Saturday, December 6, 2014

#mtboschallenge Week 17: Tips for Keeping Students Engaged & Learning before Christmas/Winter Break

This is Week 17 of the #mtboschallenge on twitter.  The challenge is to blog once a week for the remainder of 2014.  Each Saturday there will be a different prompt shared to blog about.  The prompt will be shared prior to Saturday on twitter using #mtboschallenge  You can link up on my blog (or any other blog that shares the link up). Also share your blog post on twitter with #mtboschallenge .  You can copy the following graphic into your blog post.  Each Sunday @druinok from Teaching Statistics will host a 3-2-1 Summary prompt where you can blog about anything you choose.   Feel free to join the blogging challenge on either Saturday, Sunday, or both days.  Today's Sat prompt is to share your best tips on how you keep your students motivated and learning with all the excitement in the air leading up to Christmas/Winter Break.  Thanks for joining the Challenge!

The next couple weeks leading up to Christmas/Winter Break is one of the most challenging times of the school year to keep students focused and learning.  While visions of sugarplums may not be dancing in their heads, they are definitely starting to get restless and there is an excitement in the air that has nothing to do with what they are learning in our classrooms.  I can hear Andy Williams singing in my head, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...to try and keep students focused & learning."

Here are some tips to keep students engaged and learning:

1)  Have a plan and stick to it.  Try to plan backwards of what you want to accomplish before your break starts.  The more planned and organized you are as a teacher, the more likely it is that you will accomplish what you need to before you go on break.



My plans for this week.
2) Have some fun with decorating your classroom.  The students will enjoy the your festive decorations.  I stick to mostly putting up winter/snow decorations so I can keep them up all of January, but I do have a few fun Christmas touches.  I will have to take some photos this week to update my decorations for this year.  Easy Christmas Decorations

3) Try to plan in some fun activities to keep the students engaged.  

4)  Remember whether break is coming or not, every day in your classroom is precious and you don't want to waste a second of it.  By planning in advance for some fun and still educational activities, you will make sure to get through whatever curriculum you have planned and also have some fun with your students.  These next few weeks are some of my favorite of the school year.  I'm as excited as my students 
are for Christmas break and I want to enjoy our time together.


Please link up below and share your best ideas/tips how you plan on handing the next few weeks to optimize the learning of your students.


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