Alien Pedagogy

I did a Ticket Out of Class yesterday and almost every student commented that they liked the wide range of activities that we do in class. Our activities rarely last longer than fifteen minutes.

You can find many fast activities online. To begin, click here.

Here are some practical things that I try to do to make my activities effective:

For learning:

• Clear instructions
• Clear time limit given for the task
• Clear statement of purpose / learning goal
• Collect formative assessment through notes or stats
• All students should be given the chance to do the activity — so anyone who plays pictionary should do so in small groups rather than as a class.

For management and motivation:

• Strong transitions
• Strong teacher presence in the classroom
• Use activities that speak to many skills (reading, writing, visual representation, etc.)
• Return to previous activities
• Create rapport by circulating

For a longer-lasting impact:

• Students should share what they produce with each other
• Students should reflect on what they have done
• All activities should be closed with a clear restatement of purpose

On the whole, I find that having a wide range of activities adds pace and energy to my lessons.

This year I’ve been way ahead throughout the year, until the last two weeks.

Falling behind really affects my performance because it’s something that I can directly control. Yet as that pile of work gets larger, it gets harder to start working on it — this causes the pile to grow… This not only causes stress, but also costs me confidence and motivation.

So here are some of my strategies for keeping ahead of the workload:

• Talk to students – Working with students is my primary motivation for teaching, so talking about how they’re learning helps me to take on the pile of marking, prep, etc.
• Things – I find this application superior to just using the iCal. I invest time in planning how I’ll work during the week.
• GTD. Although it’s self-help, a lot of Allen’s executive productivity-principles can be applied to teaching.
• Know when to work – For me, working in the morning and evening are when I can be hyper- productive.
• Exercise – I run, lift weight, and play sports each week. These activities increase my energy.
• Drink a lot of water. Eat healthful food. Monitor your sleep cycle.
• Readers and blogs – Even when I don’t talk to other teachers, reading about their experiences is comforting.
• Just work – Sometimes getting caught up has nothing to do with motivation and efficiency. It’s just working, so get to it.

At I write this, I’m not all the way caught up but I’m close enough to blog about it.

One of my co-workers has heard students express enthusiasm for my class. She wants to observe me.

The thing is, the reason the students think so highly of the class is that learned through unusual activities and reflection in September. That first impression created an association at the start of the course that has kept students invested in learning.

Motivation in the bank.

Now, we’re working on small details, things that don’t come so quickly. The pace is slower, and it’s not the best time of the year to observe.

For example, we spent half an hour expressing comparison-contrast analysis of Romeo and Juliet and “Romeo and Juliet in Bosnia” in compound and complex sentences yesterday. The students were willing to engage in the process, even though my sales pitch was “Now we’re going to try to express comparison-contrast analysis in single sentences!”

I’m cashing in on the trust and the motivation that I banked at the start of the year.

(For the record, that sentence-writing activity was productive. We began with simple comparisons, moved to plot/ character comparisons, and ended with text-to-text comparisons. There was a ton of 1:1 teacher-student interaction during the activity, which drove the process and produced learning.)

Another TED video…

Seth Godin on idea diffusion and making ideas remarkable — worth making a remark about.

What’s your trick for making the ideas in your classroom remarkable?

Scarily, I sometimes find it more useful to read marketing blogs than edublogs.

I always work hard to “sell” a book to the class. Here are some strategies that I used this week:

Thriller Sales Pitch

“I was looking at this copy of Jurassic Park last night and I almost started to read it. But then I thought ‘Be careful! If you start it, you won’t go to sleep tonight!’ Thrillers are really dangerous, but if you’re willing to risk it, a lot of people enjoy them.”

Inspirational Sales Pitch

I read the back cover of The Last Lecture to the class and then introduced three other books that also bring us hope in the face of adversity.

“Mature” Reading

Some books I marketed as being written for adults instead of teenagers (Procession of the Dead, by D.B. Shan is a more mature version of his teenager stories, though we have those as well). I also marketed Tom Clancy as a more mature version of Horowitz’s books.

Children’s Books

I picked up The Tale of Desperaux and Tales of Beedle Bard, but sold them as books that one reads for the fun of it. In fact, I’d already read Beedle Bard by the time I got the book to the school.