3 Little Big Tricks
The following are little ideas that can help save time, make teaching fun and help improve literacy and thinking skills. Hence, Little Big Tricks!
#1 - Grouping Made Easy
Go to a hardware store and collect a class set of paint cards. I have enough for a class of 30 students to put into 5x groups of 6 all the way down to 15 x pairs. So 15 different colours in total (this might require more than one trip to the hardware store). Since using these cards I have eliminated the silly group names (often with racist undertones) and shaved minutes off the time it takes to get kids into groups. Also, I am not a great on the spot mathematician, so I can count the cards to match the students present. The kids also think that the grouping is up to the cards to decide, but you can manipulate the cards a little.
#2 - Word Pyramids
If you are a regular interactive whiteboard user like myself, it can sometimes be tricky getting set up because you are running from class to class. To help with this, draw a triangle on the whiteboard, then place jumbled up letters from a key word learned or to be learned from the current topic you are studying (try hard not let the kids see you write up the letters, if possible have them jumbled up on a piece of paper ready to copy onto the board). Now ask the students to make a list of as many words as they can in 2 minutes (or as long as your need to set up) using only the letters in the triangle. You can make up your own rules for the length of words, I usually say 3 or more and NO swear words or names of people. Fun-size boxes of Smarties or Nerds are my prize of choice, "Nerds for the nerd". Special thanks to Hamish for introducing me to this on my teaching rounds.
#3 - Throw Arounds
This is the fun one. Ask students to write the letters A all the way to Z on a sheet of (scrap) paper. Then ask them to write down any words starting with A to Z that are related to the topic they have covered, or are about to cover, in 1 minute. At the end of the minute ask them to stand up, tuck their chairs in, put their names on their paper then scrunch it up (it is funny how precious some are of scrunching up their paper). Then on the count of three, get them to throw their paper (nicely) to someone else in the room. When everyone has their new paper, give them one minute to try to help out their classmate by adding to the gaps in their list. Repeat this process 1 -2 times more, then return the paper to the original owner. Hopefully all students should have a near completed list of words. This activity is fun, and allows weaker kids to learn from their peers without embarrassment. A special thanks to Kylie and Dan for showing me this at a school run PD