The Teacher's Box of Tricks: No prep, collaborative active learning strategies

Does lesson planning take you HOURS?

Are you spending way too much time thinking up or searching out a creative, engaging way for kids to practice what they’ve learned?

Have your students lost interest in school because you're forced to give them so many boring test prep worksheets?

The solution is simple: add more engaging activities to your teaching “box of tricks”!

I’m sharing my own personal box of tricks: no-prep learning activities that I’ve tested out in a wide variety of classrooms for more than fifteen years. You can plug these activities into almost any lesson as a way for students to practice the concepts/skills you've taught them.

In this file, you’ll get:

* 35 adaptable activities in a PDF list format that you can keep digitally or print out and store in your lesson plan binder

* The same 35 adaptable activities in 3x5 card size so that you can print them on card stock, cut them out, and store them in an index card case for easy reference. Use dividers to separate and organize the activities in any way that makes sense for your teaching context: by subject area, length of time the activity takes, most popular with students, etc.

Add your own ideas on index cards, and keep expanding your personal box of tricks!

WHAT MAKES THESE STRATEGIES SO VALUABLE FOR STUDENTS?

✓ Kids enhance their learning by constructing the content themselves, instead of you as the teacher creating the content on your own time and passing it out for students to passively consume.

✓ Test prep becomes a highly engaging activity that encourages critical thinking, discussion, collaboration, and the active participation of students

WHAT MAKES THESE STRATEGIES SO VALUABLE FOR TEACHERS?

✓ Adaptable for ANY subject area

✓ Adaptable for ANY grade level 3rd and up (or modify for students who aren’t yet reading/writing independently)

✓ No special materials: you’ll need only basic classroom supplies, like scratch paper, pencils, and scissors

✓ No prep: you can choose any one of these activities and be ready to teach it immediately

✓ Turn worksheets into a collaborative, higher-level thinking activity

10 of the ideas will help you turn worksheets into engaging collaborative activities.

Another 25 activities are worksheet-free and simply provide an easy way for kids to practice the skills you’ve just taught them (so you can ditch the worksheets and traditional pencil-and-paper activities altogether.)

Click here for FREE sample strategies: 5 ways to turn a worksheet into a collaborative, critical-thinking activity!

Nothing else like The Teacher's Box of Tricks exists in a ready-to-use format. Why waste time reinventing the wheel and creating all your own learning strategies from scratch when you can build on a activities that are already proven to be engaging and meaningful for students?

Enjoy!

Angela

NOTE: This resource is included at no cost for members of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club, as part of our focus in the month of NOVEMBER on Lesson Planning in the Full Year program and Week 5 in the Fast Track program.