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When I teach a new topic, I ask students to write down one thing they didn't understand and one thing they did on a piece of paper and to put it in a box by the door when they leave the classroom. Then I go over them and put them into groups for those that understand, those that "kind of" understand, and those who are completely lost. Then I mix the one from each group together and have the discuss and learn from each other.

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I love using bell ringers! Sometimes I review content, sometimes I use "Would you rather?", and sometimes I use "Which one doesn't belong?". I am going to try adding in a SEL check in with my bell ringer next year.

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I always use bell ringers to start my classes! It helps focus my students and get them ready to learn.

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My favorite questioning technique from the one of the course articles I read was Fist to Five. I will ask students to hold up 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 fingers to indicate how well they understand the information I just taught!

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I use exit tickets frequently. I teach math and the curriculum I use has exit tickets with each lesson. Going forward, when I use the exit ticket, I am also going to have my students answer a question like "How are you feeling with today's content?" or "What can I do to support you?" on the bottom or back of their exit ticket.

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One questioning technique that I like using is wait time. I like asking everyone to put their hand down, take some think time, and then I will ask for hands. I also like using "phone a friend". In middle school, students can be so afraid of being wrong but being able to answer with a friend's help is reassuring. Sometimes I will call on someone who has a hand up and ask them to pick someone to answer instead of giving the answer.

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I am going to try using the "Give One Number the Royal Treatment" warm up activity. I teach in a special education inclusion class so we have a wide range of abilities. With this activity, we can vary the directions for different students. I foresee one student placing the number on a number line while some create and solve problems with the number and others create word problems with the number as the answer.

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I know I need to push Higher Order Thinking more with my students. After a student answers, I am going to stretch it further by asking, "Why do you think that?" and "Why have you come to that conclusion?" They need to analyze their own answers to keep improving. I am going to keep the "Question Matrix" handy so I can vary the questions asked and vary the difficulty levels based upon student abilities.

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I am going to use the idea of the students placing a post it note on a poster size chart under the heading of “What stuck with you today?”  It is a quick way to see what stood out in the lesson.  Using the large chart where each student places their sticky note on their assigned number makes everyone accountable before they leave the classroom.

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A series of lessons my team teaches our 4th graders is about QAR techniques. We spend time examining the different questions/answer styles: right there, think and search, author and you, and on my own. I thought of these lessons as I read about having students generate their own questions for the class. Once students understand how to answer different types of questions, I could begin teaching them how to write the different styles of questions. This would be important so that students understand they can't only ask the right there questions. Having the students work on creating questions for lessons in literacy and social studies, would keep them engaged. When students feel a sense of ownership, they are more likely to be motivated in their learning.

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One bell ringer/warmup that I will try is creating a simple “math journal” that we can use at the start of math each day. In first grade we do a little calendar math and talk about what day in school it is, but I can extend this with a number of the day page. I will make a simple journal for daily practice which will include things like writing the number, one more and one less, telling if it is even or odd, writing it in word form, writing three equations that equal that number, etc. I would start a journal like this in the second month of school once we have established routines and expectations.

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A new exit ticket idea I would like to try is Kahoot. This would be a quick way to check for students understanding. I feel like this online platform would engage students. It would be a easy way for me to see which students need more practice or if students are understanding the material. Students also love using their iPads so this is a great idea for an exit ticket.

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I love to do a bell ringer first thing in the morning and right after lunch. This works best for my room and routine since it is a self-contained classroom. I do think that I would like to start book snaps as a new bell ringer for first thing in the morning. My students are too young for snapchat, but I like the idea of creating a book snap of the book they read the evening before on Seesaw. I think this would hold them more accountable for their reading outside of school and if I had them upload to Seesaw the class could see what everyone is reading. This could serve two purposes as it would be a great place to get ideas for students on their next book to read.

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My students love to draw on their personal whiteboards. Whiteboards are a fantastic tool to have, but it can get a little tiresome going over the expectations of whiteboard etiquette while working. That is why I love the idea of using the whiteboard as a class sketchbook at the end of the lesson. It was suggested to have the class draw, doodle, or write something that stuck with them during the lesson. I would have a quick snapshot of my class's learning and they would think it was a fun part of the lesson. A win-win in my book!

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One exit ticket I am excited to try is the builder for Google Slides/Power Point. I use teaching slides in everything I teach, so this would be extremely helpful as seamless way to get in an exit ticket- which can be done orally with a partner or table group. I have found that at the end of a lesson my young students are done and show they need to move on to something else- so it is easy to forget to add an exit ticket because they have short attention spans and have already sat through a lot. By incorporating a daily exit ticket as the last slide it will become routine. It is important to change up the exit ticket mode to prevent it from becoming boring to the students- some days make it oral, some days a post it note, some days a quick drawing. The article “20 ideas for ext tickets in the classroom” has an amazing exit ticket builder resource I copied and saved to utilize next school year. I can’t wait to make this a part of my daily ELA lessons.

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Questioning is a teacher skill I am continually trying to improve. I really liked the ideas in the article “7 Effective Questioning Strategies for Teachers”. One way I will try to improve my technique is by giving my students more think time. I learned it is actually a good thing to have the class sit in a little awkward silence. I am looking for at least 50% of the class raising their hands so if I don’t have that kind of participation I need to say, “I can wait until more friends have their hands up” or “I’m still waiting for more friends to share with their shoulder partner and raise their hand to share with the class”. In first grade we need to build up to this. As confidence grows so will their desire to raise their hands and participate. I also like the question matrix grid as a resource to print out and have handy as I design lessons/questions. In one of the videos I watched a teacher said she reads the articles she is going to have her students read and uses post-its to write down her higher order thinking questions. Being prepared pays off when you are trying to generate a strong discussion in class.

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Next year, I would like to do a Number of the Day for my bell ringer with my first graders.  This would be a great tool for daily review as well as providing consistency within the classroom. I would be able to make it more challenging as we learn more math concepts throughout the year. The students would know how to do each page and the expectations would be the same each day. I love this idea and I can’t wait to use it next year.

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I love to do a BELL RINGER as they walk into my classroom. Since I am a music teacher, I like to do a movement activity or dance while they get an answer on a certain topic such as "Do you know if your grandpa plays any instruments" or "If you were stranded on an island, what one instrument would you want to have with you". The students love to answer these and it gets them up and moving right away.

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I love how exit tickets can solidify what was learned during the class, but do not like all the paper (as I teach over 500 students). Instead of using paper, I like doing a large group electronic quiz at the end of class. sometimes I use white boards for this and have the answers be multiple choice. To make it fun, I also have set up four letter corners in the room (A,B,C, and D). Then, I pull the questions up on the screen and have the kiddos move to the corner that they think has the correct answers. For the kids who don't know the answer, they learn through the movement to the correct corner. It is a great way for kids to reiterate what they learned.

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Being that I teach elementary, I like to ask close ended questions. I enjoy giving students the time to talk to eachother as well with open ended pair and share questions as well!

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One new bell ringer that caught my attention is “give one number the royal treatment.” This math bell ringer is a great activity to open up math class by taking a number and breaking it apart/representing it in different ways. Some of the examples listed on the website are words, tally marks, number problems, drawing a picture, etc. this would be a great strategy to use in my first grade classroom as we learn about teen numbers, numbers in their 20s, etc. This strategy will also allow students to be creative by getting to think about how many ways they can represent a given number.

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While I have used Kahoot before and am very familiar with the platform, I was unaware that Kahoot offered a survey option outside of the normal ‘quiz game.’ I plan to utilize this survey option as an exit ticket. By using this anonymous platform, students will choose their best answer and not feel the stress and pressure of seeing their name or score on the board. This will help them to feel more comfortable and enjoy the process. In addition, this will help me, as an educator, to measure my student’s understanding with given questions. I will use this data/information to guide instruction.

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The questioning technique that I feel will improve my higher-level questioning to promote further student discussion is to implement ‘student-generated quiz questions to peers.’ I have always utilized questions that I prepared ahead of time that I assumed would generate this higher-level thinking, but have never considered giving some of the responsibility to my students to create their own questions. By doing this, students are able to collaborate with a partner, reflect on learned content, and check-in with one another to assess their understanding by brainstorming and creating their own questions. Students will feel like a teacher and own their learning by getting to create their own questions and asking other students. I can also provide students with some question stems to generate ideas when we first begin this technique.

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A warm up that I want to include in my classroom in the future is a math journal. I love setting routines in my classroom and would love for it to be a routine that a couple times a week students can do a problem or two out in their journal. This allows students to warm up with whatever topic or skill we are learning about or students can review skills and topics that we have learned about. It also allows students to have time to work through problems and then be able to share with others.

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I use exit tickets constantly. In my ELA and math curriculum, there are exit tickets built into the lessons. This really helps because I can choose to use an exit ticket every time it is built in or if I want to use my own or maybe I do not need to use it for a lesson. It allows for flexibility. I want to add in other types of exit tickets that ask about how students feel about what they are learning or what might have stuck with them.

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I give lots of wait time to my students after asking them a question. They all are aware that I do this and it is to make sure they have time to think and allows for all students to get a chance to share. Something that I would like to try is "ask multiple students before providing feedback". I love this idea and think that it would be very beneficial for students. I like how it allows for students to build upon each other's ideas and encourages risk taking and collaboration.

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I currently use bell ringers to start all of my classes. However, I really would like to incorporate more SEL into my bell ringers. An example from one of the articles I read is, having students circle their "internal weather" as a way to quickly check in on student progress and their well-being.

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Exit tickets are something I'd like to be more mindful of doing at the end of every class. More often than not, I feel as if the time gets away from us and we are rushing to complete an exit ticket. I am interested in trying the Friday Exit ticket to incorporate more goal setting and reflection from my students. I also like the idea of using yesterday's exit ticket as a warm-up for today's class. This way, I'm not necessarily reinventing the wheel for everything and it encourages students to retrieve information.

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I love the idea from one of the articles I read where students come up with their own questions related to a topic or unit. I learned that this strategy is called, "Student-Generated Discussion Questions" (SGDQ). I particularly liked how the author of this article explained how to teach students to generate questions based off of specific categories. Lastly, I enjoyed how incorporating this strategy would lead to student collaboration as well as peer assessment and feedback. In turn, this would provide the opportunity to minimize my voice and amplify the voices of my young learners.

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Bell Ringers are so important because they not only warm up the students to learn but they can also review what has already been covered in class.  I really liked the video I watched because it was a quick, five minute bell ringer where they needed to fill out three separate Google Slides.  One was fixing a sentence’s error and creating a compound sentence, the second was “test prep” which I thought was amazing!  It was just a quick slide about eliminating answers to a question on a test that you know are not correct in order to minimize the answer options.  This is such a simple idea but it isn’t often taught in class, I think most students just kind of figure it out (something that is learned along the way).  The third slide is just creative writing and allows the students to write whatever they want to (The Structured Writing Teacher, 2023).  Another idea for a Bell Ringer that I think is effective is the “Do Now” Sheet.  One thing that I loved about this activity is that the student is asked to write the objective in the lesson in their own words, which I think is a great way to evaluate whether or not the student understands the objective (s) (Edutopia, 2019).  This sheet also allows the student to have one-on-one time with the teacher in order to stay on task.

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Exit Tickets are an important way to see where the students are after a lesson and if there is possibly a need to revisit the content before moving on.  I really enjoyed the idea of the Trio Switch!  This is done by dividing students into groups of three and giving each student a role: “the explainer” is the one who explains the steps within the process, “the scribe” is the student who writes down everything that the explainer says and “the key holder” has the answer.  Once these roles are established, the class is given two minutes to solve a new problem.  After two more minutes, the roles within the group are rotated and the group continues to work on the same problem.  After four minutes, the groups come back together as one who class and everyone discusses their findings (Jputnam, 2023).  I think this strategy allows students to work in different roles and to really look at the problem from different perspectives, while also learning from their peers.

Another great idea for Exit Tickets is to use Google Forms.  This is an interactive way to assess what your students took from the lesson.  Google Forms are so cool because they allow you to customize your exit tickets so they are personal to your class.  You can add whatever question you’d like and allow for the answer format to be a variety of types: multiple choice, written answer, true or false, etc.  You can also add videos and images to entice your students!  The great thing about Google Forms is that it is very easy to view student responses separately or in grid form (Miller, 2021).

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Questioning Techniques are vital when teaching so that students can not only recognize ways to help them learn but also pull out main points within their readings.  This in turn helps them to study effectively.  The video that I watched discussed how important it is for teachers to prepare vital questions before the lesson and to not just pull questions while reading- this allows the teacher to really focus on the important information and to avoid the insignificant details (SBCUSD, 2018).  In “7 Effective Questioning Techniques for Teachers,” the author stated “How we phrase a question has an incredible impact on classroom participation” (Leslie, 2021).  I found this idea very interesting and will keep this on my mind while teaching from now on.  The author described how in the beginning of his career, he used to ask the class “what is the correct answer?”  This style of questioning poses two outcomes for the answering student: 1. they answer it correctly or 2. They answer it incorrectly and are possibly embarrassed in front of the entire class.  “The moment I changed the modality of my questions from a place of certainty to a place of probability I saw an increase in classroom participation” (Leslie, 2021).  By posing questions such as “what could it be?” or “what do you think it might be?” encourages students to try and offers a classroom discussion as opposed to right vs. wrong.

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I want to stay away from anything digital so the bell ringer strategy I am most interested in trying is creating a flow chart. I found this strategy on the digital list but I will change it to where I have students work in groups. Each group will have a large white board and must work together to create a timeline for completing a recipe. Planning and preparing before cooking is crucial and this way I can see how each group is visualizing completing the lab. For example, I will ask them to write out how to prepare a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then we will compare steps and see what each group is missing. This will help students see the big picture and hopefully makes lab run smoother!

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To get my students inspired and thinking about what to create during art class I'd like to set up a brainstorming activity that gets them up out of their seats. I'd post large pieces of paper on the walls of my classroom with questions written at the top for students to respond to. The students could then write or draw a quick idea that comes to mind after reading the question. I'd only give them a minute or two to respond before they would need to move to the next piece of paper. This bell ringer activity could be a fun way to get the students thinking about multiple solutions to the questions that are posed because they will be able to see what others have written/drawn while adding their own ideas.

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An exit ticket strategy I cannot wait to try was presented to us during the zoom session. I cannot wait to play 30 second expert with my classes. After our zoom, I went on a road trip and my friends and I played this many times. It is fun to see if each other can complete the 30 seconds. This also allows students listening to come up with their own responses. I can see students saying “but what about this” and “you forgot to say.”  This is going to be so fun with my culinary students who think they already know everything!

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The questioning technique I would like to try is having students generate their own questions. Considering emotion, reaction, or personal connection I can have students answer questions about family traditions when it comes to food, share a recipe from their culture, or answer questions about their favorite foods. I would also consider using a visual. I can put a picture of a nuclear family on the board eating a home cooked meal and then ask students what dinner time looks like at home. I expect that there is a lot of eating out, uber eats, or conversation about how expensive groceries are now!

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I currently use the Seesaw app in my class when students finish their art projects. I have them post photos of their work to document the final product. After reading about different exit ticket ideas, I think I will tweak my Seesaw assignments to include student feedback. In addition to posting a photo of their art project, I'd like them to respond to a prompt. In Seesaw, they can choose to type or record their voice as a response. Examples of prompts/questions I might ask could be: What was your favorite or least favorite moment of class today?; Evaluate your participation in class today; List three things you learned in class today.

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I really like the idea of preparing higher level questions ahead of teaching my lessons. This will ensure that I am challenging my students and adequately covering the content. I will consider Bloom's Taxonomy and the Seven Levels of Thinking when planning out the questions I will ask my students. It is important to think about how to phrase the questions so that students feel less intimidated to participate in the discussion. The point is to get them thinking, not necessarily just checking for accuracy. I also like the idea of waiting to call on students so that more of the class will actively participate. In the end, if I feel like I’m not getting enough participation, I may need to consider if I taught the material clearly enough. I liked learning about the “fist to five” strategy to check for understanding.