As a teacher, formative assessment (ie: ungraded check-ins) are something you should be doing every day. Yes, every day. If that sounds overwhelming, it shouldn’t. You do not have to check in every day with a fancy exit ticket or Google form, it can be something simple (more on this
Do your students struggle to learn vocabulary for your class? Science can be very vocabulary heavy and sometimes there is no way around it. It’s even more frustrating when you have to teach two different words that mean the same thing, because you aren’t sure which will show up on
Since I started teaching, I always got my students trained pretty quickly to start working on bellwork when they came in to class. It is a great way for them to have a few minutes to settle down, remember what we learned the previous day, and also gives me time
I know the term “open note test” makes some teachers shudder. Many teachers are completely opposed to this idea. I get it. We love our content areas and want students to retain the information and really know it. How dare students not remember information from my AMAZING lesson on cell membranes?! This
It’s April. Sigh. If you live in the US, you are likely experiencing testing season. Between ACT, SAT, and state exams, it seems like the entire month is taken. Kids are burned out and teachers just want to start teaching again. Students have to be quiet when they finish testing
Have you heard these statements before?“Why are we doing writing, this isn’t English class!”“Do I really have to write in a complete sentence?” Believe it or not, in science class we integrate almost all of the content areas. The key to this integration is making the learning interesting so you
You’re giving a big unit test in a few days so you hand the students a study guide. A handful of the students dive in and get it done, while the rest answer about 3 questions and quit. You remind them that it is worth points, so the not-so-interested students
