TEACHING STRATEGIES

Bell Works:
Start the class with thoughtful questions to answer, quick writes, or tasks each day to give kids
structure for how to come into class. Bell Works are important because they set the tone for
the class by separating play space (the hall) from work space (the classroom), and they
ensure that students are engaged in a meaningful learning experience during the settling in
time at the start of class. This allows the teacher to take role, collect homework, set up the
lesson, etc., without losing valuable learning time. Some examples of Bell Works include:

Do you believe money can buy happiness? Explain your reasoning.

Are grades an indication of intelligence? Explain your answer.
Tell a story about the most interesting thing that happened during your weekend.
"Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right
person." -Gloria Steinem. What does this statement mean to you? What do you believe is
means to be the "right" person? What steps could someone take to become the right
person?

Quote of the Day/Week/Month

The teacher will put up a new quote at regular intervals and leave it up for one day, week, or
month. The quote will correspond to the days lesson or essential questions for the unit in
order to help focus, guide, and encourage student thinking about the issues related to the unit.
The teacher should take time to discuss the quote, and refer back to the quote regularly while
its up. Students can also be encouraged to write down quotes they like in a quote notebook
or to incorporate a quote in an essay they write for the unit.
Think Time
Give students think time before they have to answer a question the teacher poses, so that
they have time to think through the question and their answer before being put on the spot.
This helps to avoid having the few students who answer all of the teachers questions,
because the longer the teacher waits, the more students get the answer and raise their
hands. This strategy is especially important anytime there are English Learners in the
classroom, because their processing time will be longer.

Individual Whiteboard Squares

Provide students with small whiteboards to help you check for understanding quickly they
can hold up the answer when you ask a question, and you can quickly scan to see who you
will need to give individualized attention to during independent work.
Use Differentiated Texts
Use different texts for different students for the same unit find texts that have a common
theme/relate to the essential question, and assign the texts to various students according to
their readiness level. Students can work in groups so that theyre all reading the same book,
and then can be broken up to share with other students about the book they read.
Ice Breakers/Building Community
Use the first 1-3 days of school to get to know students, rather than jumping into content.
There are lots of games (human bingo), writing activities (paragraph, 6-word memoir), art
projects (collage), etc., that students can do to help you learn about them, and to help them
learn about each other. More learning occurs in a classroom that has a strong community
because students are more willing to contribute to classroom discussions, and engage deeply
with the material or topics of the unit.
Read Aloud
Read aloud to students often, as its been shown to increase reading skills and engagement in
the classroom. I plan to read short personal vignettes to my students regularly, perhaps on
Mondays as a way to start the week, by sharing entries/chapters from Freedom Writers. Ill
follow the read aloud strategy with quick writes, or Ill connect the following days Bell
Work to the previous days chapter of Freedom Writers to help ensure that students gain a
deeper understanding from the experience.
State the Objective

Put the objective/learning goal in a place where it is visible for students to see. Its important
to explain the objective to students and to ensure that the objective is presented in student
friendly language, or is translated into student friendly language when its being explained in
order to ensure student understanding of the days objective. Students have a right to know
what theyre expected to learn because thats what theyll be judged on during the
assessment.
Provide Catch-up Time Regularly
Give students time in class to catch up on missed work or incomplete work on a regular basis
(once a week, for example) to help students who work more slowly than others, who have a
great deal of extracurricular activities that prevent them from doing more homework or
coming in after school, or who have missed classes during the week to get caught up with
class work.
Give Homework Sparingly
Homework should always be meaningful and with a specific goal in mind. The homework
should review something that students are able to do without much outside help, because not
all students have access to parents or guardians as a resource for help. The homework should
build and strengthen skills, rather than cause frustration or anxiety.
Spiral Approach
Teach using a spiral approach by returning back to the same topic or skill over and over,
just briefly, to help the skill or knowledge enter into long-term memory. An example of this
might be to mention a new vocabulary word each day and discuss the meaning of it with the
class. Then, as part of their assessments, students can include some of the new words theyve
learned during the unit in their essay, paragraph, or project.

Routines

Establish routines and procedures early in the year for easier classroom management.
Students need to know how to enter the room, where they can store their stuff, what to do
when they need the restroom, where to turn in work and pick up work, and where to find out
what they missed when they were absent.
Depth of Knowledge
Refer to the depth of knowledge wheel when designing assessments, daily activities, and
reflections to ensure that the assessment or project is directly connected to the objectives,
standards, and skills students are intended to be learning. While its great to include level 3
and 4 tasks, levels 1 and 2 are foundational building blocks that must be reached sufficiently
first.
Choice
Provide choice when creating assessments for students. This allows them to choose the
assessment type or topic that interests them most, and helps with both classroom
management and quality of work in the assignments students turn in. When students feel they
have agency in the class, three is less need for the push-pull power struggle that can occur in
high school classrooms, and students are better prepared to succeed when theyre allowed to
capitalize on their strengths and interests, something that is necessary and encouraged in the
world beyond high school.
Peer Review
Provide opportunity for peer review of student work before it will be given a final grade.
Students benefit greatly from the feedback they receive from peers who are often able to
explain the skill or content in a more student-friendly way, and students are provided with
more individualized feedback than they might have received with only the teacher as a
feedback source. Additionally, students are more likely to commit to the project when they
know their peers will be looking at and evaluating their work. I have found it is best to
inform students theyll be participating in the peer review at about the half-way point in the
project because telling students at the start may create anxiety, while telling students the day

of or the day before the review doesnt provide them enough time to get the assignment up to
par.