关企合作平台验证码:10 MORE Ways to Wake-up Students in Class

10 MORE Ways to Wake-up Students in Class

We received such a great response to our last guest post about interactive ways to awaken students in the classroom that we decided to share more.

In the first post, "Top 10 Ways to Wake-up Students in Class", Michelle Doman shared some great tips and tricks she uses in her own Middle School classroom to keep students engaged... and now, we've brought her back to share some more ideas!

10 MORE Ways to Wake-up Students in Class

Upon returning from break, students’ necks are craning, eyes focusing on…not the teacher, but the swirling snowflakes outside the classroom window. Sugar plum fairies are no longer dancing, but are lounging in the warm afterglow of a month of holiday activities. What can a teacher do to bring students out from the haze of festivities and into the enlightenment of academics?

Back by popular demand, here are 10 MORE Ways to Wake-up Students in  Class...

1. Twinkie Tangents: All teachers have the “tangent” student. The one who always has his or her hand up, but not necessarily biting at the bit to answer your questions. You may be amid the best mythology lesson about the rage of Poseidon when a student shares with the class, “Twinkies were actually first banana flavored!” To curb the tangents while encouraging knowledge of tidbit facts, create a “Fact Fury” poster. Prior to the bell, the students are allowed to write down true (correctly spelled) facts and list the source. These facts can be incorporated into grammar or daily lessons!
    
2. When creating a test, instead of just leaving a space for them to put their names, format it in this way…
   
   ______________ will rock the test!
   Hour:
   Date:
   
   Or
   
   ________________ is filled with knowledge nuggets!
   
   (Thanks Craig Winski for this idea!)
    
3. To make moving into groups quick and sufficient, have the students do what I call “baseball signs.” Using sign language, or facial/hand movements without speaking, the students figure out where their group is going to gather. Students love it, and it creates quicker transitions into groups.
    
4. Air-guitar spelling or vocabulary: Students pair up and practice spelling their words, or review vocabulary by spelling it in the air as the other guesses it. Once the word is guessed, the students end with a encore of air guitar! Click here for the lesson.
    
5. Limerick Guess Who’s? Create a witty limerick about each student in the class without giving away names, or have students pick a name of a student from a hat to write one about, and display one each day on the Smart Board as they enter. As a competition, they are to write down their guess each day and turn it in for a drawing. Limericks can also be used to have students review ideas or previous lessons.
    
6. Free Bird! I mean Free Verse! Have the class take a goofy class picture and photo shop crop their heads on various stick people. Give each student a speech bubble, and have them copy down one of the best lines from their favorite poem. Post these together on a bulletin board with quotes about poetry. Teachers can also place the stick people around the school, and their speech conversation bubbles can have science facts, or math vocabulary.
    
7. Book Frenzy Pocket Recommendations - As a way to promote reading, take the back of jean pockets and staple them on a bulletin board. Each pocket represents a genre, and students write down book recommendations on note cards and stick them in the back pockets.
    
8. Randomly give encouraging or endearing nicknames to each student in class throughout the second semester. Students feel privileged and love the idea.
    
9. Locker Grammar Jam- On each of the students’ lockers, post Latin and Greet roots, prefixes, and suffixes. As a competition, students are to see how many words they can record on one another’s lockers with the root, prefix, and suffix.
    
10. Engage in hip-hop dance while students learn how to write comparison paragraphs. After having taught a lesson on the structure and cue words used when comparing or contrasting major ideas, show You Tube videos of Jabberwocky hip-hop champions and classic tap dancing clips. In a Writer’s Workshop, students create their own paragraphs, and the last few minutes of class, learn to dance hip-hop themselves. Click here for the lesson.

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but students’ minds on academics are delightful.
Back to class. Back to routine…oh wait, there is nothing truly routine about teaching middle school!

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Top 10 Ways to Wake-up Students in Class

About the Author
Michelle Doman is a 7th and 8th grade Language Arts teacher at Brandon Middle School in Wisconsin's Rosendale-Brandon School District.  She is currently studying at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh to obtain a Master's in the Reading Specialist program.  You can connect with Michelle by visiting her blog, Save the Drama for your...Middle School Teacher?!

P.S. Want to have your blog post featured by SimpleK12 like Michelle's? Click here to find out how you can be a SimpleK12 Guest Blogger too.