Mr. M and Yertle the Turtle vs. The Grinch

Another game idea! This takes 15 - 20 minutes and very little equipment... another form of tag that students enjoy!

Mr. M and a New PE Game

I love learning new PE games and think they'd be a great incentive for a class reward. As the year beings, take time to have fun with your students and teach them a few of your favorite group games. Once the students learn a fun game, they will ask to play it again and again. That was the case with this game I learned yesterday..."Medic." The PE teacher I am subbing for told me this was a favorite among all students. From fifth to first, when they heard we were playing "Medic" they all cheered! Using "game time" as a classroom incentive won't cost you a penny and will get your class motivated to work together so they can play together!

Preparing for all of those End of Year Reviews!

 Spring is coming which means lots of review!
The "Kahoot" quiz, a technology based review, I'm going to share is extremely interactive and engaging while still heavily monitored and run by the teacher! Pictured below are some snapshots from the site as well as a few notes. The thought bubbles will explain the teacher side of the site (orange frames) and the student side of the site (purple frames.) I've also included some ideas on how to smoothly run this in a classroom...they are listed below the pictures!

Ideas...

• If available, each student could have their own device. However, for larger classes giving one Chromebook, I pad, etc per group works just as well!
• Instead of having students choose a Username, have them type in their computer number or their student number. This controls goofy/inappropriate usernames to be displayed as well as confidentiality. Group numbers or names would be another idea!
• When the "Score" screen comes up, cover the projector. This may seem silly, but the scores are displayed after EVERY question. When students see that they aren't in the top scores displayed they quit trying. Keep everyone engaged and display the score at the END of the review! 
• There will be some goof balls in the class who will purposely answer incorrectly to see the graphs change on the data. In order to stop this I made sure that if the question had any incorrect responses displayed in the data we had to pause and have a discussion about why "such and such" wasn't the correct answer. I also tallied how many times the class answered 100% correct and matched it with an incentive. 
• MAKE A PRACTICE QUIZ FIRST...or at least a few practice questions! Having the students, and yourself, learn to maneuver through the site is a bit tricky at first. But after a couple of questions they really get the hang of it! 

Mrs. B and the Classroom Zones

I enjoy substituting for Middle School, each teacher is so different! If I've learned anything from Junior High it's this...the more organized YOU are, the more organized your STUDENTS will be for you! It's interesting to see the same students rotate to different classrooms and how they magically "change." If the class is organized and structured, so are the students. If not, well...let's just say the kids know it and that's when the "change" happens. I found it surprising to sub for Teacher A where the students were on task and well behaved and the next day, subbing the same students for Teacher B and thinking, "You weren't like this yesterday." Routines, procedures, organization and consistency are just as important for Middle School students as it is for Elementary students, if not more!

I've shared a few ideas for organization in previous posts and I'd like to share a couple more. Mrs. B teaches 3 Block classes of 6th grade Language Arts. Her organization for students in each of those classes helped me have a very productive day while she was absent.

There was 1 clipboard for each class, each with a class photo list and seating arrangement. 

Mrs. B used this clipboard to keep track of tardy's, table points, individual points, etc.

Now for the Classroom Zones. The pictures below are pretty self explanatory, but to elaborate Mrs. B introduced classroom zones for noise level control. The zones let students know the expectation for the classroom throughout a lesson, project assignment, partner work, individual work, etc. Super easy to implement as well as remind, "Remember, we're in a yellow zone." Take a look...

Only one color would be showing at a time, of course :)

One more thing to share...Mrs. B was very generous in sharing materials, but VERY serious about making sure they were returned. (The students were as well!) They were in charge of counting Sharpies, erasers and White Out's. All had to be returned before anyone could leave.