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Keep questions at an appropriate level of difficulty

Pay close attention to who is answering questions during classroom discussion and call upon non volunteers

Ask students to comment or elaborate on one another's answers

Use information on students levels of understanding to increase the pace of instruction whenever appropriate. (There is a strong positive relationship between content covered and student achievement.

Monitoring can alert teachers to situations where they can profitably pick up the instructional pace and thus cover more material.)

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Soundboard

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10 Ways to Praise

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Show Me You Know It!

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Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find a free K-12 Digital Citizenship curriculum, reviews of popular EdTech apps, and resources for protecting student privacy.

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Differentiating with flexible groups works best when based on data. You have a wide variety of data at your fingertips from district or school assessments, to classroom assessments, your formative assessment, and your own observations. Increasingly using that data and becoming data literate means that you can enhance your differentiation skills. While we want all students to meet the same success criteria, how they meet those criteria is the key to differentiation.

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Socrative

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Login or sign up for free on Socrative - your assessment partner for real-time assessments and instant insights.

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Post-it and other brands of sticky notes are put to good use everyday by teachers and students. The Post-it website has a page filled with resources for teachers, and they have a really cool iOS app for digitizing, sorting, and sharing square sticky notes.

Those small pieces of paper that can be attached, easily removed, and repositioned can be even more useful when you print on them. While there is a printer designed to print sticky notes, you can send sticky notes through the printer you already have. You'll need a template for printing, and I just so happen to have one for you. Skip ahead to see loads of ideas for printed sticky notes.

The template is in Google Slides. Why Google Slides? It's one of my favorite design tools, and does not have to be limited to slideshows. The template has a custom page setup of 8.5 by 11 inches to match standard printer paper. I'm sharing the file in a way that forces you to make your own copy. You can edit your copy and use Google Slides' design tools to print your personalized design.

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Print Custom Sticky Notes with Google Slides - Learning in Hand with Tony Vincent

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Post-it and other brands of sticky notes are put to good use everyday by teachers and students. The Post-it website has a page filled with resources for teachers, and they have a really cool iOS app for digitizing, sorting, and sharing square sticky notes.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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lead4ward resources reflect the TEKS eligible for assessment in the current school year. lead4ward resources for the new Science TEKS will be made available prior to the implementation school year of 2024-25. Side-by-sides are available on the Instructional Tools tab.

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Quick Polls and Q/A in Google

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Google Meet Polls and Q&A Tutorial and How To Guide

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lead4ward makes a difference in the lives of students by helping educators focus their work, creating structures that give teachers and students a sense of hope and confidence, and supporting leaders with systems they can trust.

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 Research spanning decades shows that setting students goals improves both motivation and achievement. Goal setting encourages a growth mindset. It also supports the development of skills students need to be prepared for their future careers.

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Create a Jam Board of Virtual Class Goals

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Create a Jam Board of Virtual Class Goals

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Encourage students to check their goals monthly

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Where does your math instruction fall, and do you need to adjust?

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As students with diverse learning styles fill the classroom, many teachers don't always have the time to plan lessons that use differentiated instruction (DI) to suit their distinct aptitudes.
This can involve adjusting:

Content - The media and methods teachers use to impart and instruct skills, ideas and information

Processes - The exercises and practices students perform to better understand content

Products - The materials, such as tests and projects, students complete to demonstrate understanding

To help create lessons that engage and resonate with a diverse classroom, below are 20 differentiated instruction strategies and examples. Available in a condensed and printable list for your desk, you can use 16 in most classes and the last four for math lessons.

Try the ones that best apply to you, depending on factors such as student age.

1. Create Learning Stations

Provide different types of content by setting up learning stations - divided sections of your classroom through which groups of students rotate. You can facilitate this with a flexible seating plan.

Each station should use a unique method of teaching a skill or concept related to your lesson.
For example, students can rotate between stations that involve:

Watching a video

Creating artwork

Reading an article

Completing puzzles

Listening to you teach

To help students process the content after they've been through the stations, you can hold a class discussion or assign questions to answer.

2. Use Task Cards

Like learning stations, task cards allow you to give students a range of content. Answering task cards can also be a small-group activity, adding variety to classes that normally focus on solo or large-group learning.

First, make or identify tasks and questions that you'd typically find on worksheets or in textbooks.

Second, print and laminate cards that each contain a single task or question. Or, use Teachers Pay Teachers to buy pre-made cards.

Finally, set up stations around your classroom and pair students together to rotate through them.

You can individualize instruction by monitoring the pairs, addressing knowledge gaps when needed.

3. Interview Students

Asking questions about learning and studying styles can help you pinpoint the kinds of content that will meet your class's needs.

While running learning stations or a large-group activity, pull each student aside for a few minutes. Ask about:

Their favourite types of lessons

Their favourite in-class activities

Which projects they're most proud of

Which kinds of exercises help them remember key lesson points

Track your results to identify themes and students with uncommon preferences, helping you determine which methods of instruction suit their abilities.

4. Target Different Senses Within Lessons

A lesson should resonate with more students if it targets visual, tactile, auditory and kinesthetic senses, instead of only one.
When applicable, appeal to a range of learning styles by:

Playing videos

Using infographics

Providing audiobooks

Getting students to act out a scene

Incorporating charts and illustrations within texts

Giving both spoken and written directions to tasks

Using relevant physical objects, such as money when teaching math skills

Allotting time for students to create artistic reflections and interpretations of lessons

Not only will these tactics help more students grasp the core concepts of lessons, but make class more engaging.
Prodigy, for example, is a hyper-engaging way to gamify math class in a way that worksheets simply cannot. 👇 Try Prodigy today - it's free, forever!
5. Share Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses

To familiarize students with the idea of differentiated learning, you may find it beneficial to explain that not everyone builds skills and processes information the same way.

Talking about your own strengths and weaknesses is one way of doing this.

Explain -- on a personal level - how you study and review lessons. Share tactics that do and don't work for you, encouraging students to try them.
Not only should this help them understand that people naturally learn differently, but give them insight into improving how they process information.
6. Use the Think-Pair-Share Strategy

The think-pair-share strategy exposes students to three lesson-processing experiences within one activity. It's also easy to monitor and support students as they complete each step.

As the strategy's name implies, start by asking students to individually think about a given topic or answer a specific question.

Next, pair students together to discuss their results and findings.

Finally, have each pair share their ideas with the rest of the class, and open the floor for further discussion.

Because the differentiated instruction strategy allows students to process your lesson content individually, in a small group and in a large group, it caters to your classroom's range of learning and personality types.

7. Make Time for Journaling

A journal can be a tool for students to reflect on the lessons you've taught and activities you've run, helping them process new information.
When possible at the end of class, give students a chance to make a journal entry by:

Summarizing key points they've learned

Attempting to answer or make sense of lingering questions

Explaining how they can use the lessons in real-life scenarios

Illustrating new concepts, which can be especially helpful for data-focused math lessons

As they continue to make entries, they should figure out which ones effectively allow them to process fresh content.

8. Implement Reflection and Goal-Setting Exercises

An extension of journaling, have students reflect on important lessons and set goals for further learning at pre-determined points of the year.

During these points, ask students to write about their favourite topics, as well as the most interesting concepts and information they've learned.
They should also identify skills to improve and topics to explore.
Based on the results, you can target lessons to help meet these goals. For example, if the bulk of students discuss a certain aspect of the science curriculum, you can design more activities around it.

9. Run Literature Circles

Organizing students into literature circles not only encourages students to shape and inform each other's understanding of readings, but helps auditory and participatory learners retain more information.

This also gives you an opportunity to listen to each circle's discussion, asking questions and filling in gaps in understanding.

As a bonus, some students may develop leadership skills by running the discussion.

This activity makes written content - which, at times, may only be accessible to individual learners with strong reading retention -- easier to process for more students.

10. Offer Different Types of Free Study Time

Free study time will generally benefit students who prefer to learn individually, but can be slightly altered to also help their classmates process your lessons.

This can be done by dividing your class into clearly-sectioned solo and team activities.
Consider the following free study exercises to also meet the preferences of visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners:

Provide audiobooks, which play material relevant to your lessons

Create a station for challenging group games that teach skills involved in the curriculum

Maintain a designated quiet space for students to take notes and complete work

Allow students to work in groups while taking notes and completing work, away from the quiet space

By running these sorts of activities, free study time will begin to benefit diverse learners - not just students who easily process information through quiet, individual work.

11. Group Students with Similar Learning Styles

Heterogenous grouping is a common practice, but grouping students based on similar learning style can encourage collaboration through common work and thinking practices.

This is not to be confused with grouping students based on similar level of ability or understanding.

In some cases, doing so conflicts with the "Teach Up" principle, which is discussed below.

Rather, this tactic allows like-minded students to support each other's learning while giving you to time to spend with each group. You can then offer the optimal kind of instruction to suit each group's common needs and preferences.

12. Give Different Sets of Reading Comprehension Activities

Instead of focusing on written products, consider evaluating reading comprehension through questions and activities that test different aptitudes.

Although written answers may still appeal to many students, others may thrive and best challenge themselves during artistic or kinesthetic tasks.
For example, allow students to choose between some of the following activities before, during and after an important reading:

Participating in more literature circles

Delivering a presentation

Writing a traditional report

Creating visual art to illustrate key events

Creating and performing a monologue as a main character or figure

Offering structured options can help students demonstrate their understanding of content as effectively as possible, giving you more insight into their abilities.

13. Assign Open-Ended Projects

Similar to evaluating reading comprehension, give students a list of projects to find one that lets them effectively demonstrate their knowledge.

Include a clear rubric for each type of project, which clearly defines expectations. Doing so will keep it challenging and help students meet specific criteria.
By both enticing and challenging students, this approach encourages them to:

Work and learn at their own paces

Engage actively with content they must understand

Demonstrate their knowledge as effectively as possible

As well as benefiting students, this differentiated instruction strategy will clearly showcase distinct work and learning styles.

14. Encourage Students to Propose Ideas for Their Projects

As well as offering set options, encourage students to take their projects from concept to completion by pitching you ideas.

A student must show how the product will meet academic standards, and be open to your revisions. If the pitch doesn't meet your standards, tell the student to refine the idea until it does. If it doesn't by a predetermined date, assign one of your set options.

You may be pleasantly surprised by some pitches.

After all, students themselves are the focus of differentiated instruction - they likely have somewhat of a grasp on their learning styles and abilities.

15. Analyze Your Differentiated Instruction Strategy on a Regular Basis

Even if you're confident in your overall approach, Carol Ann Tomlinson - one of the most reputable topic thought-leaders - recommends analyzing your differentiated instruction strategies:
Frequently reflect on the match between your classroom and the philosophy of teaching and learning you want to practice. Look for matches and mismatches, and use both to guide you. Analyze your strategy by reflecting on:

Content - Are you using diverse materials and teaching methods in class?

Processes - Are you providing solo, small-group and large-group activities that best allow different learners to absorb your content?

Products - Are you letting and helping students demonstrate their understanding of content in a variety of ways on tests, projects and assignments?

In doing so, you'll refine your approach to appropriately accommodate the multiple intelligences of students.

16. "Teach Up"

Teaching at a level that's too easily accessible to each student can harm your differentiated instruction efforts, according to Tomlinson.

Instead, she recommends "teaching up." This eliminates the pitfall of being stuck on low-level ideas, seldom reaching advanced concepts:

We do much better if we start with what we consider to be high-end curriculum and expectations -- and then differentiate to provide scaffolding, to lift the kids up. The usual tendency is to start with what we perceive to be grade-level material and then dumb it down for some and raise it up for others. But we don't usually raise it up very much from that starting point, and dumbing down just sets lower expectations for some kids.
Keeping this concept in mind should focus your differentiated teaching strategy, helping you bring each student up to "high-end curriculum and expectations."
Differentiated Math Instruction Strategies and Examples

17. Use Math EdTech that Adjusts Itself to Each Student

Some EdTech tools - such as certain educational math video games - can deliver differentiated content, while providing unique ways to process it.
For example, Prodigy adjusts questions to tackle student trouble spots and offers math problems that use words, charts and pictures, as well as numbers.
To the benefit of teachers, the game is free and curriculum-aligned for grades 1 to 8. You can adjust the focus of questions to supplement lessons and homework, running reports to examine each student's progress.
Join over 90 million students and teachers benefitting from Prodigy's differentiating power today. 👇 Try Prodigy today - it's free, forever!
18. Relate Math to Personal Interests and Everyday Examples

Clearly linking math to personal interests and real-world examples can help some learners understand key concepts.

Working with 41 grade 7 students throughout an academic year, a 2015 study published by the Canadian Center of Science and Education used contextual learning strategies to teach integers and increase test scores by more than 44%.

Striving for similar benefits may be ambitious, but you can start by surveying students. Ask about their interests and how they use math outside of school.

Using your findings, you should find that contextualization helps some students grasp new or unfamiliar math concepts.

There are many math-related games and activities to find inspiration to implement this tactic.

19. Play a Math-Focused Version of Tic-Tac-Toe

Help students practice different math skills by playing a game that's a take on tic-tac-toe.

Prepare by dividing a sheet into squares - three vertical by three horizontal. Don't leave them blank. Instead, fill the boxes with questions that test different abilities.
For example:

"Complete question X in page Y of your textbook"

"Draw a picture to show how to add fraction X and fraction Y"

"Describe a real-life situation in which you would use cross-multiplication, providing an example and solution"

You can hand out sheets to students for solo practice, or divide them into pairs and encourage friendly competition. The first one to link three Xs or Os - by correctly completing questions - wins.

So, depending on your preferences, this game will challenge diverse learners through either individual or small-group practice.

20. Create Learning Stations, without Mandatory Rotations

Provide differentiated math learning opportunities for your students by setting up unique learning stations across your classrooms, but forgoing mandatory rotations.

The idea comes from a grade 9 teacher in Ontario, who recommends creating three stations to solve similar mathematical problems using either:

Data - Provide spreadsheets, requiring students to manipulate data through trial and error

People - Group students into pairs or triads to tackle a range of problems together, supporting each other's learning

Things - Offer a hands-on option by giving each student objects to use when solving questions

Only allow students to switch stations if they feel the need. If they do, consult them about their decision. In each case, you and the student will likely learn more about his or her learning style.

Supplemented by your circulation between stations to address gaps in prior knowledge, this activity exposes students to exercises that appeal to diverse abilities.

Downloadable List of Differentiated Instruction Strategies and Examples

Click here to download and print a simplified list of the 20 differentiated instruction strategies and examples to keep at your desk.

Differentiated Instruction Strategies Infographic
Here's an infographic with 16 ideas from this article, provided by Educational Technology and Mobile Learning - an online resource for teaching tools and ideas.
Wrapping Up

With help from the downloadable list, use these differentiated instruction strategies and examples to suit the diverse needs and learning styles of your students.

As well as adding variety to your content, these methods will help students process your lessons and demonstrate their understanding of them.

The strategies should prove to be increasingly useful as you identify the distinct learning styles in - and learn to manage - your classroom.

Differentiated instruction strategies overlap in important ways with a number of other pedagogical approaches. Consider reviewing these supplementary strategies to find more ideas, combine different elements of each strategy, and enrich your pedagogical toolkit!

Active learning strategies put your students at the center of the learning process, enriching the classroom experience and boosting engagement.

As opposed to traditional learning activities, experiential learning activities build knowledge and skills through direct experience.

Project-based learning uses an open-ended approach in which students work alone or collectively to produce an engaging, intricate curriculum-related questions or challenges.

Inquiry-based learning is subdivided into four categories, all of which promote the importance of your students' development of questions, ideas and analyses.

Adaptive learning focuses on changing - or "adapting" - learning content for students on an individual basis, particularly with the help of technology.

👉 Create or log into your teacher account on Prodigy - a free game-based learning platform that delivers differentiated instruction, automatically adjusting questions to accommodate player trouble spots and learning speeds. Aligned with curricula across the English-speaking world, it's loved by more than 90 million students and teachers.
Create your account - it's free, forever!

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20 Differentiated Instruction Strategies and Examples [+ Downloadable List]

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As students with diverse learning styles fill the classroom, many teachers don't always have the time to plan lessons that use differentiated instruction (DI) to suit their distinct aptitudes.

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5 Innovative Ways To Create Positive Classroom Culture

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5 Innovative Ways To Create Positive Classroom Culture

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https://safsms.com/blog/teachers-goals-new-term/

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Plan with the student in mind!

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Find and save ideas about Goal setting activities on Pinterest.

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Have students create academic goals and share/document their progress.

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Students can create goals for collaboration (a digital version of this might be a Jamboard or Padlet)

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Students can create goals for collaboration (a digital version of this might be a Jamboard or Padlet)

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Even PreK and Kinder can create and track their goals (letter recognition)

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Even PreK and Kinder can create and track their goals (letter recognition)

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Find and save ideas about Student data tracking on Pinterest.

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Great Support for Online Teaching from ISTE: Setting Goals and Student Autonomy

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Great Support for Online Teaching from ISTE: Setting Goals and Student Autonomy

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After a long day of teaching, the last thing you want to do is stick around all evening to clean up and prepare for the next day.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways classroom organization can save time and resources - so your whole day runs smoothly.

We gathered the best classroom organization ideas created by teachers like you, and shared for teachers like you.

Don't let a messy, unorganized classroom take up all your time. Take a weight off your shoulders and try these 28 easy classroom organization hacks.

Classroom library organization

Keep your books and papers tidy with these 7 tips to organize your classroom library!

1. Use book bins

Traditionally organized bookshelves are great, but the time it takes to find the book you're looking for? Not so much.

To make things easier, use book bins. Grab some labelled bins and organize your books any way you want. Alphabetically, by reading level, by subject - the choice is yours!

In the video above, teacher and YouTuber, Early EDventures, shows how she organized her books by genre. Now she can easily find specific books for lessons, and her students can choose which kinds of stories they want to read.
You'll need:
If you really want to take your organization to the next level, sort the library pockets into book bins. You'll have no problem finding the right one when you need it!
You'll need:
3. Laminate worksheets and reuse them

When teaching basic concepts through repetitive practice, this trick is a lifesaver - and a paper-saver.

Laminate any worksheets you want to reuse, keep them in your library pockets, and give students dry-erase markers to fill them out. Then when they're done, erase and reuse!
You'll need:
4. Color-code your books

With a class of multiple students, keeping track of individual workbooks, notebooks and journals can feel impossible.

To overcome this, try color-coding the spines of each book to categorize them. Or, use different colored binders and bins to store them.

Split your students into different "color groups" to make collecting, handing out and finding specific students' books a breeze!
You'll need:
Colored duct tape, washable paint, or binders

Try this trick: laminate your anchor charts, roll them up and store them in a laundry hamper.

This teacher also labeled her anchor charts to make them even simpler to find. This idea makes it super easy to retrieve old anchor charts. Plus, your hampers will be nice decorations in the classroom!
You'll need:
6. Replace paper with dry erase placemats

With all the activities you do in one school day, you can waste tons of paper. Instead, stick dry erase placemats on tables and desks. Students can write out their thoughts, erase, and repeat!

Plus, you never have to hand them out - they're always right there for your class to use.

This idea is especially great for teachers with lots of IEP students. Quick access to personalized materials will help you support student needs right away.
You'll need:
School supply organization

Now that your library is organized, what do you do with your glue sticks? Pencils? First aid items? Try these 10 tips for organizing supplies and materials!

This teacher color-coded her Google Chromebooks, so every device had a designated spot and a matching cable. And, as an added bonus, the pop of color made her cart look fantastic!
You'll need:
Give your supplies their own designated station and make sure each article is accounted for at the end of the day - a great task for one of your students!

When students are ready to turn in their work, they will know exactly where to find the stapler, tape or even a pencil to ensure their name is written on their work!
You'll need:
4. Label your lids

It's another all-too-common vanishing act. Glue sticks, markers, white-out, you name it - if they come with lids, those lids will likely go missing.

Instead of constantly replacing these items, try labeling your lids with corresponding labels on the item.

This will help students to be mindful of matching the numbers on the item and lid before putting the items away.
You'll need:
Put pencils for each student in their own toothbrush travel cases to contain and keep track of pencils with ease.
You'll need: This classroom medical kit is just an example. Be sure to double-check with your school nurse and/or school policies regarding medication administration.
Create a kit that's your own style and let it complement your classroom theme!
You'll need:

Storage crate or box

Stencils or sticker labels (for labelling the kit)

Basic medical supplies -- ex. bandages (of various sizes), tissues, thermometer, tweezers, hand sanitizer, distilled water

Student allergy list

7. Think outside the storage box

Sometimes you can find a perfect fit when you look beyond traditional classroom storage.

For example, kitchen storage items can be effective for storing classroom supplies. This photo shows a coffee pod carousel used to store Play-Doh tubs.

8. Promote desk organization
"But I can't find my [school supply that's definitely hidden somewhere in a messy desk]!"
Organization shouldn't be your responsibility alone. Provide a handy guide on an anchor chart to help students keep their desks neat and tidy, and encourage individual accountability.

9. Turn chairs into storage spaces

Another way to organize students' individual supplies is to go beyond the desks and use chairs as storage.

Place velcro on the backs of student chairs and on important supplies like rulers, number lines, multiplication charts and more.
You'll need:
These "teacher survival" kits can be a great gift for colleagues, or just a way to help you through that post-lunch exhaustion.

Reminder: If your survival kit has any medication included, keep your kit locked and/or out of reach of students.
You'll need:
Tracking student information

It's your job to ensure that students are safe, happy and learning more every day.

Luckily, these 5 tips for keeping track of student information can help you take care of such an important task!

Not only do you save on paper, you'll also have a much easier time finding the information you need right away.
You'll need:
A thorough student data binder like the one above should include all your student data forms, tabs with student names and blank spots to easily switch goals and add new notes.
You'll need:
3. Make a yearly birthday board

Never miss a birthday with adorable birthday boards to remind you and your students whose birthday comes next.|
For a design like this one, you'll need:
4. Track patterns with an attendance record book

With an attendance record book, you won't miss a beat.

Log student names and attendance on each day of the year. Then, you can easily look back and track attendance patterns for future reports.
You'll need:
DIY passes make it easy to keep track of why students left class. Plus, they look much nicer (and are much easier to clean in between student use) than regular hall passes.
You'll need:
Organizing your day

Try these 5 organization tips for lesson prep and daily schedule tracking!

1. Keep a morning cart by your classroom door

Meet your new morning sidekick: the morning cart.

Add anything you need to your cart - for example, a space for students to hand in and pick up work, your day's lessons and resources or any supplies your students will need for the day.

Place the cart outside your classroom door, so students can be ready for the day before they even step into the room. Suddenly, morning routines will be a breeze!
You'll need:
2. Use a hanging calendar

Effortlessly change and track the date with this handy accessory for your wall.

Now, instead of writing out the date every morning, just flip your calendar to the next day! You'll need:

4. Make a sub tub

You can't always plan for your absent days. Sometimes things pop up out of nowhere, and that's why it's always best to be prepared.

Make a sub tub to ensure your substitute lesson plan for the following day is always ready to go.

Once you have your sub tub, get into the habit of updating it every evening before you leave - just in case. Include anything you think will help your substitute teacher understand their responsibilities for the day.
You'll need:
5. Plan lessons with a digital rotation chart

Digital rotation charts are helpful because:

1. They're harder to lose - you'll always know where to access the schedule and plan.

2. They keep students on track - Display your schedule so students know exactly where they're going next and what they need to be working on. This way, as soon as one group gets done playing Prodigy, they can swiftly move on to their independent work time without any confusion or hesitation.

3. They're easy to organize - With a digital format, you can efficiently color-code, add links and sort students into groups.

Try it and see for yourself!
You'll need:
A digital presentation program such as Google Slides or Keynote

These classroom organization tips will keep your work day productive and your classroom looking great. But don't forget the most important one:

Set boundaries for yourself

You have so much to organize every day - it can become overwhelming at times. So take some time for yourself and try to set limits. Right now, it's more important than ever to make sure you put your health first.

An organized school day leaves you more time to do what you're best at: shaping young minds, so every child you teach can reach their fullest potential.

Try out your favorite classroom organization ideas from this list and share some of your own tricks to inspire other teachers.

Not sure where? Join the Prodigy Teacher Facebook Group and join 6.5k likeminded educators who discuss Prodigy, teaching tips and more.

Happy organizing!

Want to set a new course for learning in your classroom this year?

Prodigy is an engaging game-based learning platform that's curriculum-aligned andeasy to use for educators and students alike. It's used by more than 50 million students, teachers and parents around the world.

Use your teacher account to send Assessments and view student progress, all while kids have tons of fun playing Prodigy Math Game and exploring new virtual worlds!
Help your students love learning this year.

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28 Classroom Organization Ideas to Make Your Year Easier

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Don't let a messy, unorganized classroom take up all your time. Use these easy classroom organization hacks to make your whole school year easier!

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This is one of our favorite classroom procedures because it's easy and cuts back on a big problem. "The no-name papers will disappear," says Kristin B.W.

Learn more: Free Highlight Your Name Poster at Teachers Pay Teachers

12. Greet every student at the door

"They behave better when they feel cared about," says Debra M. Don't we all?

13. Use a visual timer

A Time Timer or visual timer shows how much time is left in an activity, letting students answer the "how much time do we have" question on their own.

Buy it: Visual Timer at Amazon

14. Streamline hall passes

Having a hall pass that works for your class will make your day infinitely easier as students will know if they can leave your class, and other teachers will know the students are permitted to move around the school.

Learn more: Paintbrush Hall Pass/Create Art With Me and Hall Pass Ideas

15. Stamp your feedback

Get a set of self-inking stamps that you can use to give feedback on student work. Or for students who are working on completing work independently or improving behavior, use rubber stamps that address common concerns as well as data tracking for students with IEPs.

Buy it: Rubber Stamps at Mrs. D's Corner

16. Get their attention

Having a selection of attention-getters that you can alternate, depending on your and your students' moods, will help you direct students throughout the day.

17. Set up a cell phone charging station

It's important to establish classroom procedures for cell phones from the beginning. Having a cell phone charging station solves the problem of students checking their phones during instruction. Set up the expectation that students store phones in the station so there's no back-and-forth about how much charge they have (their phones charging is not the point).

Learn more: Tips and Tricks for Managing Cell Phones in Class

18. Prep task boxes to keep kids busy

Having a set of boxes with coloring sheets, worksheets, extra practice, and games that students can play quietly or independently gives students a way to stay busy and learning while other students are finishing work.

Learn more: Swoop Into Kindergarten

19. Assign classroom jobs

Assign class jobs so that every aspect of the day is taken care of, and so students have ownership over what happens in your room during the day. Set up a way to rotate the jobs each week, and once students have their preferred jobs, keep tabs on who is doing what so it feels fair.

Learn more: Big List of Classroom Jobs

20. Have students apply for class jobs

Once students know what the class jobs are, have them apply for a job to have for the semester or year. You'll have consistency from week to week, and students will get the experience of applying and managing their responsibilities.

Learn more: Free Student Job Application at Teachers Pay Teachers

21. Communicate with cups

Provide students with a set of green, yellow, and red cups. As they work, they start with the green cup on top. If they feel like they need help, they switch the cup to yellow. And if they are totally stuck, they put the red cup on top. You can respond to the red cups first.

Learn more: Ingenious Ways To Use Solo Cups/K Teacher Tiff

22. Make bulletin boards work for you

Interactive bulletin boards can help you collect exit tickets, give you information about what students think about a question, and provide a fun procedure for students to complete each day.

Learn more: Our Favorite Interactive Bulletin Boards

23. Tighten your exit ticket procedures

Create a predictable way to collect exit tickets so students can spend their time showing what they know instead of figuring out how to pass it in.

Learn more: Exit Ticket Ideas

24. Be strategic with seating

A Double E, Pairs, Four Square-these are all ways to arrange your classroom. Your classroom routines and procedures will go much smoother if the class is set up to facilitate everything from passing papers in and out to lining up and finding groups and partners to work with.

Learn more: Student Desk Arrangement Ideas/Lucky Little Learners

25. Organize classroom procedures around a theme

Who says your theme can't incorporate procedures? Choose a classroom theme and get creative. If your theme is "Under the Sea," have seashells on the wall where students can post exit tickets, an octopus cell phone charging station, and a paper return tray decorated like a coral reef.

Learn more: Our Favorite Classroom Theme Ideas

26. Sort students into groups creatively

If students are going to be working together at all, you'll save time by having a quick procedure to move them from whole group to pairs or teams. One idea: Use pairs of cards to have students match up with their partner. Another idea: While students are seated, place a colored button (one color per group) on each desk. Then, have students stand and find the people who have the same-color button. After they're finished, have students return the buttons to a jar up front. You can use buttons or any other materials (colored sticks, tiles, etc).

Learn more: Clever Ways To Put Students Into Groups

27. Simplify grading

For informal assessments, let students know if they did or did not meet the assignment expectations. This is easier on you and gives students a quick update that they don't have to calculate (7/10) or respond to (letter grades).

Learn more: Creative Ways To Check for Understanding

28. Make transitions magical

As students move from place to place in the room, use a "magic" wand and turn them all into snowflakes, unicorns, or yetis. Get silly with it, and as students get more familiar with this procedure, put them in charge of the magic wand.

Buy it: Magic Wand at Amazon

29. Post a visual schedule

A visual schedule outlining your classroom procedures is a great way to help students know what's coming next. And for students who process visual information easier than auditory, it's helpful to be able to see the schedule and refer to it throughout the day. An individual visual schedule for a student with autism or processing needs can help them move throughout the day as well.

Learn more: Free Visual Schedule Templates

30. Bring nonverbal reminders wherever you go

Hang nonverbal reminders around your neck/lanyard and use them to prompt students to follow procedures, anywhere you go.

Buy it: Pictoral Communication Cards at Twinkl

31. Buzz in answers

Once students are in groups, have them use answer buzzers to chime in. It reduces noise and calling out.

Buy it: Light and Sound Buzzers at Amazon

For more teacher tips, tricks, and ideas, be sure to sign up for our free newsletters to find out when they're posted!

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31 Must-Teach Classroom Procedures and Routines

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These seriously cut your stress. We've compiled the best classroom procedures and routine ideas from our community and around the web.

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Looking for new ways to spice up your classroom routines? Try one of these cool "attention grabbers."

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Studies prove that a student's vocabulary is the best predictor of academic success, so I have grown to LOVE using word wall bulletin boards in my middle school classroom. Not only do they look good, but they are a nearly effortless way to promote vocabulary growth.

(I must admit that my words almost got me in trouble last year when the new fire marshal issued me a "ticket" because I had words displayed within three feet of the ceiling. Hmph...Isn't that a bit much? The old fire marshal never had a problem with them; I guess he was pro- word.)

Word Walls: Interactive and Purposeful

We want kids to engage with the word wall. It shouldn't just be decorative. Giving kids a reason to engage with word walls gives them a purpose for being in the room. Word walls aren't just posters. They are learning tools and we have to USE them as such.

Here are 10 great ideas for using word walls in a middle school classroom.

1. Personal Word Wall

Begin by giving students an organizational handout so that they can make their own personal mini word wall.

A mini word wall is a wonderful source of reference for students to use when reading and writing. It is also perfect if wall space is limited because you can change your classroom display without risking that the students will forget the words.

It's great to watch students reference their personal word wall. I like to use foldable notes, like the one at the right. Folding notes make the word visible, but not the definition. Kids can then use the notes to quiz themselves. If you don't use foldables, a worksheet with boxes is fine. Make the boxes large enough so students can add visuals if they learn better this way.

I call our word notes the "mini wo-wa." The kids like when I make words up, and they are much more likely to use it if it has a silly name. It's pretty common for me to hear a student suggest a classmate add a word to his "mini wo-wa."

My kids know that once they use a new word, it's theirs to keep.

2. Include Definitions

Word walls work best when definitions are included. They become a huge dictionary that students can refer to when reading and writing. Many teachers think that the definitions don't have to be included, but experts say they do.

Imagine this. You are eager to learn Greek, so you enroll in a beginner Geek class. In the classroom, Greek words are hanging on a bulletin board. Just the words. There aren't any illustrations or familiar text to accompany them. The teacher is speaking Greek and expects you to participate, using those Greek words on the board.

The teacher asks for someone to share the name of their skýlos. You think you remember what a skylos is, but you're not totally sure. Is it your dog? You think so, but you're not positive. Is it your town? Street? Now you start to sweat, wondering if the teacher will call on you. Luckily, someone else shares that a skýlos is a dog.

You would have been much more confident participating if you had been able to look over at your life-sized dictionary. And eventually, those definitions will sink in.

3. Refer to the Words

During instruction, use your best Vanna White arm-sweep and refer to the words frequently, so students begin to understand their relevance. Our friends will learn that the words aren't chosen arbitrarily. Referring to the words also allows kids to make a visual connection between the word and its use.

4. Add Visuals

Assign kids to find or draw pictures that illustrate the word for homework and then add them to the word wall. This ensures that the kids are thinking about the words outside of class. The pictures also add an important visual quality.

5. Use a Concept Wheel

A "concept wheel" is another popular graphic organizer you can use to allow students to build meaning for themselves. Draw a circle on a piece of paper. Divide the circle into four parts. In the first part, "Biff" writes a word he would like to understand better. In the second part, Biff brainstorms a list of words he thinks of when he hears the word in the first box. In the third is the denotation, or formal definition of the word. In the fourth section, Biff paraphrases the definition. On the bottom, Biff writes a sentence in which the word is used correctly. Students learn best when they "construct" meaning of words on their own.

6. Become an Expert

Place students in groups of three or four and assign each student one or two words to become an expert on. You can Jigsaw the activity by allowing the experts to work with experts from other groups, if you'd like. Experts have to determine the best way to teach the rest of the group about the word. They can employ visuals, act it out, provide examples, or play a game. When the experts go back to their original group, they will teach their group all about the word.

7. Create Word Art

For our visual artists, encourage each student to choose a word and then create a visual representation of the meaning of the word. They might even create it using the letters of the word. For example, in the image above, the word "conflict" looks like it's fighting, the word "impact" is crashing into a wall.

I have found this to be an excellent hands-on way to teach new words to older students. It gives them the spelling and the meaning of the word all at once and helps quicken the transition of the new words into long-term memory. The kids love doing hands-on artwork and seeing what others have created. Each word is created on a half sheet of regular copy paper and by the end of the school year, we have some cool art to add to our word wall.

8. Matchmaking (or as I call it, Wo-Wa Speed Dating)

Each student is given a word and an index card. They write everything they know about their word on the card, definitions, examples, everything. They then rotate, sharing the word card with a partner. Together, the two decided on a commonality or relationship between their words.

Impose a predetermined time limit, so students can move on, but before they do, randomly ask one group to share their findings with the class. If your friends are like mine, they are much more likely to stay on task if there is a chance they will have to be accountable for sharing their findings.

9. Write a Poem

Ask students to write a poem using as many word wall words as possible. Alternatively, task students with creating an extended metaphor poem about one of the words.

10. Word Ad

In this variation of Become an Expert, a group is assigned a word or two to teach the rest of the class. They should begin by brainstorming all possible uses of the word. Then they create a skit in which they "sell" the word to the class.

One of the best word ad skits I've seen took place during our study of nonfiction terminology. One group was tasked with creating a sales pitch for the word graphics. To start their presentation, the group read some instructions for assembling a swing set, and when they got to the part about requiring nails, brought out manicure supplies. The class quickly caught on the importance of including visual representations, especially when writing informational text, such as Feature Articles.

How to Get Started Using Word Walls

First, let's go over the three tiers of vocabulary words.

As an ELA teacher, I begin the year by hanging Tier 2 testing "power" words. These command verbs are the KEY to successful test-taking, as students will come across them on virtually every test they will ever take every subject.

I also hang Tier 3 literary terms, because our first big units of the year involve fiction and narrative writing. You can do this too. Just display high-frequency words used across content areas and words that are commonly used in your first unit of study.

By the time we are ready to move on to nonfiction, the kids are familiar with the literary term. So I take them down and add our nonfiction words.

Recommendations for Displaying Word Walls

Do laminate the words, if you intend to have students manipulate them.

Don't make the same mistake that I did last year when I decided to become Mrs. Glossy vonBlindyou. Our laminated words were so shiny that there was a bad glare at certain times of the day. I'm pretty sure I temporarily blinded at least one kid. Lesson learned: I should have made them matte.

As for display, the words don't have to be displayed on a bulletin board. If space is an issue, hang them in various places around the room. If space is not an issue, good for you! I won't let my...sniff... jealousy get in the way of our blossoming friendship. 😉

If you have other ideas for using word walls, please share! I'm always looking for new ways for my students to interact with vocabulary words.

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10 Ways to Use a Word Wall for Vocabulary Growth - ELA Buffet

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Studies prove that a student's vocabulary is the best predictor of academic success, so I have grown to LOVE using word wall bulletin boards in my middle school classroom. Not only do they look good, but they are a nearly effortless way to promote vocabulary growth.

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15 Genius Lining-up Strategies to Make Your Life Easier

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Lining up shouldn't be a stressful, painful, or lengthy process. Yet, we know it can be a struggle, so we did some digging to find some great lining-up strategies, tested and approved by teachers. Here are some of the best ideas for getting your students to line up quickly and quietly.

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Are you using a Learning Management System (LMS) to connect with students, provide resources, foster interaction or create assignments? With the rise of online and blended learning models, there are many varieties of LMS geared toward the creation of virtual classrooms. Whether you are using a free option, like Edmodo, or your school has implemented a fee-based LMS, such as eChalk or Blackboard, here are some tips to help you create an effective virtual classroom.

1. Provide Class Notes

One of the simplest ways to use an LMS or virtual classroom is to provide students with class notes or presentations to follow up the learning. Posting notes or presentations for students will provide them with access to information if they miss class. In addition, this frees students up from taking notes and allows them to focus instead on interactions or activities during the lessons.
Tip: While you could simply provide your notes to students, helping those who were absent to catch up, you might also consider assigning a student each day to share their notes with the class. This could provide an avenue for building a collaborative community.
2. Give Students Timely Feedback

Feedback to students is very important when it comes to learning new content. One of the challenges that students might find in participating in an online class is response time from the teacher.The success of your online course or virtual classroom depends on making sure your students know that they will receive timely feedback as well as knowing that you are available for questions. The easiest way to do this is to make sure you respond to questions and provide feedback whenever students submit an assignment.

This also allows for individual communication between teacher and student. A student will then experience better success knowing they've gotten a unique individualized response to the work they submitted.
Tip: Make students aware of your posting schedule. If you have a specific time when you will be providing feedback to online assignments, let them know so they can check in for feedback about their work.
3. Schedule Assignments
Tip: Make referring to the calendar a routine for your classroom and students. Point to the calendar often and make sure you keep it updated. If an assignment is due on a certain date, make sure you stick to that due date to hold students accountable.
Take advantage of the calendar associated with your LMS. By scheduling assignments and providing due dates, this will automatically become part of your students' calendar inside of your virtual classroom. This will help students stay organized as well as allow them to know and understand what assignments, events, or tests are coming up in your class.

4. Provide Clear Instructions
Tip: Continue building the collaborative community by giving students the option to crowdsource questions about the assignment to the entire class or build assignments that require a collaborative element.
Students completing assignments online do not have the luxury of the teacher being right there to answer questions about the assignment. Along with being available and responding to any questions posted, make sure you provide clear instructions for anything you post to your virtual classroom. By providing example projects or rubrics, the student has access to appropriate information to complete any assignment to the best of their ability.

5. Foster Interaction

Ultimately, we want the virtual classroom to become a place where students share information, ask questions, and comment on each other's thoughts. While this may not happen right away, there are ways to encourage this type of discussion.
Tip: Always monitor student posts for proper Digital Citizenship. Make it known that you are monitoring comments in the virtual classroom to create an expectation for students to use it properly. Tip: This is especially useful for parents of younger students that need or want to monitor their Internet use. Do not expect a 1st grade student to log into a virtual classroom on their own, but the resources available for the parent to access are just as useful.
One suggestion is to use commenting as part of your homework assignment. If you post a reading or question, require your students not only to comment their original thoughts but reply to one of their peers' original comments. This can foster interaction as a part of the natural flow of work in a virtual classroom. Students will then develop routines for visiting your virtual classroom to ask questions and respond to each other's comments.

6. Parent Involvement

Let parents know what is available in your virtual classroom and what you are trying to accomplish. This will enable parents to get involved with what is happening in the classroom when they do not get information from the students themselves. Many of the school based virtual classrooms have a parent portal that allows them to view information related to their child, such as upcoming assignments due or class events, without being able to participate completely in the virtual classroom.

What tips do you have for creating a virtual classroom?

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6 Tips for Creating Effective Virtual Classrooms

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Are you using a Learning Management System (LMS) to connect with students, provide resources, foster interaction or create assignments? With the rise of online and blended learning models, there are many varieties of LMS geared toward the creation of virtual classrooms. Whether you are using a free option, like Edmodo, or your school has implemented a fee-based LMS, such as eChalk or Blackboard, here are some tips to help you create an effective virtual classroom.

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The way a lesson is laid out online can make all the difference in whether a student can follow along and execute it successfully.

When our classrooms moved online this year, many of us scrambled to find ways to engage students with lessons remotely, only to find that it was no simple task. Many of us, myself included, didn't know where to start.

Even the most basic communications, like the daily lessons that I posted for students, were trickier than I anticipated; my posts careened from being too wordy to too vague, from too content-heavy to too task-heavy. Students felt overwhelmed by their new, independent workload, and I wasn't streamlining our learning effectively. It just wasn't easy to transform a 50-minute lesson into a clear, pithy post that would serve my high school students.

Fortunately, my students weren't shy about giving feedback that helped me hone my daily posts, and over time, I was able to make my lessons more navigable, readable, and engaging.

7 Guidelines to Set the Stage for Online Learning

1. Same time, same place: Post your lessons in the same place every day. Once students know where you'll be posting your materials for the day-whether it's on a certain page of a learning management system or via email-be consistent and encourage kids to bookmark the landing page. Be sure to publish at the same time every day, too. If other teachers in your school can align and post in the same way, all the better.

2. Remind and reinforce: Your first few posts should begin with reiterating where and when students should check for lessons. I always posted my daily lessons in the announcements section of our learning management system at 8:00 a.m., and my first week of posts included a reminder that students should always check that space at or after that time. When students or parents emailed with questions, including a stock phrase about when and where to locate lessons helped keep everyone in the know.

3. Emphasize the date: Title your posts the day of the week and date. Because some students may fall behind and others may want to refer back to lessons, organizing with the date keeps your posts immutably anchored and sequenced. Students won't always see the continuity implied in posts that are labeled with the lesson's focus (such as a thesis statement lesson that precedes the lesson on quotation selection), but they'll definitely know that Tuesday, September 1, comes before Wednesday, September 2.

4. 1-2-3: Use numbers to drive students through your lessons. For me, the first item listed was always attendance, and after that, I listed content for the lesson, relevant documents, and links for submissions. I got positive feedback from students when I kept my posts light on language, organized by simple numerical signposts. This was also a helpful way for me to see when my lesson was getting out of hand; once I got to number five, I knew that I was probably at the outer limits of what most students could reasonably tolerate from me in a day.

5. Link everything: During online learning, students are already in a tough spot (just like we are), and any little roadblock-like being unable to locate a rubric-is going to feel insurmountable. It takes an extra minute to link a document, a helpful website, or an assignment submission, but if you don't have links in the post, you'll spend a lot more time answering emails and chasing after kids who didn't do the work or didn't do the work properly.

6. Remember when...? At the end of most posts, I included a summary of the previous day's post, cut down to the most important points and links. This was usually just a few sentences long, harvested from the previous post in a simple cut-and-paste, but students appreciated the convenience of being able to access refresher materials easily. I found this was also helpful for kids who tended to access the course inconsistently; if they tried to jump into a day's lesson, this brief review was helpful in orienting them to the day's learning. And, because this is the last section of the post, students who didn't need it became acclimated to skipping it, which was easier to do at the end of the post than if it had been inserted elsewhere.

7. Include a video overview: Lastly, create a short screen cast with a voice-over that walks students through the day's post. This was a step I skipped for the first few weeks of remote learning, and when my students asked for it, it felt a little silly-why do they want a two-minute video of me reading the post to them? But once I did it, I saw that it helped knit together all of the seemingly disparate pieces of the day's lesson, giving students a more holistic view of their "in class" time that day. This also turned out to be a helpful way to proofread my own work, ensuring that none of those typos or dead links made it to my final publication. Once I made a video overview, I inserted it at the top of my post, above the first element in my list.

Online learning will never replicate our time in the classroom, but following these simple steps can help keep learning accessible, which is a pretty good place to start.

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7 Guidelines for Setting Up Clear Online Lessons

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The way a lesson is laid out online can make all the difference in whether a student can follow along and execute it successfully. When our classrooms moved online this year, many of us scrambled to find ways to engage students with lessons remotely, only to find that it was no simple task.

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5 Components for Delivering Effective Virtual Instruction.

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5 Components for Delivering Effective Virtual Instruction.

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Looking for more IDB tools? Check out this link!

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Looking for more IDB tools? Check out this link!

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Let's face it. When you're not present in your classroom, you miss your whiteboard.

It's convenient. Everyone in the room can see it. You can write text and draw pictures on it, then erase it clean in an instant.

When you're teaching remotely, the physical whiteboard may be gone. But the concept of using it to teach doesn't have to be.

In this post, you'll see 15 options for teaching remotely with whiteboards. With most of these options, you can ...

Start a video call using your preferred video call platform (Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.). Share your screen so students can see your whiteboard.

Use a screen recording tool to capture video you can share with students later. Use a tool like Screencastify, Loom, Snagit, the Game Bar app in Windows, etc.

Have another idea for online whiteboarding for remote learning? Share it in a comment below!

10 Online Whiteboard Options for Remote Learning

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Recording real whiteboards

If the real thing will work, you may not need to go digital. Grab an actual white board or a sheet of paper. Either of these options may work for you!

Use a real whiteboard

Use your phone as a document camera

This is a fun hack that's easier than you'd think! Start a video call. Then use a second device -- a smartphone is best -- and join the video call with it. Set the phone on a tall stack of books with the camera facing down at a paper (or small whiteboard). Instant document camera!

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Ready to take your teaching skills -- and student learning -- to another level?

Check out our online courses. ALL under $50!

©2022 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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15 online whiteboard options for remote learning

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Let's face it. When you're not present in your classroom, you miss your whiteboard. It's convenient. Everyone in the room can see it. You can write text and draw pictures on it, then erase it clean in an instant. When you're teaching remotely, the physical whiteboard may be gone.

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Scotsdale Morning Assessments begin by getting in Rhithm

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Scotsdale Morning Assessments begin by getting in Rhithm

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50 Ways to Check for Understanding

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One of the common practices of any art, regardless of its form, is a focus on fundamentals. Whether practicing scales for a musician, free throws for a basketball player, or movements for an actor, fundamentals bring focus to our actions and present scenarios the practicing artist might face in the world.

If teaching is an art, then formative assessment-the planned, ongoing processes used to elicit and use evidence of student learning-is one of its fundamentals. During this singular moment in the lives of students, it has never been more important to understand student learning in the moment and use that understanding to drive instruction. As our research has shown, the learning gaps between students that will emerge during this period will likely be substantial. What we don't know is how this crisis will affect those students individually: where specifically students may fall behind and the specific content they will need to catch up. Formative assessment can help bridge the gaps in our understanding by going deep into what students know and can do, and providing students the opportunity to collaborate on the next steps in completing their unfinished learning.
1. Formative assessment lets you see where students are
Here are three reasons to use formative assessment in your virtual classroom right now-and some ideas on how to make it work for you and your students.

Formative assessment is an invaluable way to lock down an understanding of a student's level of current mastery. Even under the best conditions, the interruption to students' daily routines during school breaks and other absences can interfere with how much of what they've learned students retain. Under circumstances like those we are living through-the trauma of a global pandemic, resulting in illness, loss of life, and economic insecurity-will likely limit what knowledge students can build and retain even more than a run-of-the-mill interruption to their learning.
2. Formative assessment can increase student engagement
Tip for application: Now is the time to examine your spring curricular map and consider what students might miss. Formative assessment provides tools for understanding student mastery of that content, information you can use to uncover what essential content to reinforce before summer break and where potential group-level learning gaps will lie for those students in the fall.

Formative assessment can provide opportunities to keep engagement high during virtual instruction. Doing formative assessment well is all about providing opportunities for students to reflect on the learning, set next steps to build their understanding, and act on those plans to continue toward mastery. Especially when our opportunities to interact with students have become limited, schooling structures that can provide that opportunity for students to engage are critical. As a process instead of a test, formative assessment practices are remarkably portable to virtual environments.

Several formative resources, including those listed in our post "75 digital tools and apps teachers can use to support formative assessment in the classroom," provide opportunities for instructional enrichment or supplementation to support whole-group instruction. Additionally, whole-group classroom practices, such as Think-Pair-Share, Carrousel Brainstorming, and ABCD Cards, all of which are described in our post "27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning," are all focused around helping students interact with content and interact with each other.

While you may not have access to the same physical tools or spaces for which many formative techniques were designed, the combination of the digital tools linked here and some creative thinking can help you adapt these techniques to a video-based virtual environment.

Tip for application: One way to try Carrousel Brainstorming digitally is to work with an application that allows for easy file sharing, like Google Drive. Break your class into groups of about four students. For the sake of clarity, let's say that puts you at eight groups.

Create eight versions of the same document with nothing but instructions on it for each group (in Google's case, you'll use a Google Doc). The instructions should ask each group to, collaboratively, do something specific, like provide as many answers as they can think of to an open-ended question. Consider labeling each document with a group number or name to make it easier to keep track.
3. Formative assessment can help kids take ownership of their learning
Once groups are done writing answers, share the documents with other groups so that each group has a chance to review a document they didn't contribute to. You can ask them to insert comments to share what they think about the other group's responses or add information they think is missing. You can follow up with a revised document that captures accurate information from the group documents and allows you to fill in holes students may have had or clear up misconceptions.

Formative assessment can help build student ownership of learning, encouraging independent progress while teachers may be less able to attend to the needs of individual students. As any teacher knows, underlining the 'why' of learning is essential when building persistence and helping students make the connections between key ideas across specific skills. With less opportunities to communicate with students directly, and an increasing reliance on supplemental virtual instructional resources, using formative assessment techniques to support student goal setting or similar practices can help students understand the importance of continuing to work on key skills and give their best effort.

Quickly and unexpectedly, students have all taken a central role in governing their own learning (and their families have become your paraeducators!) Formative assessment practices help move students from learning to reflecting on their learning, and from reflecting on learning to valuing their own learning and that of their peers. Most formative assessment techniques require students to reflect on content in terms of what they have learned, and support their classmates in doing the same. This can mean asking students to identify what they'd like to learn next, making students the primary speakers in a class discussion, or even asking students in small groups to gauge each other's understanding.

Regardless of the specific approach, formative assessment responds to the unique learning characteristics of this environment by letting students take their place in the driver's seat of learning-and frees teachers to carefully examine that learning and use that information to guide instructional next steps. While empowering and activating learners has always been part of the secret sauce driving student growth, it's particularly important when asking students to commit energy to learning outside the social context of a school building.

Tip for application: Our recent webinar series on empowering students as independent learners offers lots of concrete tips for building flexible thinking and reflection on learning progress.
In closing
One simple idea you could try, especially if you have older students, is to have students keep a journal during school closures. Google Drive will work well for this kind of assignment, too. How often you have them journal and how much you want them to say depends on their grade level, of course. If you wanted to provide writing prompts, you could encourage students to write about the challenges they see ahead every Monday, and you could ask them to reflect on what went well, what didn't, and what they might try differently the following week.

While the fundamentals of formative assessment may not be different during school closures, applying formative assessment during distance learning will almost certainly require thinking about things in a completely different way. Developing these fundamentals can help rebuild the learning culture of your class, however, and make it easier for everyone to power through the sometimes isolating effects of distance learning.
Questions for teachers
Visit our Formative Assessment Archive here on Teach. Learn. Grow. to explore more posts that could inform your practice. And get the conversation started with colleagues using the following discussion questions.

What are three reasons to use formative assessment in virtual instruction? How can you apply these to your classroom?

How does formative assessment boost student engagement?

In what ways does formative assessment help students take ownership of their learning?

What are some ways you can integrate formative assessment strategies into your current classroom structure?

How can you model formative assessment strategies in staff meetings, PLCs, and meetings with teachers?

How do you create an environment that supports formative assessment as a process for student ownership and engagement?

How can you use formative assessment data to drive school-wide instructional change?

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3 reasons to use formative assessment in your virtual instruction-and tips on how to go about it

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One of the common practices of any art, regardless of its form, is a focus on fundamentals. Whether practicing scales for a musician, free throws for a basketball player, or movements for an actor, fundamentals bring focus to our actions and present scenarios the practicing artist might face in the world.

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75 Digital Tools for Formative Assessment

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75 Digital Tools for Formative Assessment

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75 digital tools and apps teachers can use to support formative assessment in the classroom

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We’ve compiled an extensive list of 75 digital tools that can help teachers use formative assessment to elicit evidence of student learning.

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The evidence is in the practice

ESSA Level 3 correlation evidence in math and ELA, earned by teachers running frequent formative assessments.

When teachers run 30+ formative questions a week, the research is clear: they get more data-driven, their students get more engaged. Wayground is built to make that practice enjoyable ot run, attainable to fit a class period, and habitual enough to last past September.

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Quizizz is now Wayground | Teacher AI and Resources

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Find standards-aligned resources that engage every student. Wayground (formerly Quizizz) helps teachers differentiate instruction with AI and track student progress.

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Kahoot! | Learning games | Make learning awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun to 1+ billion players every year at school, at work, and at home.

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We all have the Microsoft Whiteboard App in IDBs! It's super useful, read on to learn more.

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We all have the Microsoft Whiteboard App in IDBs! It's super useful, read on to learn more.

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Digital Online Whiteboard App | Microsoft Whiteboard | Microsoft 365

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The intelligent whiteboard and infinite canvas for creative collaboration that’s included with Microsoft 365.

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Assessment rubrics, by setting benchmarks for student learning and achievement, are effective tools for evaluating a wide variety of student learning activities.

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RubiStar is a tool to help the teacher who wants to use rubrics, but does not have the time to develop them from scratch.

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Award-winning reading solution with thousands of leveled readers, lesson plans, worksheets and assessments to teach guided reading, reading proficiency and comprehension to K-5 students

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Any great teacher or coach is constantly assessing performance and giving timely and direct feedback. Formative assessments are paramount in the math classroom. There are some assessments that are more formal than others, but you have to plan them in order to make sure they happen. Also, you shouldn't do assessments just because you're supposed to do them. As teachers, we use, and value, formative assessment because they inform our feedback to students and the way we'll deliver instruction in the future.

Sometimes you need to slow down the instruction, or maybe you need to speed things up. Formative assessments reveal the misconceptions and missteps that students make. You can respond quickly and reinforce the correct process for students. If you just give assignments and correct them for grades, without specific feedback or adjustments in teaching, then the assessments won't have the impact on learning that you crave.

I'd like to share a list of formative assessment that I love to use when working in my grade level math class as well as my intervention classes. Usually, intervention classes are smaller and that gives you so much more opportunity to assess and give feedback. The best math teacher I ever worked with was also the teacher that gave more specific and timely feedback than anyone else I've ever seen. I watched the impact her daily feedback had on her students over the year. It reinforced for me that the more feedback you give students, the more you help students move forward in their math learning.

I start each class with formative assessments in the form of math mazes. This is my go to as students walk into the room. They pick up their maze and start working on it. The daily maze has problems related to what we're learning. Watching students work through their daily maze gives me information about where the whole class is with the topic as well as each individual student.

I personally check each student's maze every single day. This gives me a chance to check in with every student and give them feedback. If they have no errors, then they get a stamp and they move onto the problem of the day (a more complex problem that takes some time to work through). When there's an error I either ask students a probing question, or give them a quick pointer. This gives formative assessment to every students every day. It's a great way to start my class each day and ensures that students get feedback and I get a snapshot of how my students are doing. I'm not sure what's better than that.

Want to try out a free math maze today? Sign up for the Maze of the Month club and get a free maze on middle school math concepts sent right to your inbox each month. Plus, you'll get an adding and subtracting integers maze right away.
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Can't wait to see you there.

Personal whiteboards

There are only a couple of things that I couldn't live without as a teacher, and personal whiteboard sleeves is one of them. You can pose a question or problem on the board and then you can see the whole class' response instantly.

Once again, with a quick check you can see how students are doing. Then, you can let students know if they got it or if there is something that they need to go and fix. As a teacher this takes a lot of concentration, but you'll be able to see students really learn when they go through this process. We use these whiteboards just about every day. As I'm talking about many of the other types of formative assessment, the personal whiteboard sleeves are a tool that can easily facilitate these strategies.

Exit ticket poster

A couple of years ago one of my colleagues had this idea to have a poster with 5 questions on it. Then, we used this poster as a quick go-to for exit tickets. I've placed the poster in two different places in my room as well as in students' notebooks. When it's time for an exit ticket I can just tell everyone to respond to question 4. Boom! Simple and done.

I give students a post-it or a quarter sheet of paper to complete this exit ticket on. No matter which question I use I get great formative assessment info that helps inform my instruction for the next day.

We use task cards as a practice activity in every unit that I teach. Usually, students don't have time to complete all of the task cards. One little trick I've learned is to keep a couple sets of taskcards on hand as formative assessments. I have student complete the problems on their whiteboards and I can see quickly where they are tripping up.

Taskcards are great for a quick formative assessment- just choose one or two to have all students answer and then move on. (They're also great for quick sponge activities, cyclical review, and more.)

My Favorite No

A few years ago at one school we read the book Making Thinking Visible, and it introduced the strategy of "my favorite no". It became a fan favorite to use at my school. In this strategy, you give some form of exit ticket or assessment. Then, you go through the answers and make a pile of yes and no based on who's got it and who doesn't yet. Finally, look through the no's and find the one that illustrates a common misconception or is the closest to being correct.

The next class, share with students your "favorite no" and why you liked it. You can explain what the student got right, and then what we can learn from the mistake they made.

This strategy is super simple and it helps incentivize actually looking through the exit tickets because you have a plan of what to do with them. It also gives students a chance to look at others' work and try to figure out why an answer was the teacher's favorite no. It's formative assessment at its finest.

Google Form

I have loved Google Forms since we started using them years ago. They're easy to make and assign, and you get feedback right away. Google Forms are my go-to assessment for my intervention class. Students complete one every day and then analyze their errors.

You can use Google Forms to create math problems or reflection questions. Also, you get a lot of information from the responses- they even create little graphs and chart for you. My heart gets a little happy every time I see these graphs and charts that are made for me. With a quick glimpse I can see how students are doing overall. With just a little bit more time, you can also see each students' quiz individually.

If you have access to tech devices for students, Google Forms are an invaluable way to instantly get formative assessment information.

Which mathematician is right?

There are a variety of ways to analyze errors. The "Which mathematician is right?" strategy is similar to "my favorite no" because students analyze other "students'" work. Then, they decide who they think did the problem correctly and explain why they agree and disagree with hypothetical students' work. If your students struggle to know why one solution is right and the other isn't, then they might not really get the concept.

After students have created their responses in writing they can share them with their partner. I like to give them a minute or two to compare their answers with their partners and then let them share out with the class. Everyone doesn't need to share out, but letting 3 or 4 kids share their insight provides good conversation. This exercise pushes to students to a deeper level of analysis, revealing their understandings or misunderstandings.

Muddiest Point

The muddiest point is an exit ticket where students identify what is still unclear for them. It can be used as an exit ticket on paper, or you can have students write their muddiest point on their whiteboard. It just depends on the situation and how long you think the responses will be. The responses on the whiteboards really shouldn't be longer that a sentence or they get really hard to read.

You can see which parts of the concept are difficult for everyone at a glance. You might want to start them off with a sentence starter like: After today's lesson I am still confused about... This gives them the words they need to get started. When all is said and done, once they've told you where they're getting stuck, you can give them some quick pointers to get them back on track.

Fist to 5

I use "fist to 5" insead of thumbs up/thumbs down. There's a lot of variation in understanding and students can show that one one hand. A one means that they don't get it at all and a 5 means that it is crystral clear. This is a quick check you can do between the lesson and the practice. It will give you an idea of who to check on at the beginning of the practice.

Emoji scale reflection

The emoji reflection exit ticket is very similar to the 1 to 5 scale except that students shade in the emoji that matches their understanding the best. They also have to justify their choice by writing an I can statement of what they can do or what they need to work on.

Doing this assessment with the emojis seems to take down some student anxiety about self-evaluation. Students are familiar with emojis and they don't have to show the whole class their response.

Two truths and a lie

Playing two truths and a lie makes a great formative assessment strategy. It comes from a game I remember playing as a child. We often played it to introduce ourselves and we had to create two truths and a lie about our own lives. It's fun and for math purposes it gets students to identify two correct answers and one lie. They have to think a little differently about the math.

Another twist on this strategy is for the students to create the statements. There's a lot of thinking that is involved and you'll see if they can purposely make a mistake. Then, you can read students' stories to the whole class to review learning. You could really ham it up and act like you are on a tv talk show (or not).

Explain it to an alien

Sometimes a great way to see if students understand something is for them to just explain the steps. Instead of telling them to rewrite the steps you can have them explain it to an alien, a 5 year-old, or a monkey. This will make them have to not just copy their notes, but to use language that makes sense to them AND to someone else who doesn't know how to do what students have been learning about.

Sentence starters with quick writes

I've mentioned sentence starters already in this post, but they deserve their own section. For 5 years I taught English Language Learners. Many of them came to me with no English skills. I learned the power of the sentence stem back then and have used it with all sorts of students.

I find that some students just can't get started, but with just a little boost they have great ideas and thoughts to write. If you try nothing else from this whole blog post please use sentence starters. Give the kids who need scaffolding some easy support.

Check out 3 ways we use sentence starters to help students show what they know.

Kahoot

Kahoot is a game that students love to play. It's a whole class game and can easily be used as a formative assessment. At the end of the game it gives you the option to save the results to a Google Sheet. It will give you a detailed report of how students did. You can so this quickly at the end of class with a short game of 3 to 5 questions. My favorite Kahoot games are short and sweet.

When playing, you'll want to have student show their work on a paper or a whiteboard and keep reminding them that getting it correct is better than fast. When you download the report at the end of the game, you'll quickly see how the whole class does, and each individual student as well.

Quizizz

Quizizz is a similar to Kahoot, but students can go at their own pace (I like to assign as "homework" and turn off the question timer). There is still a game component, but they work on their screeen at their pace. They think it's fun and you get a lot of data from it. I used to use Quizizz for my daily quizzes. It works well for that.

Making a formative assessment plan

Keep in mind that this is a short list of ideas for formative assessments. One of my favorite math teacher books has 75 formative assessments. So, now make a plan for how you are going to incorporate formative assessment into you class and what actions you will take as a result. We can't wait to hear more about what you're doing in your classroom. Let us know on Instagram @ideagalaxyteacher or on Facebook at Math Idea Galaxy.

Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!

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15 Math Formative Assessments Strategies That Rock - Idea Galaxy

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Any great teacher or coach is constantly assessing performance and giving timely and direct feedback. Formative assessments are paramount in the math classroom. There are some assessments that are more formal than others, but you have to plan them in order to make sure they happen.

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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Top 3 Strategies for Solving Word Problems: Any Grade!

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Top 3 Strategies for Solving Word Problems: Any Grade!

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Strategies for Solving Complicated Problems

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With all the excitement and anticipation of being a first-year teacher, there's often a sense of anxiety mixed in leading up to that first day. But have no fear! With these five essential resources for first-year teachers, you'll have everything you need to put your mind at ease, build confidence, and be fully prepared for your teaching journey.
Plus, raise money for your classroom by launching a campaign with Scholastic today!
Teaching Tools
Filled with helpful how-to articles, book lists, classroom activities, and free lesson ideas, Teaching Tools is the first-and most frequent-stop for any first-year teacher. Whether you're looking for the best books to improve classroom behavior or tips and strategies to help your students become stronger readers, Teaching Tools is the place for you. Updated weekly, this free teacher resource has answers and advice for first-year and veteran teachers alike. The Teacher Newsletter is a must-have resource for every teacher, from rookie to veteran.

Classroom Library Essentials
If you're a new teacher, setting up your classroom library is going to be at the top of your to-do list. A high-quality classroom library will not only have a tremendous impact on your students' reading success, it will help them build the skills necessary for success inside and outside the classroom, too. Of course, before you start building your classroom library, you'll need a plan. This post highlights 11 classroom library essentials and is a great resource to help you get started creating your very own classroom library!

Scholastic Book Clubs
First-year teachers always want to know the best and most affordable ways to stock their classroom libraries. While thrift stores and library book sales are a great place to start, Scholastic Book Clubs makes it easy to line your shelves with student favorites and sought-after titles. It's a great way to instill a love of reading among your students and earn free books for your classroom library at the same time. To start growing your classroom library, create an account with Scholastic Book Clubs today.

Professional Development Books
Whether you're looking for innovative ways to engage reluctant readers or are in need of some tips to teach essential math skills, these professional development books from Scholastic are a great resource to turn to. While you'll learn and grow each day you're in the classroom, these professional development books will help you reach all of your students and take your teaching to the next level.

Scholastic Teachables
During your first year of teaching, time is a precious commodity. With ready-to-go lessons and time-saving resources for every grade, subject, and skill level, Scholastic Teachables makes it easy to engage students with fun and enriching activities. It's a great tool for new teachers who love to plan ahead and are looking for inspiration for their own lessons. Sign up today and try Scholastic Teachables for free for 30 days.

These are just a few of the most essential teaching resources you can turn to as a new teacher. For more must-have books, tools, and classroom favorites to help you ease into your first year of teaching, check out these teacher resources from Scholastic.

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5 Essential Resources for First-Year Teachers

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With all the excitement and anticipation of being a first-year teacher, there's often a sense of anxiety mixed in leading up to that first day. But have no fear! With these five essential resources for first-year teachers, you'll have everything you need to put your mind at ease, build confidence, and be fully prepared for your teaching journey.

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Ten Activities for Establishing Classroom Rules | Lesson Plan

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Surprisingly, student-created rules are often much the same as rules a teacher might create.