Silent Teacher Day

Silent Teacher Day

          There are times when I still have to give notes or go over vocabulary with my students, especially when the concept is very new to my students. When I have to give them facts to use I work diligently to capture their attention so they are really focusing on what they are doing and they aren't just going through the motions because I have asked them to. I have been wracking my brain lately trying to come up with something new and different, something I haven't done before and something that the students of today would understand. So I'm thinking and thinking and it dawns on me that the students of today have all seen those videos where the person sits in front of the camera and they simply flip the cards one by one while the audience reads them. I pondered and pondered wondering how I could use this same technique because I know my students are already familiar with it and trained to read and follow along. I came up with the following class exercise:

1) I print student copies of fill in the blank notes that students normally fill in as they follow along with me through a power point.

2) I print out the power point and tape the slides up around the room. I do not tape them up in order because that would be too easy. I do group a couple of slides that are relevant to one another, especially if they are in a paragraph together.

3) I write 12 questions about the notes that vary in DOK level. I tape the questions up around the room by the part of the notes that helps the students answer the questions.

4) I create some Google slides that will become my directions that the students will read as I silently flip through them. 

5) I write my objectives and "To Do" list on the white board.

When the students enter the room they already know that they are supposed to work on their warm-up so they work on it and we go over the answer together and then I stand in front of the room and I hold up my slides, flipping through them slowly as the class reads them, follows along and answer the questions asked on the slides. The students are shocked they cannot believe that I am not going to talk to them, that they are going to be responsible for their own learning and that they are going to get to work together to make it happen but once the initial shock wear off they are excited class has become like a game.

Here are the directions that I gave:

          When we had 10 minutes left of class I had everyone return to their seats and glue their notes into their science notebooks. We make a flap at the top and glue it so the notes can be flipped up to reveal with answers to the questions underneath. We then talk about how the activity went, the purpose of an activity like that and how they felt about doing the activity. Overall they all liked it, a few of them felt freaked out by the activity because they are no used to the teacher letting them be responsible for basically running the class together but they felt with some practice it would get better. We went over the notes and question answers the following day as well as questions that they had about word meanings or concepts.

          Overall I was very proud of this lesson. One of our administrators came in and observed, she really enjoyed it and said she thought one thing I could add next time was a slide asking if anyone had any questions. She liked the way I used facial expressions and allowed the students to help one another to answer the questions they asked without my prompting. She also liked the way I walked up to the students who did not appear to be paying attention and I held the papers out for them so they could read them and ensure they knew what was going on. 

I think I will definitely try "Silent Teacher Day" again. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.