Pinterest

I love browsing on Pinterest.  If you are not yet familiar, it's a website where you can "pin" the ideas/websites that you like and organize them.  There is a category for education and that's where I'm spending my time today.  A warning, most of the ideas you'll find there are for elementary school, but that's where your creativity comes in and adapts it to your own classroom. 

Here's a short list of what I found and pinned in the past few weeks:

Hidden Answer Key:

I can see placing these around my classroom, where students would get up and go check their work with the answer key.  Or instead of an answer key maybe it's a hint to the problem they are working on.  That's the beauty of this, I can make it my own.  I just have to develop the idea yet.

The Sub Tub:

I think it's important to have emergency lesson plans, you never know when your own child is going to wake up ill.  I would like to give my subs choices when coming in to my classroom.  Each sub has their own personality, just like we do.  Instead of having a pile of folders on my desk for a substitute, I am going to create a "sub tub" this coming year.

Story Sticks:

This pin is originally about picking one stick of each color and creating a story for the sticks you selected.  I adapted this (if you can read the small print below the photo) to creating word problems.  A yellow stick would have written what the word problem is about.  A red stick would let the student know the algebra needed to solve the problem.  And a green stick would be the answer.  I couldn't think of what to use the blue stick for.  Any suggestions?

An extension would be to have the students convert their word problem into a 3 Acts Math Task.  :)

High Five:

A little elementary, but the students love recognition for a job well done.  Give it to them!