Recently, during an inservice, we were discussing vocabulary and creative ways to help students study and learn their vocabulary words. Several great ideas were presented, but my favorite has quickly become Quizlet. You can either access this program online at quizlet.com or download the app onto iPads for quicker access. What I find most beneficial about Quizlet is that the students get to play fun games, and Quizlet will produce a test and grade it for you (what teacher wouldn’t love that!). Continue reading Who doesn’t love playing games?
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Game Is Afoot!
In a soliloquy from Henry V, the title character announces “the game is afoot” in encouraging his men to battle. That is how I oft feel about my teaching repertoire. One of the things that I absolutely love in my teaching is the use of games and simulations to immerse students in the context and experience of social studies content. What is better to teach students about the areas of our content by having them do it. With games, I find it more efficient and more interesting to have them play a game to find out about an event, rather than a dry lecture or textbook worksheet.. Fortunately, I stumbled across a site for fellow game-junkies that has high-quality online games for you to utilize in your classroom. Continue reading The Game Is Afoot!
Reflecting on Technology
For my students, any time they can get their hands on technology, or I let them play on the SmartBoard, they are as happy as can be. For most of them, an iPad is more comfortable to use than paper and pencil, so any lesson that I can alter to use technology is going to be more successful in my classroom. Continue reading Reflecting on Technology
How I use “Discrepant Event Inquiry” in my classroom
A few years ago, I was introduced to “Discrepant Event Inquiry” from Glenn Wiebe. (Here is another post about it from his History Tech blog). The idea is that you take an image and only reveal a little bit at a time. As I reveal a little bit of the picture, the students must guess Who is in the picture, What is happening, When was the photograph taken, and Where is this taking place. This encourages students to think outside the box and it also does WONDERS with questioning and how to ask the right questions. Naturally, I turned this into a competition. Continue reading How I use “Discrepant Event Inquiry” in my classroom
Visual Vocabulary
This week in my class we are starting a new unit that comes with several vocabulary words that my 7th grade students aren’t used to hearing. Before jumping right in to the content I want to make sure that they have the background knowledge they need to comprehend what we are learning, so we are focusing first on the new vocabulary. Continue reading Visual Vocabulary
