Board AB

I heard that people who teach elementary school especially the lower grades have to have a different lesson every 20 minutes. As a high school teacher for many years, I thought how difficult that must be.

In the last ten years though I began to put that idea into practice with teens. Both in my math classes and in the three years that I taught the course I created (Strategies of Success), I began to change things up every 20 minutes or so. I found the variety and change of pace to be really effective.

One strategy that was very effective especially in math (although it could apply to pretty much any discipline) was what I called Board AB. I would name the rows A or B alternately. I would have all the A's go to the board at once (I had boards both in the front and back of the room). I would give a problem and everyone would do it at the same time. B's would get to watch A's and learn from them if they weren't sure how to do the problem, no student felt alone at the board, and I got to find their mistakes and correct them long before a quiz or test. I would do a couple of problems with this set up, then the A's and B's would switch.

This strategy which I developed while teaching hyper 8th grade students worked equally well with honors juniors and seniors who are tired of sitting at the desk all day long.

More on this next time...