Speed Dating Review Exercise

No no, nothing fishy going on here!  I found an idea from Twitter and decided to try it out myself in the classroom.

I am always looking for new ways to review material before a test.  Lots of stuff gets old really fast with as many tests as we give.  Fortunately, this is a new activity I like and the students like it too.  It is fast-paced and requires 100% engagement for it to work, so students that usually don't contribute are forced to on a smaller scale.

It is more of a "speed-networking" exercise, which is becoming more and more popular in the business world as a way for clients to meet a lot of prospective businesses at once.

Here's how its done:

1. Beforehand, use a bracket-generating site like challonge.com and create a round-robin tournament for your students.
2. Go here and download the accompanying sheet for students to use.
3. Come up with enough terms/information for students to research (1 per student)
4. Assign each student one term.  Give them around 8-10 minutes to create a 30-second description.
• Make sure they focus on putting their term in context of what you are studying.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT just provide a definition.
5. Find a way to time each round.  I use online-stopwatch.com.  Set the timer for 1-minute rounds.
6. Project the bracket on a screen or find another way so each student can see the schedule.
7. Have students gather with their partner, and each of them have 30 seconds to "introduce themselves" to their "date".  I usually call out after 30 seconds so they know when to switch.
• Student A describes themselves while Student B writes lists them on their sheet.  When Student A finishes describing themselves, Student B will circle "yes" or "no", as in "Do you understand this material?"  Then, they flip after 30 seconds.
8. After the minute is over, repeat step 7 for the next rounds (however many you have).

It will get loud.  Students will be engaged.  It will be awesome. :-)

Great PSYC Videos for Review in Class

These psychology videos I stumbled across are fantastic!!  I am planning on using these as review videos before a quiz.  They are great for Introduction to Psychology classes, but they may be a little too easy for any AP PSYC classes.  We are discussing the history/approaches, so here is one about said topic:

There are plenty more of these videos at education-portal.com.  They have plenty of other subjects in the social sciences, math, physical science, etc.  I am going to be linking to these Psychology videos at my YouTube page for students to view.

Flipping Out Over the Flipped Classroom?

So I have been really weary of this entire "flipped classroom" ideology overtaking education right now.  There are multiple issues to get around before it can take shape.  BUT...all of the resources out there have really got me thinking that there may be something to this.  It is raising test scores, it allows teachers to individualize instruction, and students seem to enjoy it if it is done "correctly" (as in, not just replacing lecturing at school with lecturing at home).  Our principal is pushing it, our teacher of the year just received an award for implementing it...

...could there be something to this??

So in these next few months, I am going to be researching how to implement this strategy in a social studies setting (which is what I am doing currently).  I will share interesting resources that I find and document my journey as I find my way into a flipped classroom.  I already model the flipped method in some chapters in US History, but to do a full-fledged implementation may be a little tougher.  Any suggestions in the comments would be helpful.

Zone Out During Life? You're Not Alone

Well, at least I know I'm not the only one...

An article on the PsyBlog takes a look at several studies on the subject and found that people approximately zoned out 5.4 times in a 45 minute period. However, they weren't always aware that they were zoning out (ever read a page and not remember a thing you read?)

So the researchers devised a system to catch these people, and found that minds wandered about 13% of the time while reading. However, what is more disturbing, is that in another experiment, mind wandering occurred in almost half of the participants when they were asked in everyday general life.

How Does It Affect Education?

Well, it doesn't bode well for activities in the classroom, especially with the "need satisfaction immediately" generation we are teaching. If one in two of your students are mind-wandering, or half of your students are zoning out at any given moment, how can you keep students on task?

Some suggestions: keep activities fresh, focus on student-centered learning, and follow up with students about what they just learned.

Do you have any ways to keep students (or yourself) on task? Comment below!

Summer Book Club on Twitter #sschatbook

Some quick words of advice: if you haven't signed up for Twitter yet and you are an educator, do it. Start building your PLN. It was the best professional development I have ever done. I only wish it counted toward my Professional Growth Points as an Indiana educator. Sadly, they lag behind in the technology world.

Once you do get on Twitter, be sure to search for #sschat to connect with fellow social studies educators (there are also #histchat, #psychat, #mathchat, #scichat, etc. if you want to get more specific.). #sschat is having a book club this summer, and they are reading one of my favorites. I like it because it is essentially an educational psychology book, but it can be applied to everyday teaching!

Daniel T. Willingham's book "Why Don't Students Like School?" is a great look at how most teaching is not conducive to how the human mind works, and how to rectify it. I have read it before, but I plan to read it again as a part of this book chat. We are reading 1 chapter per week for 9 weeks. The first chat is on June 24th. See the promotional flyer on Google Docs.

"Everything Comes Down to Poo - Toilet Psychology"

University of Melbourne professor Nick Haslam is pushing the bounds of psychology where it has never gone before...literally.  In the June 2012 issue of The Psychologist, Haslam argues for more research into human excretion.  Although disgusting (at least in this blogger's opinion), I do agree with the points he makes:

“In 30 years of studying the field I rarely came across any recognition that human beings are creatures who excrete.  Much of what we psychologists care about is on the mental side of the mind/body divide, but even when we go corporeal we eliminate elimination. Psychologists have examined the psychobiology of eating, sleeping and sex at great length, and devoted numerous journals and professional associations to them. We have investigated how substances cross from outer to inner but largely ignored traffic in the other direction.”

He also argues that some gastrointestinal disorders are linked to psychological abnormalities, how excretion is linked to social attitudes, and how men and women view excretion differently (men are more open to discussing it, women tend to keep it hidden).


Check out Susan Perry's summary of the article in the MinnPost.
Give Haslam's article a read for yourself: it's pretty interesting (and free)!


How Does It Affect Education?
Well, this might be an interesting way to grasp students attention at the beginning of a unit.  There are multiple units that can open with this as Prof. Haslam has used multiple examples of how excretion is tied to psychology.