A few weeks ago, I posted ideas for engaging students in the last weeks of school. Cindy Duffy, a Great Falls high school English teacher (who was also a 2016 Montana Teacher Leader in the Arts), responded with some additional ideas for several grade levels.
1. BRAIN DANCES for WARMUPs. I had never heard of a brain dance so I did some googling and found this and lots more examples of different types of brain dances on YouTube. (Apparently, a Brain Dance gets students brains "ready, willing, and able to learn.")
2. In class reading for 20 minutes--relevant topics--then ORAL pop quizzes to check for understanding. This gets discussions going. She also uses Answer Boards with checkers or playing cards (to add a game element to the Formative assessment). They may be old hat to you, but I'd never heard of answer boards, so I asked Cindy for more information.
She sent the picture above and explained: the boards are laminated for easy cleaning, all questions are oral, and all answers are marked or covered by checkers, candy (skittles or M&Ms, or paper dots.) "The center square is for answering in a complete sentence with elaboration (for HS kids.)" And according to Cindy, it "feels like a game."
3. Integrating the Arts: poetry, drawing (thinking charts), music, theatre (role play) and 3-D projects
For more ideas to engage students, check out these suggestions I gathered from teachers at our March workshop "Hooks."
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