Doing Things Differently…

As a professional student and educator, I am constantly striving to find new ways to share information with students and colleagues.  Sometimes this means going the extra mile and dedicating long hours to creating new and inspirational educational materials.  This last summer I was struggling to find a way for student to synthesize three weeks of summer school in preparation for their Biology STAAR End of Course exam.  This foldable incorporated designs of several different foldables that I had used before.

The really awesome idea came when I realized putting all the information in one place would be the easiest way for students to quickly access a broader range of information.  In retrospect, I might have tried to put “too much” information on one page, my handwriting is a lot smaller than most of my students.  Some of them had trouble fitting all the small details I easily tacked on.

I used a variety of coding mechanisms (color coding and letter coding), visual cues, and display arrangements to allow students to categorize and process the information.  There were unifying themes across the different pages, and the students enjoyed working hard to fill in the details of each section in the allotted time.  There’s something about a race to beat the clock that invigorates some of our students.  We can’t forget about those tactile and kinesthetic learners that love to create manipulatives and be active in the classroom.

I had the students complete each section of the foldable by answering clue questions on a blank version of the foldable.  Using this format required students to do more than regurgitate information, and made them easier to grade.  It took about two class days for a group of 30 students to make their way through the entire foldable, give or take about half a class period.

The hardest part about being creative and doing things differently in the classroom is realizing you don’t have to experience a pedagogical epiphany every other week in order to be an effective teacher.  We are often our toughest critics. Working with high school students I’m provided a unique opportunity to engage in real dialogue and have conversations about “real” life.  Not only can I help these students understand the process of their own learning, but we can have meaningful discussions about what works and what doesn’t work.  Students are surprisingly flexible, especially when we model that for them.

Stepping outside of your comfort zone to provide a different kind of educational experience can be completely terrifying.  However, it is when we take great risks we experience great rewards. We cannot learn the best ways to do different things if we only ever do the same thing! Be willing to try something different, even if its only every once and a while.