Job Connection Ticket-Out-The-Door

Taking the opportunity to connect your students to career opportunities can return great dividends for you and the young men and women you teach. We spend so much time teaching the content in our lessons, that sometimes we forget that we must train our students to learn, think independently, and make connections to real life. Try this twist on a common review technique to begin training students to make life connections to material learned in class.

Once a week have students complete a “Ticket-Out-The-Door” on a small slip of paper. Ask students the simple qThinking about the big questionsuestion, “What is one career that is related to the content we learned this week?” If students are unsure, have some resources available for students to quickly review. During some challenging concept areas, you may wish to imbed references to related careers throughout the week, to begin introducing students to career opportunities. Remember to include jobs at all experience levels, including completion of high school, technical school, or receipt of a degree from a college or university. After students capture down their career ideas, stand at the door and collect these “tickets” as students exit.

What may seem like a simple review technique is actually training your students to continually ask themselves, “How does this content apply to real life?” By repeating this activity weekly at the same time, you begin to anchor the thought process with students. Before long, students will be subconsciously going through this thought process each time they leave your classroom, and hopefully their other classes as well. Take the time to teach students to make these important connections, and you will open their eyes to a world of opportunities.

Student-Led Career Fair

Career Search“Why do we have to learn this?” “When am I ever going to use this?” “Why is this important?”  Heard these words lately? It can be frustrating as educators to defend our educational strategies and lesson plans daily, but we must also realize that it can be frustrating for our students as well. Students become disengaged and disinterested when they can’t make the connection between their coursework and real life. Take this challenge as an opportunity to help your students connect content with their lives, by bringing relevance to your classroom with a student-led career fair.

 Regardless of the content area you teach, or the grade level, you can implement a student-led career fair to connect core content with career opportunities. The idea is simple – each student in your class selects a career connected to your content area and conducts research on the career. After research has been collected, select one day for a student career fair. Students each set up a “booth” on a desk top with information about their career. Students should display pictures and information such as career description, education level/training required, salary levels, and employing companies. Encourage students to get into character by creating business cards and dressing the part!

 How do you keep all of your students engaged during the career fair? In addition to receiving credit for displaying their career booth and information, give students credit for visiting at least five career booths. Rotate students so that a majority are manning their booths while a handful are visiting booths until all students have had an opportunity to tour the career fair.

Ask Yourself - "Could a Student Do This?"

“It is more than probable that the average man could, with no injury to his health, increase his efficiency 50%.”  Walter Scott

 Time – there is never enough in the world of teaching. By the end of the day, drained and exhausted, you wonder…how did this stack onStudent Cutting Paper my desk get even higher? With the realization that every day will bring with it new challenges and opportunities, I pass on a bit of wisdom from my mother. Mom is an elementary school teacher who guides her class of Kindergarten-2nd grade special education students through a myriad of adventures each day. Pop into her class on a given day and you will find students engaged in Zoo-phonics as they move their little bodies to learn the alphabet, baking a healthy treat as they learn nutrition and life skills, or working to develop social skills in the greenhouse. “How do you do it all?” I asked her one day. “I continually ask myself one question,” she replied, “Could a student do this?”

 Each day as she plans her class assignments, instead of spending hours cutting out shapes, sorting colors, filing papers, or moving materials, she asks herself, “Could a student do this?” If the answer is yes, she incorporates that step into her lesson. She looks at every step of lesson preparation as an opportunity for students to develop skills, and as a result, has streamlined her daily preparation process to an efficient machine. By empowering students to be involved in daily classroom tasks, she allows more time to focus on the conceptual areas of her teaching plan.

 As you get ready for this next week, and you begin to sort, file, stack and organize – ask yourself, “Could a student do this?”

IDK Alternatives

I had the joy of spending some time in a fellow high school teacher’s classroom recently, and I was drawn to one of her walls covered in bright paper. A larger-than-life mind web was spun, pulling students to the center of the web which read, "IDK" with a giant slash through the middle. Reminiscent of a no smoking sign, no cell phone zone, or any other "no" zone, this red circle with a slash clearly set the expectation that students could not respond to a teacher asked question with the words, "I don’t know."

So what do they do if they really don’t know? Snaking out from the center of the wall was a seriesIDK Sign of options for students who have hit a mental wall, or might just be caught off guard. In Who Wants to be a Millionaire game show style, some of the options read: "Can I phone a friend?", "50/50", and "I’ll get back to you!" If a student was called on for a response and did not have the answer, they could "phone a friend" by asking one friend for help in the class. This option could only be used once, however! They could also opt for the "50/50" helpline, in which the teacher would give two options of responses, with only one being correct. Finally, students could ask the teacher to come back to them, so they would have time to review their notes.

I was amazed to realize that, by simply having these options visible, students were less intimidated to respond to questions. With anxiety levels lowered as the fear of failure diminished, students participated more freely in class. This is just one great technique for empowering your students and holding them to a high level of expectation!

No “Substitute” for Motivation

Sometimes leaving your students with a sub can be more work than actually being at school! It is frustrating, if not downright disheartening, to come back from a day off campus only to find your room in disarray, and a note from the substitute listing the creative ways your students undermined authority while you were gone! In a follow-up tip to “Sink the Sub”, posted December 3rd, we bring you a new motivating tip shared by a junior high science teacher.

Students love competition. Adding a little competition among classes or class periods might be just the motivation students need to be on their best behavior for your substitute teacher. Establish ground rules for a competition, in which substitutes will give each class or period a letter grade (A-F) or a ranking (Excellent, Good, Average, Poor) based on their behavior and level of respect for the day. Leave your sub a note with an easy fill in chart so they can quickly grade class periods. Determine a time frame (quarter, semester, term, etc.) for which you will keep track of substitute grades. At the conclusion of that time period, the top scoring class/period will receive a prize such as a class party, a movie, a fun teambuilding activity, or even extra credit points.

Empower your students by having them establish guidelines for the grading. Ask students what a respectful class looks, sounds and acts like when a substitute is present. Capture notes on a tear sheet to post on the wall. You can also ask students for input on the end reward. Give students parameters, such as length of time, money, resources, etc., and they just might give you a great reward idea! It becomes a win-win situation for you, substitutes, and your students!
 

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