Bathroom/Nurse Pass Procedures - Trial and Error

I went through about 20 different ways of dealing with bathroom passes, so I wanted to sumamrize for myself (and anyone else fascinated by such things) all the things that worked and didn't work.

I seriously thought about using Fred Jones advice at the beginning of the year, which can be summarized as "If a 7-year-old can go the night without wetting himself, a high school teenager can wait 50 minutes. Don't let them go without a doctor's note." I agree that they CAN wait, but I feel weird about controlling people's bodily functions to that level. It doesn't seem right, and after all there ARE emergencies. I don't think a young adult should have to beg for a simple bathroom visit - it seems so condescending. So I tried many other things:

1) Decided to give each kid 3 bathroom passes, but didn't hand them out at the beginning of the year. Instead I would write them out on the school hall passes and then collect them back.

Benefits: Didn't require any organization beforehand.

Drawbacks: I would lose them. The kids would lose them. The kids would throw them away on the way back so I couldn't collect them. I collected a huge pile before buying an index card box to put them in. I then proceeded to stuff more in the index card box and never organized them. After kids got their 12th pass in 5 weeks, some of them (why not all????) caught on to the fact that I wasn't keeping track of them. Writing them out wasted time during class and annoyed me. The lack of organization drove me insane and I allowed myself to stress over it.

2) I borrowed a pyramid model from another class (copying something I had seen in another classroom) and taped a green pass inside it. I told the kids that if the outline of my PPT was green, they could quietly take it and leave, but if it was red, they had to stay in their seats.

Benefits: I stopped all my paperwork. The kids did REALLY good at not asking me when the board was red, in general.

Drawbacks: The kids still insisted on asking me when the board was green, so I was still monitoring who got to go in what order. Then some kid broke the corners off my pyramid pass. Then another kid stole it (probably threw it away). Also, if I didn't prepare my PPT ahead of time I didn't have red or green boards up, and that confused them.

3) That annoyed me so I stopped letting them go to the bathroom for the next week (an immature response, I admit).

Over Fall Break I thought a lot about my procedures, and wrote a very late Plan for Success (syllabus):

4) I told them at the beginning of the second quarter that if they had an emergency that was worth leaving the classroom, it was worth coming in for 15 minutes of tutoring. I also told them, to make them think before they asked, that if they asked I would automatically put the 15 minutes up on the board.

Benefits: They asked less.

Drawbacks: They asked all the time, including in the middle of mini-lectures or notes. They had no incentive to come back quickly. I also suspect that they tried to "get their 15 minutes worth" by wandering more than usual (this may not be true). They also quickly forgot that asking=tutoring, so they would ask, then go when it wasn't an emergency.

5) Without telling them I started asking "Are you sure? You know its 15 minutes of tutoring if you leave." every time they asked. I'd also say "After you start working" and "in a few minutes" and "No! Ask during groupwork, not while we're taking notes."

Benefits: Bathroom visits went down.

Drawbacks: I'm sick of nagging.

*) Side issue #1: Our lunch is staggered because we have a closed campus, so my fifth period algebra class is at the same time as fifth lunch. That means that the kids like to ditch and take a double lunch with their friends - or, to "go to the bathroom" and come back half an hour later. We were told at the beginning of the year not to let 5th hour go to the bathroom at all because they just had lunch, but I didn't feel like saying that so I gave them the same rules. It was a disaster! The same four kids asked to go every day, and I distracted them as much as possible but it didn't seem to make a difference. At the end of the semester I lost my temper and said "Too many people are ditching. No going without a doctor or parent note." This stopped the ditching, but caused quite a lot of bad will with that class. On my end-of-seemster evaluation form, a lot of them said "We can't go to the bathroom" as one of their main grievances. And like I said earlier, I just don't feel right being that controlling.

*) Side issue #2: A girl in one of my classes told me that she has a medical problem that requires frequent visits. I believed her (and still believe her) so I've been letting her go more often, and I told her that she wouldn't need to come in for the mandatory tutoring. Result: she took advantage of that and "went to the bathroom" all the time. Its during my 5th period, so I started hearing reports that she was walking around the lunch area with her friends. When I changed to the "no visits without a parent/doctor note" I told her that applied to her as well, and the note never appeared and the need-for-bathroom-visits stopped.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

So I've been weighing the following suggestions and problems:

1) They go too often, just to get out of class or move around.
2) They go for too long - it ends up being a ditch and they wander around campus or the cafeteria with their friends.
3) They get mad when I don't let them go - and frankly I sympathize with them.
4) They ask for bathroom passes as rewards.
5) I'm worried they'll copy the passes and then use them every day with the "But you said we could..." line.
6) I'm worried they'll steal the passes from each other.
7) I don't want to be over controlling.
8) I don't want them missing important information and then falling behind when they wander back into class.
9) I don't want them interrupting notes or mini-lecture to ask, such as when I ask "Questions about that problem?" and they raise their hands and ask to leave.
10) I'm tired of paperwork, tired of nagging, tired of having to repeat myself because they stayed out for 30 minutes, and tired of wasting time and energy and class time dealing with this issue.
11) Keeping track of who did their mandatory detention is a pain in the butt.

So here's the policy I'm going to try next semester:

------------------------
BATHROOM/NURSE PROCEDURE


1) At the beginning of each quarter you get two bathroom passes. (I will sometimes give out bathroom passes as rewards for winning review games or good behavior.) Write your name IN INK on them right away and keep them in your folder or backpack:



2) You may use them during groupwork only. Get your pass out and have it ready when you ask and I'll take it and tear it up. Then quietly take the pass hanging on the wall and go. I will keep track of how long you take so be quick.

3) If you've run out of passes, you must put your name on the board for 15 minutes tutoring if you need to go again - so save them and use. If you bring a parent/doctor/nurse note you don't need to do this. For fifth hour, after you use your two passes you MUST get a parent/doctor/nurse note to go again.
------------------------

To enforce this I'm doing the following:

a) I'm copying the passes on bright neon paper I got from our VP, so they'll be harder to lose. They have my turtle so they know its for my class, and in the box on the bottom right-hand corner I'm going to initial each copy in red ink so they can't be photocopied (these kids usually don't cheat on that level, but I'd rather head off possible problems)

b) I'm going to redo my seating chart I carry around on my clipboard so I have space to note down the time they leave and come back, and if I see a pattern of long visits I will deal with it on an individual basis.

c) I would prefer something easier to recognize than "during groupwork" but I'm just not organized enough yet. I often change things in the middle of class so I can't rely on my pre-prepared PPT with red and green backgrounds, and often I'm just too tired to make a good PPT lately. I also tried music to signal grouptime but I'm not organized enough yet. Its been a big struggle to admit that I CAN'T do everything this first year, so I'm going to force myself to admit that I can't, and tell them "during groupwork."

d) I'm going to redo my detention/mandatory tutoring bookkeeping, because I've been letting them slip A LOT, so that the ones that get filled only happen because they are mature kids that come in on their own. Right now I'm just losing their respect (and my own!) for having policies I don't enforce.

e) I'm going to try and schedule times to get up and stretch so they have other ways to get our their wriggles. (Right now I've gone to a don't-get-up policy which isn't reasonable)

f) I bought a bathroom plastic logo from OfficeMax, and I'm going to tape a green school hall pass to the back and hang it by my desk in the front of my room, instead of the back (so it won't be as easily stolen). Its also not as expensive to replace if/when it gets lost, stolen, or broken.

g) In fifth hour, if they really have an emergency after using the two passes, I'll discuss it with them in the hall and then let them go in exchange for 15 minutes tutoring.


We'll see in a couple of months how this goes...

Stress Balls for ADHD Kids

One of the things I enjoy about this job is how much the kids teach you about teaching. I don't mean learning from experience; I mean when they come right out and tell you solutions that other teachers have used. One bouncy kid actually asked me to make him a behavior contract to sign, saying "It helps me behave."

At the beginning of the year many of my ADHD and/or extrabouncy kids told me that stress balls really help, so I went around looking for them (lately I haven't been thinking far enough ahead to order things online as I should). First I bought some squashy balls from Walgreens, but I'm on my second set now. If you want to do this in your classroom here are some things to consider.

1) Stress balls are something you'll see in stores occasionally, but its really hard to go looking for them. Order online, or look at Party City, where I found these balls (note to self: PC by JoAnn's, 5th aisle, halfway down on LHS):



2) Get unpopular styles. My Walgreen balls were Disney themed - Cars, Toy Story, and Winnie-the-Pooh. They disappeared very quickly, with Cars going first, then Toy Story, and Winnie-the-Pooh balls getting stolen when I had a substitute. Party City had squashy sports balls but I've learned my lesson now.


3) Make sure they don't do any of the following things: bounce, make noise when squashed, make noise when rubbed against a smooth surface like a desk, come apart easily, or seem interesting in any way. I nearly bought some squashy balls before I realized they were the "inside-out" balls that can be turned inside out and stretched over the head, with gel spikes sticking out everywhere. Huge catastrophe averted!

4) Don't let them take them home. It seems obvious, but when a kid says "If this is only for me can I keep it in my backpack?" and you're in a hurry, don't say yes!

5) Either clean them every day or buy one per student. I will be labeling mine A-L and listing which kid can use each one.

6) Keep them in the front of the room. Even though its more disruptive, make the kids come up to the front to get them and put them away. Anything not tied down is fun to steal for those 1-2 immature kids per class.

Overall the kids are very grateful that you went out of the way to get stress balls for them, though at the beginning everyone will ask for one. I suggest making them come after school to ask for one, which is what I am going to do. That cuts down on kids that just want to waste class time.

Seating Chart Template

I've been having problems deciding what information to keep on my clipboard and what to keep elsewhere. I've already gone through several permutations:

1) Keep attendance only

2) Keep attendance and write everything else down randomly near their names

3) Keep attendance and behavior

4) Keep attendance on clipboard, behavior on board (This worked very well once I listened to the other teachers and did this. During my student teaching I was at a school with such bad discipline problems that the students would walk up to the board and wipe their names off, so I was reluctant to try it here. But, as I am continuously reminded, this is NOT Student Teaching High School. Putting their names up has freed up my clipboard space, held them accountable, and helped me not lose detentions!

5) Keep attendance and write HW and Class Participation points randomly near their names

And now I am on Seating Chart Method 6.0. I needed the following things:

1) Desks with enough space to write their names
2) Desks with spaces for attendance, tardies, MP (hw) points, and Classwork points
3) Desks that would be identifiably rectangular and not square so they looked like my class (OCD)
4) Desks big enough to write on
5) Desks small enough to fit 34 on my 8.5"x11" paper in the right configuration

After spending way too much time playing with Microsoft Paint (yes, the free app that comes next to the calculator) I came up with the following possibilities for desks:



I chose one of the diagonal ones as the best for my purposes, and wasted more time (hey, its my fall break; if this is the most fun I have...) making a diagonal version. My problem is that I like the simple and clean bitmap format for things like this, but Paint has so few tools - for instance, it can only rotate 90 degrees. After spending a lot of time measuring with my fingers on the screen I hit myself on the forehead and remembered what I had realized last semester - I'm a math teacher!

:-)

In other words, if you want to make a diagonal of a certain length, you can make a circle with that radius and use any line from the center to the circumference. Again, I could have done it faster by relearning Fireworks or buying Paint Shop Pro, but I'm a geek like that. Math in action!




I then created my seating chart - 8 groups, 4 students per group, with two additional individual seats for students that want/need to be by themselves until a group activity begins (at that time they will have to pull their chairs to the nearest group if they want participation points for the day).



Finally, to make transportation and sharing easier, I inserted the above pic into a Word document and added my turtle crawling onto the page from the bottom left corner.

The top boxes are for attendance every day of the week. If they are absent I mark a slash from the top right to bottom left corners of the rectangle. If they show up late you modify it by adding a line from the middle of the rectangle to the bottom right corner (so it looks like a sideways skewed "T" for tardy).

The two diagonal areas are for classwork and homework points. During bellwork I go around and check More Practice (my term for hw) and give them 1, 2, or 3 points and write that numeral in the first triangular section. During classwork I use the second triangle to deduct 1, 2, or 3 points if they are off-task. At the end of the day I can (theoretically - let's see how this works out!) quickly input these grades into Easy Grade Pro.

2 examples (1 absent student, 1 tardy student):



All these pics, and the Word document, can be found at the Sines of Learning Document Page. They are licensed under a Creative Commons non-Commercial license.

Enjoy!

Starting Over

Well, my first nine weeks were - okay, I guess. I spent the first 6 beating myself over the head and the last 3 shrugging it off - maybe a little too much. I've learned a lot over these 9 weeks, and I have decided to view this next quarter as a way for me to start over. Even if its too late to train some of the kids to behave, I can start over. For myself.

Its fall break now, and I was planning to spend it in the following way:

Friday-Sunday: enjoy myself in Tucson
Monday-Friday: work at school without a school day looming over my head

Instead, an hour after the kids left I started feeling a tickle in my throat, and my week started like this:

Friday-Saturday: trail after friends in Tucson, hacking and coughing, with a roll of toilet paper for tissue
Sunday-Monday: Sleep 18 hours a day at home. Also drink South Asian remedy which is so disgusting that I usually choose to be sick instead

Its Tuesday now, and I'm back in my classroom listening to the radio and making a To Do list on the board. So far, it looks like this:

Bellwork and Closure

One of the things that worked really well for me during student teaching was to have separate papers for Bellwork and Closure. I was considering only having a separate paper for Closure, since that's what I want to look at closely every day, but I think the kids may ignore bellwork if I only look at it every few weeks during notebook checks.

So here are my forms:

You can see my Bellwork form in Word or PDF form on the Sines of Learning Document Page.

Here's the top:



The double line and HW questions are copied lower down for Tuesday, and for W Th and F on the back of the paper.

I'm hoping that this will encourage reflection on the students' part. I want them not just to do their homework, but to ask themselves the question "What does this tell me? How well did I understand how to do this?" Hopefully this will encourage them to contemplate their grasp of the material before the test.

However, the Closure paper is much more important to me than the Bellwork one.

You can see my Closure form in Word or PDF form on the Sines of Learning Document Page as well.

Here's the top:



If there is one thing I look at at the end of the day, I want the Closure paper to be it. First, I want the kids to reflect on how well they grasped the P.O. - Performance Objective. Also, the questions on the Closure will be less problems and more writing questions, with "Why?" and "How?" questions. I will also tell the kids that the Closure is the way to communicate with me if they don't want to share something out loud in class. They can give their feedback on the class, what confused them, and what interested them. I'm then going to ask them to paperclip their group's Closures together and put them in a basket on the way out. Every night I'll skim through them, or at least some of them, and since they are written responses instead of math problems, it'll be easier and more interesting for me... at least, that's my hope!

[ETA: I asked my mother for her feedback, and she pointed out that my original P.O. ratings (identical to the HW ones) were somewhat vague. So we changed them to what you see in the screen shot above.

Then, at least for the first few weeks, I'll write out the complete sentences so the kids know what I mean.

For example, if my Performance Objective on the board is: Today I will be able to find the equation of a line from its graph.

On my Closure PPT slide I'll have

1 - I don't know how to start finding the equation of a line from its graph
2 - I can start but can't finish finding the equation of a line from its graph
3 - I can sometimes finish finding the equation of a line from its graph
4 - I'm ready to show I can find the equation of a line from its graph

I've updated the Closure_Paper.pdf and Closure_Paper.doc on the Sines of Learning Document Page.

ETAA (edited to add again): I figured out how to do screen shots and put up the pretty pictures :-)
]

Well, take a look. As always, any feedback is much appreciated!

Choosing Class Rules Part I

One of my tasks over the summer is to choose my class rules. I've been reading both Tools for Teaching, and The First Days of School by Harry Wong, and the latter suggests distinguishing class rules from class procedures, the former being general codes of conduct and the latter being precise sets of directions. This makes a lot of sense to me, so I'm trying to come up with mine so I can get my poster made as soon as I have access to my school campus.

Last semester during student teaching these were the class rules my mentor teacher used:

1. Come to class prepared with all materials.
2. When the bell rings, be in your assigned seat quietly starting bellwork.
3. No personal grooming, electronics, food or drinks (except water) during class time.
4. When I call for attention, give me your raised hand, eyes, & silence immediately.
5. Be silent & pay attention when teacher is talking.

I later modified them and put up my own poster, as she encouraged me to take ownership of our classroom as much as possible, but I can't remember all our changes.

Still, here are the things I'm considering for my class rules this year:

* Come to class prepared with all materials & positive attitude.
* When the bell rings be in your seat and start the bellwork.
* No personal grooming, electronics, food or drinks (except water) in class.
* Do not talk when the teacher is talking.
* Discuss grades or class expectations after class.
* Follow all school and district rules.
* Be attentive, productive, and creative!
* Be respectful towards the teacher and your classmates.
* Do not interfere with the learning process of another.

I'm probably going to drop the one about the bell ringing as I think it fits more under "procedure" than "rule." Before I finish this post, I'm going to reread First Days of School (FDOS) and look at their suggestions...

I don't look on FDOS as the wonderful book that many other people have told me it is; I think its far too vague and full of edu-speak, but there are still many useful things in it especially for a first-year teacher.

What I got out of my latest reading was: 1) What are the basic things that, if my kids did them, I would be delighted? and 2) Rules are about behavior, not academic achievement.

Yes, yes, nothing brilliant or new, but it helped anyway. When I look at my list I'm now asking "What were the 5 most fruatrating behaviors in student teaching that wore me out mentally and emotionally?" FDOS also suggests more specific rules for new or struggling teachers, so I've cut my list down to this:

* Discuss grades or class expectations after class.
Huge, huge, huge problem for me. If I have this up, any time a kid tries to complain about my activities, assignments, rules or procedures, I can silently point to my class rules poster.
* Follow all school and district rules.
I constantly got "but its not on the list, why can't I?" when it came to enforcing school and district policies. Part of it is that I was at a campus with HORRIBLE inconsistencies in enforcing rules, but I'd like to cut that on off at the knees.
* Pay attention and don't talk while the teacher is talking.
Single biggest problem, of course.

At this point I'm running out of room, but I really wanted to end it with the positive note "Be attentive, productive, and creative!" Still, after trying it out, the poster was just too crowded. I've decided to make a separate poster saying "Be attentive, productive, and creative" and my final set of classroom rules (as of today, at least) is this:



If you want to download my poster to use, share, and/or change, you can download it here: Class_Rules_Poster.pdf or Class_Rules_Poster.ppt, on the Sines of Learning Document Page.

Tools For Teaching Part I

One of the most useful resources I've come across was Fred Jones's works. Even though the teacher certification program I went through was great in many respects, we had -no- training in classroom management (big surprise, right?). Once I asked the best teacher we had, our math methods teacher who had been a classroom teacher herself, and her response was "The best discipline plan is a good lesson plan." Riiiiiight. There's tons of truth to that, but every trainee in the classroom knew we needed more than that!

During my student teaching last semester, I was quickly approaching burn-out when I went to a local public library and browsed through their catalogue for books on classroom management (my mentor teacher had already given by Wong's First Days of School, which is great, but I needed something more). I came across a set of books by Fred Jones called Positive Classroom Discipline and Positive Classroom Instruction. "Hey, sounds good" I thought, and checked out both. What I found blew my mind away, and I quickly bought the first edition of Tools for Teaching off of amazon.com. I also eventually paid for myself to go to his 3-day conference in Phoenix, AZ, and there got a free copy of the second edition with the accompanying DVD. The following is my review of the latest Tools for Teaching book.

Tools for Teaching, Second Edition, by Fred Jones is the best book that I have come across on classroom management so far. He divides up his system for managing a class into 3 fundamental parts: classroom structure, limit setting, and motivation using Preferred Activity Time (PAT).

Anyone can read the book, so I'll keep my summary short. He brings all his advice together in Chapter 25: Exploiting the Management System, as a ladder of responsibility. Everything is first built on 1) Classroom Structure, which includes Discipline (room arrangement, carefully teaching routines, and constantly moving among the students) and Instruction (replacing a passive teach-teach-teach-teach-practice format with an active learn-use-learn-use-learn-use one, giving instruction visually instead of audibly, and getting helpless handraisers to independence). Anything that cannot be controlled with Classroom Structure is controlled with 2) Limit Setting, which is the section where Dr. Jones won my respect: he studied the body language of effective classroom teachers and broke it down into individual body movements that are described and can be practiced and learned (we did this in the workshop too). Basically, he took the mysterious "meaning business" that good teachers instinctively know how to do and broke it down so the rest of us can learn it. Finally, any behavior that can not be controlled by limit setting is controlled by giving Preferred Activity Time (PAT), which uses the idea of Preferred Activities such as games to motivate kids who currently have no instrinsic motivation for learning the material.

Here's my one-sentence overview of the book: Tools for Teaching brings a thousand should-be-obvious "Duh!"s to the front of your mind.

What I got out of this book was no ground-breaking thoughts that expanded my mind, or new insights that made me go "Wow! I would never have believed it!" Instead, my reading and re-reading of the book is constantly accompanied by this mental train of thought: "Ow!....Ouch....Zing! So true! But what can I....oh. Oh, duh. Wow, this is obvious - why didn't I think of this?.......Hmm, I'm not sure about this...oh. Yeah, I guess so. Doh....Ouch! I say that all the time! But what else can....oh. Huh. Doh."

I've just changed the format of this post to the first of many, because I really can't do justice to the book in one sitting. But for right now, here are my reservations and the adjustments I plan to try in the coming year:

1) FJ seems, from his writing and workshop, to believe that groupwork is overused and preferred individual or pair work. I'm not sure, but it seems that way. I definitely believe in groupwork (and I'm also *required* to use groups by my school!) which means that I can't use part of his Responsibility Training. FJ suggests motivating students towards diligence (hard work) and excellence (good work) (p.104). To do this he suggests using Preferred Activity Time (PAT) in two ways: first, PAT the entire class accumulates to use on fun activities, and second, PAT activities individual students can switch to when they have demonstrated mastery of the day's objectives. In group learning we depend on peer teaching to help all the students so I am not planning on using the individual PAT activities that any student can get to every day. Hopefully this will not cause the whole system to collapse; I'll keep this blog updated on whether this is possible.

2) FJ doesn't seem to like discovery work very much (again, just my impression), preferring direct instruction from the clear-cut directions he gives as examples of good lessons. However, in my student teaching I did not find that his suggestions interfered with my abiity to run discovery activities. Indeed, his suggestions point out ways to avoid the BAD "discovery learning" that people can fall into, without clear directions and expectations.

3) FJ's examples focus on procedure, not concepts. Indeed, he uses math for most of his examples and then quotes humanities teachers that say "But Dr. Jones, my subject isn't like math, its about concepts!" AAAAAAAAAAAURGH! It hurts every time I read that. Math is NOT about procedures, it is about concepts, and math is as much (or sometimes more) conceptual than any other subject. Still, I found that I was able to work around this. His examples focused heavily on teaching procedures, like the long division algorithm, but I don't find it very hard to take his underlying philosophy and apply it to teaching concepts. The basics are still useful: be clear in what you want. Use visual aids instead of spoken instructions which are quickly forgotten. Give students a change to use new information immediately, not at the end of a long and boring lecture. Give plenty of practice with the teacher (Guided Practice) before releasing the kids to work on their own (Independent Practice).

4) FJ promotes a more authoritarian view of the teacher than I would like, but once again, I can adjust it to my teaching philosophy. And I have come significantly closer to his POV after student teaching and losing my naive "let's all be nice to each other" hope. My hope is to teach my students that I cannot and will not tell them what to think and believe, but that in my classroom, I can and will set up choices for them about behavior: correct behavior or appropriate consequences.

5) FJ suggests that the time-honored goal of teachers to motivate with content has failed enough to be put aside in favor of other motivators (like PAT). I'm not quite ready to give that up and I hope to God I never will be - when I cease to hope for instrintic motivation, I hope I'll leave the classroom. Still, what eventually won me over was the fact that I don't have to choose. I will run both "motivation systems" side by side - institute PAT time to get reluctant students on board, and then use their attention to try and capture as many of their minds and hearts with math as possible.

Well, this is too long already. But my basic recommendation is this: Read the book, over and over. Take what you can from it, and what is antithetical to your teaching philosophy can be adjusted or discarded. But for any struggling teacher, especially new ones, READ IT. Its NOT a dry read either - FJ has a great dry sense of humor and you find yourself laughing out loud (at yourself, goodnaturedly) constantly. His son's cartoons are also right on the dot. Its funny, eye-opening, doh!-inspiring, and useful. I couldn't use all his suggestion during my student teaching, but what I did use made my job much, much more enjoyable. Hope it does the same for you!

(In my next post I will also include a review of www.fredjones.com)

[ETA: added pretty screen shot]

Desk and Group Labels

Right now I'm focusing on how to set up my classroom. I have to use the department's quizzes/tests, homework assignments, and syllabus, and teach the state standards of course, but as far as I can tell those are my only limitations.

A few weeks ago I got excited at an idea that finally came together. I plan to use the idea of Preferred Activity Time (PAT) Fred Jones describes in his book "Tools for Teaching", and I'm toying with the idea of dividing up the classroom into two teams for the entire semester. Then every Friday as we play math football, or math volleyball, or math Jeopardy, etc., they will always be playing for the same team. The advantage of making the teams semi-permanent, as far as I can see, are:

1) All students in the same group (desks in groups of 4, or maybe 5) will be on the same team, so I'm going to use competition to give them an extra incentive to help their groupmates.
2) Alternate groups are going to be from opposite teams, so if I choose to do so I can have them exchange hw, etc., and give them an incentive NOT to give the other student free points.

The downside is that its really important the teams be about equal in strength, or one team will always win and that will take the incentive away completely. I'm going to be giving mini-assessments the first week to see where they are, and I'll try to balance it as much as I can. I think that what I’ll end up doing is assigning semi-permanent teams, but warning the kids that I might have to shuffle people around once in a while.

So. Here’s my great idea (its not really great unless you think of it at 1am!) I needed a way to label students that would give them a seat label and a group label, but also a “complimentary group” that they might be asked to switch papers with, etc. I finally resolved this by getting the idea of using shapes for one of the labels. I hate making things more than once so I typed up my ideas, and you can access it by downloading the file Desk_Labels in Word or PDF form on the Sines of Learning Document Page.

Instructions for Desk (and Group Station) Labels

Desks are set up in groups of 4, going in circle around room to form 8 sets. Students above 32 are added to existing groups.

The 8 groups are red, blue, red, blue, red, blue, red, and blue.
The first two groups are circles, the second pair squares, the third pair triangles, and the fourth pair diamonds.

I know it sounds confusing, so that’s why I’m going to print out 2 copies of Desk_Labels.doc page 2:



The first page I’ll color the shapes red, the second page I’ll color blue (leaving the circular space around the number white). These will be taped to either the students’ desks or on their seat backs (where Fred Jones suggests they are least likely to get peeled away) so that at all times students know their team (red or blue), their group (Red Circle, Blue Diamond, etc.) and their seat number (1-5).

Pages 3-6 contain labels for whiteboards or anywhere else you want to place stations so that one student per group can be selected out. I'll print out 2 copies of each, color one of each shape red and the other blue, and hang them to designate group stations:



I plan to cut these out, paste them on black construction paper, and use them to designate 8 spaces along my whiteboards so I can say, for instance “All number 3s to the board!” while the other students work at their seats. These can also be used to identify any other group materials, like group manipulative sets or group TI-Navigator hubs.

It sounds a little complex, but it’s complex for me, not the students – they’ve got everything they need to know taped to their desk, and don’t need any explanation other than the Red vs. Blue teams.

Any comments? Suggestions? I would appreciate any and all feedback.

[ETA: pretty screen shots instead of rambling descriptions]