the journey and not the result - praise their efforts and you will see that their self confidence will build as they reach the product. A good author to research this idea, of process and not product, is Carol Dweck.

Engaging Students Through Games: Reviewing

I teach classes with ARC out in my community. One of our classes is an after school club at the middle school. Once a week, my supervisor and I are teaching the children lessons that are broken down into two parts - first they learn about natural disasters, how they occur and why. Second we teach them how they can be prepared for common natural disasters in the area. On our last day of the club we wanted to do something that really engaged the students but also provided a cumulative review of all the information they had learned.

We decided to create a Jeopardy game. Six categories with five questions for each category. We placed the pieces of paper on the whiteboard. When a student got a questions right, they got to hold onto the paper that had the point value on it. At the end, they counted up their points and the one with the most points got to pick their prize first.

It is important for me to mention that I do not support using food as a prize. I also believe that it is important that if one student gets a prize, so do all the rest. The key here was the one with the most points got to pick first.

This game did not take that much prep time either. We have saved all of our lessons so when we walked through the information we pulled questions and hand wrote them out. The only thing that took time was setting up the game on the whiteboard, I would suggest having this already set up to cut down on transition time.

The students loved the game and got really into it. They were taking ownership of what they have learned. Before they left class I asked them to tell me one questions they missed and they answer - this showed me that even if it was a "review" game, they were still learning. I would use this technique again!

Six Categories, Point Value/Question Under

Each point value can be taken off to read the question, the point value paper goes to which ever student got the question right.

The way your game will look. Questions still up there for repetition.