How hard could it be?! well with online learning, IT IS REALLY HARD !!
but through experimenting, ( 2020-2021 year was full of experimenting) some things seemed to work with me and I'd like to share them with you!!
1- Engaging starters aka hooks!
engaging starters, hooks, attention grabbers, or check in.. whatever you may want to call it, it has been a game changer for me.. so as you may have experienced, middle schoolers may come a bit late to the session so in order to avoid wasting time waiting for them or start the session and have to repeat part of it for those who are late.. I dig up interesting videos - not related to the lesson every time- and share it with the students some times its a short animation movies, song, new invention, recent occurring event, artificial intelligence... and start a discussion about it! One would be amazed by what ideas come up to their minds!
another idea would be this or that, in this starter you would bring up 2 events or 2 objects that are hard to choose between, and spark a discussion...
other days I would use a riddle, make a student prepare a starter!
2- Relate lessons to real life or a subject of their interest!
Any lesson can be linked to real life ! As a science teacher - I admit that would be very easy for my subject ( unlike math for example..) - relating friction to accidents, waves to earthquakes, sound waves to animal hearing, etc... explains many phenomena that middle school students may be wondering about and thus keeps them highly attendant to what I'm saying or displaying !! relating my lessons to our country as well and to subjects of their interest ( Minecraft, Fortnite , Among us games...) worked much as well!!
if you're interested in a post about what kids these days like, write in the comment!!
3- Giving them choice for their project outcome!
Giving my students options on how they would like to present their learning outcome was such a success! In some projects I provided them with a choice board. For example in learning about cell organelles, my middles where provided with different challenges, from which they had to choose one to show their understanding of cell parts! you can find it here as well as other differentiated project ideas.
if you have any other engaging trick!! let me know😓
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