That High School Teachers Should Steal from Elementary
High School is a different beast from elementary school. We see hundreds of kids a day for 40-80 minutes. Those kids tend to think for themselves and to be less eager to please. They have lots of responsibilities outside of school which include chores, watching younger siblings, jobs, sports and extracurriculars. And yet, there are so many positive classroom ideas for high school that they are doing at the those younger levels that high school teachers should steal from elementary.
5 classroom ideas for high school teachers
Organizing the Classroom Library
My reading and literacy teacher friend, Amber Walther (of Success through Literacy) started out at the elementary level before making the move to high school six years ago. One of the things she brought with her from elementary was organizing her classroom library with baskets. I looked at them all year and at the end of last year decided it was a move it needed to make.
I already have shelves with plastic shoeboxes containing schools supplies like scissors, glue sticks, and tape, but moving the books to baskets labeled by genre was a game changer. Students can pull the baskets out and look through them. There are always books with their covers face out (which is a way to get kids interested in books too). Students don’t usually look for books based on authors, they are more interested in books that fit into categories or that come from the basket labeled “Mrs. McLaughlin Recommends.”
Numbering the Desk
Another idea high school teachers should steal from elementary is putting numbers on the corners of each desk. I let my students pick their own seats at the beginning of the year. I ask them to stick to these until I get to know their names. But I also put number labels on the corner of each spot. This helps me to align names and seats on my seating chart (used strictly for learning names), but it also give me opportunities to mix things up.
Ways you can use the numbers on the desks:
- To randomly call on someone (you could even use the popsicle sticks in a can to draw a number)
- To remix groups. My students already sit in clusters of 4, so I can easily remix the class by telling them to get in groups bases on number. Like find a partner who doesn’t sit at your table who is also an odd or even number (so if you are odd, your new partner would be odd) or find a partner who doesn’t sit at your table who is the opposite of you based on odd or even.
- To choose who will speak for the group. Since most of the time, my kids sit in clusters of 4, I can ask the person who’s number is divisible by 4 to report out or the one with the prime number
- To make sure the desks end up in the right spot after you move the desks for a seminar.
Morning Meeting
In a 42 minute high school class, we don’t have time for a full formal morning meeting, but I do think that it is important to have a consistent start to the class. In my classes, we use the bell ringer or warm up in place of the morning meeting. Depending on whether you are in my AP class or my regular/ICT English 11 class, it will look a little different. In AP we use Poem of the Week and Passage of the Week (you can read more about that here) and in English 11 we use a variety of warm ups which include Roots in Context, One Word Warm Ups (more here), Quote of the Day and 3-2-1s.
Another great warm up to use as part of your morning meeting is quick writes. For more on quick writes, check out this post from my friend Missy at A Better Way to Teach.
Task Cards
Until recently, I didn’t know what a task card was, but then a friend who is a fifth grade teacher asked me to look at her the math task cards she was preparing for her Teachers Pay Teaches store. As I was going through them, I thought, this is brilliant. You can use task cards as warm ups, as stations, as the jumping off point for a seminar and as a quick check for understanding.
You simply divide a paper into quadrants, then on each quarter of the page, you put one task. Then cut them and distribute. My favorite way to use task cards is with the text How to Read Literature Like a Professor. You can write a prompt based on the chapters and then use them when the prompt fits the text you are reading.
Reading Out Loud
It doesn’t matter how old you, people love to be read to. This totally explains the current popularity of the audiobook. I love snuggling up with my own kiddos and reading a book with them night after night, but I love it even more when I get to snuggle up an listen as my husband or older daughter do the reading aloud. High school kids are no different and we should play into that. We don’t always have time to read a full text out loud but even if you just read sections, your kids will eat it up.
And sometimes I do read a full text out loud because there are so many benefits including hearing something read well, hearing words pronounced correctly, helping to develop vocabulary and hearing us think out loud. If you are worried that your kids will not remain focuses, have them work on coloring pages (like these Coloring Sheets for Teens with Author Quotes from A Better Way to Teach) or Sketch Notes.
And don’t skip the picture books for your high school students either. Picture books are a plethora of information and processing opportunities. For more on using picture books in high school English, check out this post.
A Wealth of Knowledge from our Elementary Brethren
So as we start the new school year, lets make sure to that we borrow classroom ideas for high school from elementary teachers because a lot of the great things they are doing with the littles DO translate to great things we can do with the bigs. Let me know in the comments what your favorite elementary school hack for high school is.
And for a bonus, consider adding rest time into your schedule. Check out this post by my friend Missy of A Better Way to Teach.
