The Ugly Sweaters of Education

The ugly sweater. No matter your faith, it is a recognizable holiday phenomenon. Some wear them proudly, and yet it is only because they are messy, loud, and noticeable. The time when they were fashionable has past (decades ago) but there are some trends that stick around because they are hard to forget.


There are certain teaching and learning strategies that are no longer en vogue, but are so valuable they have quietly lasted decades in many classrooms. In many cases, the tools used to carry them out and the names used to describe them have changed.

Lecture

Yes, I said it. Even as a teacher who has criticized the practice of lecturing quite often, I do believe it is a tried a true practice that can be effective –– if done well. Educators who are masterful lecturers understand that a quality lecture is interactive, thought-provoking, and entertaining for all participants. Great lectures are not solo performances, they are engaging experiences.

Pear Deck is one platform that allows educators to thoughtfully plan for personalized and collaborative learning activities that are built into the lecture slide deck. Another option is to offer for participants to engage in a backchannel using TodaysMeet. Then review the transcript and respond to ideas periodically during the lecture. Finally, if you want to take specific questions live from your audience, consider using Google Slides and it's kind-of-new Q&A feature.

Daily Quizzes and Exit Tickets

These strategies are worthwhile because they are frequent check-ins on student progress, but any teacher who really actually used them daily is superhuman.  I don't know about you, but I had between 120 and 130 teenagers walk over that classroom threshold on a daily basis. Is it possible for a mere mortal to create, read, and assess that many exit tickets every 24 hours (especially when you consider the daily lesson/project planning, summative assessment creation and correction, and 6-7 hours of sleep that are also required to function)? These tried and true formative assessments were too much work before, but digital tools have changed that.

Poll Everywhere offers a live survey-style effect to close out your class period. Formative offers a variety of questions types that can remain private or can be displayed live, based on teacher preference. Socrative even has an exit ticket built in their dashboard for teachers to use spur-of-the-moment.

Bell Ringers or Bell Work

I like to call them "activators" because I like to think they activate the kind of thinking needed for a particular activity (and also because some schools no longer mark time with bells). The truth is they are just as much a class management tool – designed to get students to engage in classwork and resist messing around as soon as they enter the classroom with their friends – as they are an opportunity for learning.

Steal from the project based learning playbook and make your activator about a real world problem that connects with the topic of class for that day. For instance:

  • About to embark on a long term research project? Invite students to try to solve A Google a Day. The exercise teaches them the valuable of un-Google-able questions and includes hints on how to properly navigate search engines. They will be better prepared to author their own research question and to find the sources they need to complete their research.
  • Planning to introduce students to the concept of velocity and how to calculate it? Start by showing them this downhill skateboard racing video. Start by reminding your students that these racers are professionals (or reckless at the very least) and they shouldn't attempt such a stunt. But then appeal to their curiosity. How might we figure out how fast they are going? What information would we need? Are there clues in the video – like the regular dashes on the side of the road and the ticking seconds in the YouTube timer – that might help? 
Opening class with activities like these will surely result in a room full or students who are more invested in mastering the skills and content at hand.

While lectures, daily quizzes, exit tickets, and bell work might be old fashioned ugly sweaters to modern connected educators, they are methods that have been around for decades. They might not fit in today's classroom in their original form, but when the best edtech tools and resources are used to make them more engaging, manageable, and powerful... they're back! Just as with fashion, what is old can be new again, and we need to remember that great teaching and learning should never be pushed aside and replaced by a new trend "just because."

Ugly sweater photo from flickr

Comments

  1. Unstitched summer collectionThursday, July 02, 2020 4:28:00 AM

    I would love to hear this bachelors stories. These are real life examples of education.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Darren DemersSaturday, December 11, 2021 2:19:00 AM

    Copyright holders have wide latitude in placing restrictions on the use of their work. They can decide that children can use their work but not adults. Or that copies can be made digitally but not on paper. Or vice-versa.
    sheets & pillowcases ,
    teal sheets ,

    ReplyDelete

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