Ninja Tip: Super Sliders

It's the beginning of another year. I'm moving into a new classroom. One tip I wanted to make sure all of you other folks needing to move bookshelves and file cabinets and teacher desks and everything else knew about. Super sliders. They have them at all Lowe's and home Depots and other hardware stores. They come in different sizes but basically they're very smooth plastic, with foam backing. You only have to lift each corner of the object you want to move enough so you can shove one of these under. After all four corners are done you can just glide whatever it is all around the room until you have it just right. They really are an amazing help.

Better Grading

I wanted to point out two thought-provoking posts that came across the transom about grading. The always-wonderful MS Teacher found a great video clip of a Dr. Reeves telling us why we should just stop giving zeroes.

Over at the lovely What's It Like On the Inside, we have a good rundown on ways to Advance the Gradebook. Use Exel and other options to graphically represent your student data and student achievement can apparently rise 26%.

see also: Just Give Them the Answers

Parent Volunteer Gifts

One of my more popular posts was the one about Teacher Gifts (and check out the comments on that one). Well, teachers need to give gifts too, especially to the amazing parent volunteers who sacrifice heaps of time and gobs of energy in our nutty classrooms. I took a poll today at my school and in order of interestingness, (from hand made at the top down to "a plant is always nice") here are the results. Obviously the number of volunteers you have will make a difference in what you can do. Add any more ideas in the comments!

The students...

...made soap! (really!)

...decorated a bag chair!

...baked something and put it in baskets.

...made paper flowers and put them in a vase (or fake flowers with pens).

...made something using their hand or fingerprints (bag, apron, shirt). My wife got a hardback picture book from a teacher at the end of student teaching and the kids had inked their thumbprints, signed them and turned them into little faces on the inside cover.

...made a cool thank you card and signed it.

...signed a class photo.

The teacher...

...bought a beach bag with a towel, sunscreen, water bottles, and beach toys.

...bought an ice cream bowl, scoop, and gift card to ice cream place.

...bought a bowl, microwave popcorn, candy, soda, and video rental gift card.

...made a gift basket out of BBQ items.

...made a small gift basket with pen, memo pad and other small supplies.

...bought a set of patio dishes and glasses.

...gave a nice notecard set.

...bought a nice beach towel.

...gave a nice candle.

...gave some bath stuff.

...gave a potted or hanging plant or flowers.

...gave a gift card. (One teacher said they gave a MC/Visa gift card so the volunteer could use it as they pleased).

(photo by pixelstar)

Under Construction

So I've obviously been fiddling with the blog. It's all Joel's fault. Since I signed up for his Blogging Revolution, I've felt the need to make improvements. I bought my domain name, and with the help of hacks from Amanda at Blogger Buster, have even tinkered with the HTML (of which I am ignorant) and added a tag cloud and come other goodies.

Check out the list of participants! Some of these guys are already blogging ninjas, no question. I even stole ms_teacher's cool little Amazon widget (scroll down to the very bottom of this blog to see it).

Let me know what you think. Feel free to click around and let me know if anything needs work. Oh, and be sure to check out those other blogs. The best resource we have as educators is each other.

Just Give Them the Answers

Why not?

Check out this radically cool homework hack from Mrs. Bluebird. She was tired of homework not coming back and now just gives them the answers. It sounds strange I know, but read the post, then decide. Here's what some of the teachers at my school said after I shared it:


"It does sound very interesting. I like the choice aspect. I like that the student can choose when as well. I even like the answer key... I DO think that it work for my middle schooler at home. He loves choice, he needs time, and sometimes I need the answers to help him too! I think he would actually do his homework if it were set up this way. He currently chooses to do NONE!"

"You know, I might give that a shot next year, because they are right there are only 3 types of kids that do work, don't do it, or need a little help. This really might be helpful for ESOL students too!"

"All the points they bring up about why not do homework are valid. However, it brings up lots of questions too? For example, what would compel a child to do more than copy the answers? I think of me as a middle schooler and if I could have gotten away with just copying answers, I think I would have done that. (I like to think I am more honorable as an adult). But, it does make me want to consider some variation of this for homework I give so they have the answers but have to show the work or whatever."

Food for thought.

Box Hero, Box Hack

Box Hero

It cracks me up to get credit just for saying I'm going to do what I said I would. I work in a big school that uses gobs of copy paper. I asked the Copy Goddess for some empty boxes a couple weeks ago. She was out, but a new shipment of paper came in if I wanted to wait. I went ahead and unloaded all the paper for her and took the boxes. I needed to move all the books off my shelves at home while new floors were being put in. I promised to bring the empty boxes back when I was done, since she kept running out.

Today I brought them all back and the folks in the library were cheering and telling me I was the bomb. For bringing empty boxes back.

So clearly there's a need, people. There are teachers moving classrooms and schools at the end of every year, so now's the time to stock up on boxes. Break them down and bring them in. My favorites are the ones from bookstores because they're mostly the same size.

Box Hack:

That's the secret to moving books, by the way. Pull them off the shelf in order, set them in the box, and then get another box. Don't try to fill the box. It's much better to use way more not-too-heavy boxes than to have well-packed overly heavy boxes that take forever to unload. Now when you set up your bookshelves, you just pull the already alphabetized books out of the box and set them back on the shelf. You can even label the boxes Shelf 1, etc. It you have different bookcases, number them so you have boxes that say things like Case 2, Shelf 3 and so on.

Trust me, I'm the bomb.

Turn Any Paper Into A Sticky Note!

Great hack! Here's the link.
I can think of a bunch of classroom uses for this.
What ideas do you have?

Teacher Gifts

Leo, over at Zen Habits, has a post about inexpensive teacher gifts. It's a good list, but I suggest scrolling down to the comments. I and some other teachers have mentioned some of the problems with teacher gifts. Who needs another candy-filled coffee mug or more cheesy ornaments? The things that go away are good. Brownies and cookies, but I usually end up eating one and leaving them in the teacher's mailroom to magically disappear.

In the past couple of years I've tried a different approach. I post a list of needed (or wanted) classroom items. From printer paper and index cards to dry-erase markers, ant farms and books for the classroom library. (We always need new copies of Captain Underpants!) Magazine subscriptions for the class are good. So are gift cards for places like Target, Staples, or Borders. I say I don't need anything and will be more than happy to have a hug and their holiday wishes but if they truly feel they absolutely must get something, then make it something we all can enjoy (and that goes away)!

What do you think?

GTD with Darwin!

Man, oh man am I ever loving this. Over at 43folders, they're discussing Darwin's method of GTD. One of humanity's greatest scientists (the ultimate mind ninja) talking about his productivity hacks, including his version of audiobooks and the 43 folders (tickler file) themselves.

Great stuff.

Simplify Forms

On our county's enrollment form the parent is supposed to answer three questions about the student's language background. Is language other than English used in the home? Did the student have a first language other than English? Does the student speak a language other than English most of the time?
This confuses the non-English-speaking parents and some of them leave it blank. Some kids who don't speak another language end up in the program because a relative living in their house does. I even had one parent write in that her kid's first language was "mama and dada." It gets crazy.
Why not just one simple question with a box to check? "Does your child speak another language?"
This isn't the only form that could use simplifying. I find them all day in all aspects of my work. It makes things harder for everyone.
If you ever need to make a form please make it as simple as possible.

Throwing Fish!

This is my (mega-ninja) friend Merlin. We went to college together. We were both goof-offs to some extent (but he was a much smarter goof-off). We'll get back to him in a moment.

During teacher planning week they showed us a motivational video about these guys at a big international fish market in a city who made their job fun by really performing for their customers and making a big show of throwing the fish and just making their "boring" job a ton of fun. It was motivating and as you watched you wanted to be one of those guys.

Then I had to sit through four (!) two-hour (!) slide-show presentations that turned my brains into tapioca pudding. I've mentioned this problem in this blog previously.

Which brings us back to Merlin. He recently gave a slide-show presentation at the Googleplex on how to deal with your email called "Inbox Zero." I've mentioned and linked to these before. Now he has written a post about how he made this presentations so darn good. Please read it if you or anyone you know needs to do a presentation and feels the need to use a slide-show (Powerpoint, etc).

Most important rule: 10-20-30. No more than ten slides. No more than twenty minutes. No font smaller than 30pt. Now go and throw some fish!

Chart Paper Hack

Roll loose chart paper up in a small circular trash can and you can pull out single sheets as needed!

Not being a classroom teacher means I don't get as much supply money and haven't sprung for a good chart display. My room is small anyway, so I'm fine with just tacking the sheets up on the whiteboard or bulletin board and working that way. But finding storage space for all that loose chart paper was always a struggle until a great ninja Kindergarten teacher I know clued me in (she even gave me a cool wire can!) and now I keep it right under the clips above my whiteboard and I'm good to go.

Send in any other classroom hacks, ninja teachers!