To engage my students each of my lessons was named after a movie that could be related to the lesson. At the beginning of each class I would play a relevant clip from that film along with my own version of the studio logo. The following video highlights some of the logos I created for my lessons.
To help students visualize where we were headed each class I provided them with a daily agenda. Utilizing my creativity I created the agendas based on the Mission Impossible theme. Typically I’d play the video and then afterwards I would spend a minute or two going over in greater detail some of the things. The following video was the agenda for my lesson on Bioaccumulation.
To help prevent my students falling behind in their classwork due to reasons such as an absence or a misplaced handout I connected the class to Edmodo (a social learning platform for teachers). However, before granting the students access to the website I required their parents to sign a permission form; I understood not all parents may want their son or daughter using Edmodo. The use of Edmodo
- provided parents and students with an alternative way to contact me
- provided students with links to relevant online resources that we’re talked about and/or shown in class.
- provided students with PDF files of all the handouts (assignments, notes, etc.). Updated daily.
Understanding that their is a time and place for everything I had a no phone policy in my classroom, however, their were exceptions to this rule. Students were allowed to use their phones (listen to music, look up something relevant online, etc.) when working on individual assignments or group work. They were also provided the opportunity of using their phones as iClickers. Every now and then I created a set of questions using Polleverywhere for a quick review activity with my students. Students would text in their answers which would appear anonymously on the projector screen for the whole class to see. To ensure everyone had access to a phone I had them always work in groups. My students loved the fact that they were using their phones to help develop their learning.