Hey guys, I am new to an excellent STEM school in a big city. We have very long periods here (1 hour 45 minutes).... I am finding it hard to keep students engaged for this long. I teach middle school English. I know some people would love to have this much time to plan and do all they want etc, but I am finding it hard to keep them excited and engaged for that long everyday. What kind of things can I do to keep them active and engaged during these lessons. I have one class that is VERY squirrely .... I know they would probably benefit from more group activities, hands on stuff etc, but they are so hard to keep under control that I sometimes don't even want to try anything new.
Your problem sounds EXACLTY like mine except our classes are 95 minutes. After about 45 to 60 minutes, students really start to "lose it" but I know many math and English teacher really wanted the extra time. I would much rather teach six 45 minute periods a day than three 95 minutes. I have no solutions but I wish you good luck!
You need to have at least 5 different things to do each day. 1 hour 45 min is a lot, I used to have 90 min which I LOVED. Here's basically what I would do: -Warm up (15 min or so) -Introduce new information (20-30 min) -Activity on new information (15-20 min) [this can be worksheets, diagrams, mini research, articles, discussions, etc) -New vocab activity (10-15 min) -Closing activity (10-15 min)
Have you looked at this book? I LOVE it. I use it with high school students. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/032504435X/ref=oh_details_o07_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0325030871/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
For my block days (English teacher also), I'll typically structure it something like this. Warm up - 5 min Grammar activity - 15 min Reading of some sort - 25 min with "share with your partner" discussions in between. Questions - 10 min Some sort of group project, poster, presentation, etc - 20 min Quickwrite - 10 min I definitely agree you need at least 5 different activities, 2-3 of which need to be moving/talking types of activities. To sit and read and write for almost two hours is ridiculous - I can't even do that without getting squirrely
oh wow, I have the opposite problem. I teach 4th math/science and my first core is 125 minutes! My 2nd core is 105 minutes! Granted it's two subjects. With that said, I RUN out of time on most days doing JUST math. I have to force science in 2-3 x's a week for about 30 minutes each time. The rest of the time I'm scrambling around like a chicken with my head cut off just trying to get all I planned for one day into two days! I guess that goes to show, that both ways (too much time/not enough) are equally as bad
The structure of my class is similar to those above. I love the look of those two books. My school doesn't have textbooks so it would help me a ton. Every student has a laptop which helps also. We use google docs for almost everything too. Don't print very often at all.
The books are awesome. Very structured. I followed the first few lessons exactly, but then learned how to tweak them for the needs of my students. I put a lot of the text info into PowerPoints to guide students through the process. Also, this isn't necessarily a way to fill the class, but if all of your students have laptops, check out the free version of Canvas. It is AWESOME. http://www.instructure.com ... a fabulous CMS that is FREE!
