I have discovered that I can’t teach a boring lesson anymore. I really wanted to today. I was tired and it was Friday, last period. My grade 9s always seem a bit too boisterous when I am the most exhausted. Sigh. All I wanted was to sit them down, get them to be quiet, and do some mindless, repetitive task. Unfortunately, I had done one thing at the beginning of the year that ruled out a boring lesson.
I told them never to bring their textbooks to class.
As a result, every lesson has to involve some kind of activity. We have to talk, sort, write, create, classify, or debate. I have no choice but to get them doing and moving. Even when I most want to sit down and supervise them, I rarely can.
We talked about the index laws, then did a quiz-quiz-trade activity to practice simplifying complicated expressions using indices. Then we wrote a few of the “best” examples (the hardest are the best, right?) in our notes. Then we solved a corny riddle using indices. “How do you write a song to knock over a cow?” “In beef flat.”
Not using textbooks in class can be tiring. But it helps me cause active learning.