The Gamified Teacher

This past semester was a cacophony of attendance problems, behavior issues, and missing assignments. Students and teachers both were thrust into a new type of in-person learning that came with pandemic procedures, restrictions, and precautions. Despite these unnerving variables, my freshman English students achieved at pre-pandemic levels! How did this happen? It all came down to how I adapted as a teacher in a pandemic. Incorporate Social Time The main reason for our students' behavior issues has to do with all of the social isolation of the past two years. They were denied the experience of building and maintaining friendships, working through interpersonal conflict, and maturing in social situations. You can imagine that suddenly being immersed in a social environment causes them to feel overstimulated, anxious, and of course, very distracted.  In order to compensate for this, we need to build in true social time.  I'm not talking about pair-and-share or small group, teache...

As English teachers, we spend a lot of time scoring essays, which can be exhausting and stressful - especially with impending deadlines. I've been taught many essay grading techniques, but all of them were time consuming, and the resulting scores varied greatly between teachers. For this reason, I took the official state writing rubric, tweaked it, and came up with a simple scoring process that takes just one minute per 5-paragraph essay. Start with a Detailed, Quantitative Rubric To prepare yourself and your students for scoring, start with a detailed rubric that uses quantitative - not qualitative - measurements. This reduces grading bias and means less time spent deciding which score a student deserves. For example, instead of describing a score as "excellent," "good," or "unsatisfactory," get specific with what was there or missing like "all elements used," "a couple elements missing," or "zero elements used." Under ea...

Teaching reading to a class of hyperactive students is hard enough, but teaching it online is a challenge all its own. If your school is going remote, and you'll soon be dealing with all of the variables and limitations that adds to your job, don't give up on getting your students to read just yet. Follow these 10 tips to make reading online a better experience for both you and your students.     Use Shorter Selections I know this is hotly debated, but using shorter selections simply makes more sense in today's world - especially when trying to hook students on reading. Consider the fact that articles, videos, even book chapters are getting shorter and more to the point. Those page-long descriptions classic authors loved so much are out of style and for good reason. Our brains have adapted to taking in information at much faster rate and our language has evolved to compensate for this. So why force students to slow down when they're ready for more? This doesn't mea...

You've probably heard about the latest trend, interactive slideshows, and yes, I have a favorite. I recommend using the Google Slides Add-On Pear Deck for any class. If you're an English teacher, and you're not sure what you could do with Pear Deck, take a look at my favorite ways to use it in my high school English classes.    Multiple Choice Slides The free version of Pear Deck allows you to add multiple choice questions to your slides that students can answer live during your lesson. You can then show a summary of their answers.  This basic feature can be used in a variety of ways, including: Reviewing Checking for Understanding Opinion Polling Choice Voting Quiz Show Gaming Text Response Slides Another feature of the free version of PD is the text response slide, which allows you to put a question on your slide and give students a place to enter their typed response during your lesson. You can then choose to show particular responses or show all of them. Even better,...

Let's admit it. Getting students to engage in learning since COVID has been a bit of a struggle. It just seems like some of those tried and true methods aren't working for as many of our students as usual. There's no need to get discouraged though. We simply need to do what teachers do best - use our creativity to adapt.   I've found that incorporating more game-style interactions into my lessons and assignments has not only increased engagement, but also learning. As a result, I've developed a lot of ELA games that my students love to play. If you'd like to do the same, check out these 10 tips on ELA gamification. Make it a Competition The easiest way to gamify anything is to simply make it a competition. Who will find the literary device first? Which group can find the most evidence? Which pair can find and fix the most errors? You get the idea.   This strategy may seem overused, but it truly works! In fact, when I proposed a competition between my classes to ...