Inspiration Boards

From Make Writing: 5 Teaching Strategies that Turn Writer’s Workshop into a Maker Space

The Problem: In writing classes, students are sometimes slow to come up with ideas for what to write

about.

The Solution: Dedicate a wall in your classroom as an Inspiration Board, a place where students can place

images, quotes, rough ideas, the opening lines of a story they’re thinking of writing, anything that inspires

them or shows fragments of inspiration. This gets the ideas out of students’ heads and into a public space,

where they can generate fresh new ideas. “Students put an idea up, and then someone else maybe will see

that idea and go, ‘Oh, I like that, and that makes me think of this,'” Barnes explains. “They’re getting

thoughts out onto a board, and then starting to discuss those ideas, and ultimately those turn into those

stories and projects and pieces of writing.”

What You Can Do Tomorrow: Clear everything off one of your bulletin boards and ask students to bring in

something to hang on the board that inspires them—this can be a quote, an image, a poem, anything that

can be affixed to a board. You may need to model this at first to get things going. If you teach more than

one class period of writers, you could create separate boards for every class or just mix it all together.

Celebrity Couple Nickname Game

From Hacking Engagement: 50 Tips & Tools to Engage Teachers and Learners Daily

The Problem: Learning student names is essential for relationship-building, but it’s hard to learn lots of

names quickly.

The Solution: In the same way that the media creates mashups of celebrity couples’ names (think

Brangelina), you can construct similar mashups to create unique nicknames for students using their first

and last name: Jason Matthews becomes JMat. Rhianna Johnson becomes RJo. Have students offer their

own suggestions until you find one that’s just right. Although you will eventually need to learn students’

real names, these nicknames can help jar your memory more quickly than a standard list of names will.

What You Can Do Tomorrow: Obviously, if you’re reading this close to the beginning of a school year, you

can plan to play this game with your students soon. But even if you’re way into the year and you already

know everyone’s name, the game would make a fun bonding activity when you have a few spare minutes.

Boomerang Model

From Hacking Homework: 10 Strategies that Inspire Learning Outside the Classroom

The Problem: Students lack independent problem-solving skills when it comes to homework, relying too

often on parents to “tell them how to do it.”

The Solution: Teach parents how to use the Boomerang Model, which empowers students to find solutions

to their own homework problems. Barnes explains: “So they come to me, and they say, ‘Dad, I need help

with this. I don’t get it.’ I’m going to respond with, ‘How can you help yourself? What strategy can you use

that maybe you haven’t tried yet? Where should you start, because maybe you missed the real starting

point? What evidence do you have to support this?’ If they say, ‘Is this right? Should I do this this way?’ I

can say, ‘Well, what evidence do you have?’ We don’t want their automatic response to a struggle to be, ‘I

need help from a teacher,’ or ‘I need help from a parent.’ We want them to help themselves.”

What You Can Do Tomorrow: Create a list of questions parents can “boomerang back” to their kids, then

practice using them yourself, so students get used to hearing and responding to them. Introduce this

concept to parents in a newsletter or better yet, a video demonstrating how it’s done.