Time Timers

This school year, I've been trying to manage my instructional time efficiently and effectively.  I think I've always been decent at staying on task/on track with my instruction, but I became aware of needing to be better at staying on time throughout a lesson in order to maximize the effectiveness of my instruction.

Can you tell I just finished working on my K-12 Reading endorsement to add to my teaching certificate/license?  In guided reading lessons, we were required to break our instruction into small, timed parts such as work work for 5 minutes, introduction to the reading selection for 1-2 minutes, etc.   I tend to get deeply involved in my teaching and don't always keep track of time, so having to time everything was a big change for me.

I learned to use a timing app on my iPad called Alarmed.  It was helpful because I could preset some alarms to sound at 1, 2, 5, 10, etc. minutes.  It worked for what I needed for my two sessions of summer reading tutoring at the university.

Alarmed by Yoctoville

I still use it for myself, but I found I really LOVED the Time Timer for my students.  I bought a small Time Timer and I set it for class ending time as soon as I start a lesson.  My English Language Learners are so excited about the Time Timer.  They love being able to "see" how much time is left for a project or for the class.  If I forget to set the timer, one of the students will ALWAYS remind me to do so.

"Hey, Mrs. Gumby!  You forgot the timer!"

"Mrs. Gumby, we NEED the timer!"

"I love the timer.  Watch the red get smaller!"

Time Timer

I know that the Time Timer company offers an app now for iPads, iPhones and Android phones. But...sometimes the original physical product is the best, in my opinion.  My little three inch tall Time Timer takes up a very small space on my table, but it works SO WELL!  I don't have to worry about forgetting my iPad.  I just reach over, set the time I need and away we go!  I love the gentle "beep" at the end of the elapsed time.  My students love watching the red area "go away" or get smaller.  ( I was afraid some of them might be distracted by watching the red disappear, but surprisingly, I haven't had a single student show any distracted behaviors.  In fact, it seems to motivate them to do their best work and stay on task.)

Yay, Time Timer!!  You make a great product!!

  

Are You Listening?

In our ESL classes, we work on reading, writing, speaking and listening.  I know I plan a lot of instruction for my students covering the first three areas, but I need to increase the opportunities I provide for students to become better listeners.  I found an excellent article from Larry Ferlazzo at Education Week Teacher.  The article, "Response: Several Ways To Help Students Become Better Listeners" has some ideas I want to present to my students' classroom teachers AND some other ideas I am going to implement in my classroom.

We are fortunate to have many good teachers in our school, but I need to remember to gently remind some about providing verbal and written instructions for our English Language Learners.  In Ferlazzo's article he mentions,

Verbal/Written Instructions & Modeling
A major mistake many of us make is not providing verbal instructions before an activity. Extensive research emphasizes the importance of providing verbal and written instructions to English Language Learners, and this classroom practice works well for all learners. This will not only reduce the number of repetitive student questions, but it is also far easier for a teacher to point to the board in response to that inevitable repeated question, "What are we supposed to do?"

Teacher modeling is also an important instructional strategy that is often shortchanged in the classroom. After you give instructions, teachers actually demonstrating them can go a long way towards students understanding of what they are supposed to do. In addition, researchers have found that modeling has a major impact on increasing student self-confidence that they can replicate the task. Robert Marzano also recommends teacher modeling as a way to "deepen" student comprehension.

One of his readers, Heather Wolpert-Gawron, suggested an idea for listening practice.  She said,

If you're looking for a cool listening lesson, however, visual note-taking is a great activity to build up those listening muscles. Read them a passage, excerpt, etc...then time them as they sketch every detail they recall. When time is up, slowly remind them of the itemized list of details they may or may not have heard. If they sketched it, they get points. The goal is to get the most points, and the teacher decides what details the students should have absorbed with only one reading.

I think I might try this and see if it makes a difference with my students!