End of the Semester Goodness!
Preparing for Exams, Review Tips, Promoting Retention, etc.
How will we make it through? How will THEY make it through?
The end of the semester is tough! Teachers are trying to finish teaching necessary material for exams and students are doing their best not to learn any more material. Seniors have been suffering from senioritis for months and your stress level is high. What can you as the teacher do?
Stress! How we can get rid of it (and help our students get rid of it, too!)
- Prepare, prepare, prepare! Be sure that your students know what will be on the final exam and that they have ample opportunities to practice.
- In addition to HOT lunch tutorials, consider holding after-school review sessions or review sessions during other lunch times. My department always does this before benchmark tests and they are normally well-attended.
- Place extra practice websites with self-scoring quizzes or add your own quizzes to your Edmodo site with questions that contain concepts that will appear on the final exam.
- Make use of the tutoring lab at school - if you are too busy and stressed during tutorials, let someone else take the burden off of you!
- Also think of pairing a student up with a subject-specific honor society student for tutoring during lunch.
- Outside of school, try to take some time each night to do something to decompress (I know, easier said than done!).
Some Review Game Ideas
- Pyramid
- Bluff/trashketball
- rave
- Deal or No Deal
- Jeopardy
- Hot Seat
- Tower Builder
- Horse Race/Mr. Potato Head
Retention/Graduation
- Assign any child who is not "getting it" to HOT lunch tutorials consistently.
- Follow up EVERY TIME when a child skips tutorials. Letting it slide sends them the message that it's OK to skip tutorials because you won't do anything about it.
- Be sure you write a grade recovery contract for all students who have failed your course and personalize it to fit their needs.
- Keep consistent and accurate records of attendance.
- Keep in close contact with parents, counselors, and if necessary case workers of struggling students on a regular basis.
- Document, document, document!