Football

Football

Football is a game used to review for a quiz or a test. All you need to play is a list of questions, a visual of a football field with lines drawn every 10 yards, and a token (magnet) to mark where each team is on the field when they have the ball. You can draw the field on your classroom white board or if you have a smart board you can project the one I have provided below. The tokens can be anything that will stick to the board. Now that you have a field, questions, and tokens, please divide your class into two teams and follow the procedures below.

Game Procedure:

1. The teacher flips a coin to decide which team gets the ball first. The team that wins the toss will receive the first question on their 20 yard line. Place the team’s token on the 20 yard line. The first question will be asked of the first player on the team. If answered correctly, the team will move 10 yards on the football field and receive another question. The student receiving a question cannot receive assistance from other team members. If assistance is given, the team automatically fumbles the football and the other team will take over on the yard line where the ball was fumbled I recommend the no-talking rule for all teams while the teacher is asking the questions.

2. If the student answers incorrectly, the opposing team can collaborate (in a whisper) and answer the question to cause a fumble and take over possession of the ball. If team #2 fails to answer correctly, the student receives another question but will lose a down. The student has four downs to move the ball and failure to do so will surrender the ball to the other side. If you have discipline problems in your classroom, I recommend using a team captain as the only person who can give the answer to create a fumble. The team captain would poll 4-5 students for the answer and decide which answer to give the teacher. Students who desire to be polled need to raise their hands.

4. The process continues until team #1 either scores or fumbles the ball. If a team scores they will receive 6 points. The next student in line kicks the extra point by answering the next question correctly and thus adding one point to the team’s score. If this student misses the question and the opposing team answers it correctly, it will be ruled that the ball was fumbled and run back to the opposite end zone. This will result in the opposing team being awarded 2 points. Many people do not know this rule in football so your students will be impressed with your knowledge of the game. Every time a team scores the non-scoring team receives the ball on the 20 yard line farthest away from their end zone..

5. The team scoring the most points wins the game.

Variation:

To add spice to the game I recommend adding passing questions. I shuffle passing questions in at random, and they automatically go to the next student in line to answer a question. If you answer a passing question correctly then you will move the ball 30 yards for your team or in other words you have completed a pass play or scored. If you miss a passing question and the other team answers the question correctly they will intercept the ball and run it back 30 yards or score. The more I play the game the more I like the variation and never play the game anymore without using it. I do pre-marked questions that are passes prior to starting the game. This way the students see you as being fair to both sides.

Football Field
Football Field Numbers
Football End Zone Signs

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Roundtable and Roundrobin


Both Roundtable and Roundrobin are brainstorming activities that can be used to introduce an idea, practice material just taught, or review material to ensure student understanding. I will go over each activity individually and then will explain how to put the two together as an instructional strategy.


Roundtable – In Roundtable the teacher puts the students in groups of three or four and each student in the group takes out a piece of paper and writes whatever question the teacher tells them to write on the top of the paper. The students then number the paper 1-20. The teacher tells them to begin and each student will write as many responses to the question as they can in the time the teacher gives. The teacher will then say pass and the students will pass their list to the left and receive a new list from the right. Each student will read what is already on this list and add their own comments to the new list. It is important that the students do not repeat answers. There is absolutely no talking during this activity. The process will continue until all students get their own list back. Each rotation should last about 15-20 seconds and the pass should take about 2 seconds. I usually bring closure to this activity by having each student star the five best answers on his/her list. If possible I always gave each member of the group a different color ink pen. This allows the teacher to monitor who is contributing to the brainstorming activity in each group. A sample question might be, “What do you know about George Washington?”

Roundrobin – The teacher puts the students in groups of four and a group writer is appointed. The writer gets out a piece of paper and writes whatever question the teacher tells them to write on the top of the paper. The writer then numbers the paper 1-20. The teacher tells them to begin and the writer turns to his/her left and asks the student sitting there to respond to the question. The writer jots down the answer and goes to the next student and asks him/her to respond and so on. When the writer gets to themselves, they add their own response and go on to the next student. There is only one person speaking at a time and no other student in the group can help the person being addressed by the writer. If you cannot respond to the writer you just say pass and the writer will go on to the next person. Once you have said pass you are not out of the activity you have just missed one round. A sample question might be, “What do you know about George Washington?”

Roundtable/Roundrobin –When you put Roundtable and Roundrobin together you use Roundtable to generate interest or to find out what the students already know about a particular subject. You follow the steps in Roundtable to the point where the students star the best five answers on their list. Next, you give roles (Leader, Writer, Presenter, Materials Organizer) to the members of the each Roundtable group. The leader is responsible for getting the assignment done, the writer makes any visuals that are needed to share with the rest of the class, the presenter will tell the rest of the class the findings of the group, and the materials organizer will get supplies needed and hang any visuals that might need to be placed on the wall after the group presentation is given. After the roles are assigned, the teacher will give the group assignment. The group assignment will be to take each group members top five answers and come up with the best five out of the 20 answers that had been identified by each group member. The best five are then placed on strips of paper by the writer, hung on the wall by the materials organizer, and then presented to the rest of the class by the presenter. During presentations the teacher may give students additional information. Students would be instructed to take notes on this material. After the last presentation, the teacher enacts the 30 second clean-up. During the clean-up the leader collects all individual sheets and turns them into the teacher, the writer prepares a sheet just like the one that was used in the initial Roundtable (What do you know about George Washington and number 1-20), the Presenter picks up all markers and colored pencils and returns them to the appropriate spot, and the materials organizer takes all visuals off the wall and puts them into the trash can. It is very important that each member of the group has a clean-up job to complete. The 30-second clean-up is more than just getting the junk off your walls, it is the way that all materials are put away so that a true assessment of your activity can take place. The Roundrobin strategy will now be used for this assessment. The writer will now create one list for the whole group to turn in for a grade following the steps listed above in Roundrobin. You will note that during the 30-second clean-up, the writer created the sheet he/she will use to list all the things all the students in their group know about George Washington.

The use of Roundtable and Roundrobin either singularly or together helps you present, practice, review, and assess material in an orderly fashion. Anytime you want students to work together you must have a clear plan of what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. We brainstorm all the time in class, but it is usually teacher led and only one student and the teacher are participating at a time; this way the teacher becomes the facilitator and all students are participating at once. This activity should last between 15-30 minutes depending upon the type of question you use.


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Classroom Management Tips #11: Merging Hand Signals and Verbal Cueing

Using hand signals to reinforce verbal requests is extremely helpful with children. Since your classroom will be filled with different types of learners, it is important that you tap into the different learning styles when setting expectations, implementing teaching strategies, and setting behavioral procedures. For example, if you have the procedure that your students will become quiet in five seconds, the teacher should make this request both verbally and visually using hand signals. In implementing Five Seconds to Quiet you should display five fingers when you say five, drop a finger when you say four and so on until you get to zero.

Many of the classroom management tips listed on this blog can be used with hand signals for increased results. For example, If you are using Classroom Management Tip #7: Six inch voice you should either display six fingers every time you make the Six inch voice request or hold your hands six inches apart. If you are using Classroom Management Tip #8: Five Seconds to Move you should display one finger when you say one thousand one, 2 fingers when you say one thousand two, and so on. Check out these Classroom Management Tips and incorporate verbal and visual for increased success.

Every time I had an opportunity to merge visual and verbal cueing, I did so in my classroom. If I asked a question of a student, after receiving the answer I would then ask, “How many got that right?” Students were expected to raise their hand if they had thought of the same answer. This technique helps to focus students during questioning. I then would often ask a student who did not raise his hand what about the topic he did not understand. I would also ask students who had raised their hands to repeat correct answers as a means of reinforcement. This helped to keep the students on their toes. You have to keep everyone honest with any gimmick that you use to encourage total participation. Since many of you have Smart Board in your classroom you should consider using clickers with the Smart Boards to answer review questions. If you have Smart Boards in your school it is a pretty good bet that you have at least one set of clickers in the building; if not, you should ask your principal to buy a few sets of clickers to use with the students. Once it is set up all you have to do is pose a question and every student in the class answers using their personal clicker. You get immediate data on what your student do or do not know.

Another way of using hand signals is to come up with a signal to let the students know that it is time to stop whatever they are doing and to look at the teacher. I had a little noise maker that I used but anything will work. Having a signal really beats trying to get the attention of 25 people who are engaged in an activity. I also used a two sided visual to inform the students when it was time to listen and when it was time to ask questions. I had a large one hanging in the front of the room to remind the students whether it was time listen to the teacher or ask questions. See sample of visual below.

In addition, you can develop hand signals to use when using instructional techniques. For example when using think, pair, share as a teaching strategy you should point to your head to start the think portion of the activity, raise two fingers to start the pair portion of the activity, and display open hands palms up to announce the share portion of the activity. I always made up signals to use with both management as well as instructional techniques; I called them procedures, taught the procedures to the students, and then made them standard operating procedures.

Any time you can get a student to perform any task without talking, you have scored a victory. So start thinking about how you can take what you do and come up with ways to cut down on the amount of individual talking by adding procedures that use verbal cueing and hand signals.


Get the Word document for this visual here.

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HAVING PROBLEMS …. IT MAY BE TIME TO START OVER ….

As you get ready to start second semester it is time to evaluate how things are going in your classroom and time to come up with the solutions to fix those problems. I always told my teachers that “The First Three Weeks” of school were the most important three weeks of the school year and that a teacher could make or break themselves by the end of that first three weeks. I told my teachers this to try and help them understand how important it is to be tough in those first few weeks of school. The next thing I told them was that “Starting Over” is acceptable and necessary to maintain a well managed classroom. Every new marking period needs to be kicked off with a day in which rules and procedures are evaluated, changed, and reviewed with your students. Sometimes problems are instructional while at other times they are organizational; but do not forget, they are always linked together. A lesson is only as good as the procedures used to implement it. We all make mistakes and we can continue to make them or we can do something about them. I have always preferred change to failure and hope that you do to.

At the start of school and at the start of each marking period the teacher must:

Teach/reteach and model academic expectations.

Teach/reteach and model classroom procedures.

Teach/reteach classroom rules and model consistency in enforcing consequences.

Set the tone for the rest of the school year.

Where do you start…

1. Have a plan for Success. For example, here are my “five steps to an A or B”:

Come to school everyday. (Good Attendance)
Listen to your teacher and classmates while in class. (Don’t talk in class about non-subject
related items)
Participate in all classroom activities. (Stay on Task)
Do your homework. (Come to class prepared to do work)
Study for quizzes and tests. (Review means extra SOL/Benchmark preparation)

2. Have each student write down on an index card what grade they want to receive for the marking period.

3. Explain the plan on the first day of school and at the start of each marking period. The plan should change each nine weeks as you evaluate what your students need to be successful.

4. Spend some time explaining to your students how they can use the plan for success to achieve the grade they have written on their index card. Be sure and keep these cards as they will be useful to show students and parents when students are not working hard toward their goal.

Where do you go from here…

1. Evaluate the old, create some new and teach/reteach the rules and procedures. Before you create the rules and procedures list all the behaviors you would like to see exhibited by your students in different types of situations. Remember behaviors are actions you can see or hear; your acceptance level of these behaviors may change as the years goes on and you attain experience. What is acceptable on the first day of school should not be acceptable to you at the start of the second semester. The key to success here is to have lots of procedures and very few rules. It is time to evaluate your classroom ---- when do you lose instructional time …… what makes this happen in your classroom?

For example, if you collect papers one by one the students will get noisy, if you have them passed to the front and then down the front row you can collect them in about one minute which is not enough time for students to get out of control.

Other problem areas are generally going to the bathroom, sharpening pencils, personal conversations, sleeping in class, and getting in and out of groups.

One of the biggest mistakes that teachers make is not adequately teaching what each rule means and the practicing procedures needed to carry out activities that impact the daily routine.

2. Organize yourself and develop well-planned lessons. It is time to decide which strategies are working and which ones are not. If you do a lot of worksheets and students talk while they do them then you must come up with alternatives to deliver material to your students. You cannot use the same strategies day in and day out and expect success. For example if you teach a 90 minute block you need to have planned at least 120 minutes of instruction utilizing different teaching strategies for that 90 minute block. You need to vary the time line each day and have lessons that last from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. Some days you may have three 30 minute lessons utilizing three different strategies, other days you might have one 30 minutes lesson, two 15 minute lessons, two 5 minute lessons, and one 20 minutes lesson utilizing multiple strategies. Of course do not forget about over planning (120 minutes) and the back up lessons you will need if one of the planned lessons does not work and needs to be terminated. It can be deadly to continue with a lesson that is not working in your classroom. Scrap what does not work and move on. Also, if all your lessons work then you have a head start for next weeks planning.

3. Be fair and consistent with all students. This is one of the hardest things a teacher must do. If a rule is good for one student on one day then it must be good for all students on all days. You cannot bring your personal problems to your classroom and you cannot let your emotions influence your decisions.

4. Believe that all students can learn. I have worked most of my career with at-risk students and I know beyond a shadow of doubt that all students can learn but not always in the same way. You have to look at your students and search for ways to help them become successful. It is a ongoing trial and error process. Good teachers know this and master how to do it.

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Difference between Rules and Procedures

Rules are for undesirable behaviors that have set consequences while procedures are expected classroom behaviors with no set consequences for a violation. Anytime a student violates a rule in your classroom, you must act and a consequence must occur (See handout on Possible Consequences). Consequences should be realistic for both teacher and students and should progress if the rule is broken repeatedly. In other words if a student talks in class you would not write a referral on the 1st offense but you probably would if it continued to be a problem and you have tried other ways to control this behavior in your classroom. There can be consequences for violating procedures but the consequence never gets to the referral stage. You might redirect a student for violating a procedure, call the parent, or not allow the student to participate in a fun group activity, but a student should not be suspended for not following a procedure unless insubordination is involved. You need to remember that it is not the severity of the consequence, but the consistency that causes behavioral change in your classroom. In other words the teacher must Say What They Mean, Mean What They Say, and Do What They Said They Would Do. Once rules and procedures have been created, it is important to teach, check for understanding, and practice proper behavior in the classroom. Below is a worksheet to focus you as you create your rules and procedures. I always filled out one of these sheets for each rule and procedure I had in class so that when I taught it I was sure that all students had received the same information. It is important to note that when explaining consequences to students that you tell them all the possible consequences. During the explanation phase you have to explain what the rule or procedure means to you. Respect may not mean the same thing to you as it does to your students. It is important to reach an understanding as to what both parties are thinking about each rule and procedure. You can reach this understanding when you do the check for understanding section of the rules and procedures worksheet. Practice makes perfect; rules and procedures are no different. Failure to practice procedures before you use them in a class activity will ensure total failure. As a fellow professional, I believe that the key to success in the classroom is to have a few rules and lots of procedures; help your students to understand what good behavior looks like through sound procedures in your classroom. I have enclosed some examples below of classroom procedures:

Examples of Procedures
1. How students move desks into a group activity.
2. How students enter the classroom.
3. How students turn in work.
4. How students listen to oral presentations.
5. How students get the teacher’s attention.How students get a new pen or pencil.

Click on picture below for full view. From the resulting window you can "Save as" a JPEG to be printed later.



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It’s all in the Planning

The most important key to teaching success is good planning. There is no substitute for it, no way to get around it, and if you do not do it you will most assuredly be a dismal failure as a classroom teacher. The question most often asked is “Where do I begin?” You begin with the school division’s established curriculum, which will include state standards of learning in academic classes or state competencies if you are teaching in a vocational field. Established curriculums are the minimum you must teach in your classroom. Additional material is added for enrichment as time allows you do so.
Develop a Pacing Guide

Next, you take this curriculum and divide it into manageable chunks (units) that can be taught in two weeks or less. I highly recommend shorter units and find that students are more successful if material is broken up into manageable chunks. At the end of the each unit there should be a major test given. In addition, there should be multiple assessments (both written and oral) taking place each day in your classroom. More opportunities for assessment within a grading period tend to raise student grades and give students more self confidence. Of course not all units can be set up in a two week block; some units may take only a few days while a few units could take longer than two weeks if you are teaching in a high school. I would recommend that you never let a teaching unit go over three weeks. Smaller is always better.

Next, buy a large calendar and put in the first day of school, the last day of school, all holidays, teacher workdays, division testing days, etc. These are the days in which you are not in control of what goes on in your classroom and these days can not be used to teach the curriculum. The days you have left on your calendar are used to teach the manageable chunks (units) that you have created. Your calendar should reflect the number of days needed to teach each unit as well as a testing time for each unit. A day is the amount of time that you are allotted for each subject you teach each day.

After this calendar has been created, you take the number of days left at the end and allocate them back into your pre-set units; this will give you time for enrichment (in depth study) that would improve the quality of your student’s education. The calendar is then adjusted and now you have a pacing guide.

Creating a pacing guide is the first step toward setting up a teaching plan for success. Some school divisions give you an outline to go by but even that outline has to be adjusted for the level of the students you are teaching. If your students are all advanced, then you can go faster and offer more enrichment; if your students are at risk, then you may need to break down the curriculum and divide developed units into smaller sub units to ensure student success.

Plan Your Units

Now that we have a pacing guide, it is time to start planning your teaching units. I recommend you set up a notebook with a divider for each unit that you will be teaching. You can do this in folders on your computer just as easily. I do recommend that you keep a hard copy notebook of your units to use for reflection and replanning once a unit has been taught. Computers sometimes breakdown and you lose stuff, so always back up files and take the necessary precautions; you never want to become totally dependent on your computer for all of your resources.

Next, you plan one complete unit including all activities that will be used to teach the unit and all the assessments that will be used to evaluate the unit. While you are teaching the first unit you have planned, you should repeat this process for the next unit. This should be your process for the entire year. If you are a new teacher or a veteran you should always be teaching one unit while working on the next. You can never allow yourself to plan the night before for what you plan to teach the next day. If you do this you will always be off balance and always struggling to have enough material for your students to do. Advanced planning is extremely important to the success of your lessons.

As you plan your first unit, I want you to think PPA (Present, Practice, and Assess). These are the three things you must do for each activity you plan each day. Presenting is how the initial information is delivered to the students. This could be teacher talk and/or modeling, reading, demonstrations, cooperative learning, brainstorming, etc. Practicing is letting the student use the presented information in a second format. This could be a scavenger hunt, a drawing, experiments, creating charts and graphs, etc. Assessment is how you evaluate your teaching and whether student learning has taken place. Written quizzes, questioning, and games should be part of the daily lesson plan and must take place after each activity that you implement in your classroom.

Time must be considered when planning and each activity must be given a set amount of time for completion. If you do not estimate how long it will take you to complete activities you may under plan and not have enough work for the students to do. If you have 60 minutes to teach a particular subject you should always have 90 minutes planned in case you have underestimated the amount of time needed to complete a specific task. In addition to time, you must also have a complete materials list for each activity. I have seen many great lessons disappear because a teacher had to start looking for materials in the middle of the lesson. As a teacher you must know what you need, how much you need, and have it located at your fingertips.

Lastly, you must include procedures to carry out each activity. No matter what you want students to do there must be an established way of doing it. For example, if you want your students to move into groups of four then they must do so while you count to five. If you want them to complete tasks in set amounts of time then use a timer and a checklist. If you are using colored pencils have them located in a specific location and have a set amount of time to obtain them. Procedures should be taught and practiced like rules in your classroom. In fact if you have good procedures for specific tasks in your classroom you will probably not need rules. Students should have direction for everything that they do in your classroom. It is easy to write a good plan but a good plan cannot be executed without procedures. Organization of the learning environment is a must if you want to be a good teacher.

Plan Day by Day

Now that we have the basics down it is time to get into the serious planning. Below is a visual that I hope will help you with your lesson planning and will answer some of your questions. (Click on picture to bring up full page image or right click on picture and click "open in new window" to get full page in a new browser window.)





Anyone should be able to pick up your lesson plan and know what you are going to teach, how you will teach it, what materials you are going to need, and how you plan to evaluate whether your students learned what you taught them. Every day your plan will look different. Some days you might have three activities while other days you may have six activities. It will depend upon what you need for your students to accomplish.

Lesson planning should not be frightening; it should be a blue print to success. A lesson plan should include all essential facts and skills that your students must know in order to reach the minimum competency goals of the state you live in as well as all the enrichment you can provide your students to ensure that they are successful in life. For example, reading and writing are so important in order to succeed in anything that you do; working only at a minimum competency usually does not give a student all he/she needs to be successful.

Evaluate Your Planning

Now that you have planned and taught your lessons it is time to add feedback to existing lesson plans. Take a red pen and go to work. If one of your activities took longer than expected, you will need to note this on your lesson plan. If some of the activities were great, you will need to note this, because you want to use them again. If some of the activities were not so great, then you need to note this and decide which ones can be rewritten and which ones need to be thrown away. Having one good planning year will make all the difference in your classroom; is this your year? I see so many teachers who do not keep good records and as a result they must start over each year. These teachers never really get their classroom organized and efficient. On the other hand some teachers create one lesson plan; and even if it is bad, they teach it year after year. These teachers are not really interested in their students and should find other careers. Expert teachers are always planning, changing, evaluating, rewriting, and I could go on and on; choose to be an expert and get started today. Expert teachers change lives; what type of teacher do you want to be?

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