Teacher Approved Tips: Visual Timers and Boosting Engagement [episode 72]

Emily
Hey, there, thanks for joining us today for teacher approved tips, a special series from the Teacher Approved podcast. Every Thursday, we’ll be bringing you a weekly bonus episode highlighting new and favorite teacher approved tips from us and other amazing educators.

Emily
Our first teacher approved tip is use a visual nudge to keep kids on track.

Heidi
This is such a practical and useful tip because it turns out that time is incredibly abstract.

Emily
Yeah, especially for kids. In most cases, students really are capable of keeping themselves on track while they work if they know how much time they have left. But checking numbers that are counting down on a timer isn’t really the easiest way for kids to understand how much time they have left.

Heidi
And that is why we love visual timers. It really makes a huge difference for kids, when they can visually gauge exactly how much time they have left, while they’re working.

Heidi
With a visual timer all students need to do is to glance at the timer, just to get a sense of how much time they have left. And this even works for older students, not just our little young ones.

Emily
Yes, I think even I would benefit from a visual timer sometimes. And using a visual timer saves you from having to nag your students to get moving so that they can finish that activity before time’s up. When you can see, there’s no way they’re going to get it done, so you got to nag them, you know, no one wants to do that.

Heidi
And it keeps the students from needing to ask you how much longer they have to work. So that’s a win win right there.

Emily
Yes, anything to reduce the number of times they need to ask a question? Yes, yes. There are some great visual timers available on Amazon. And we’ll link to one we like in the show notes.

Emily
It shows how much time is left using a colorful circle that slowly starts disappearing like a pie chart.

Heidi
That’s slowing getting eaten, I guess.

Emily
Yes. One slice at a time.

Heidi
But there are also some wonderful digital versions available if you want to be able to project your timers for students to see from anywhere in the room. One digital timer that we really like is onlinestopwatch.com, which has many different timers to choose from really a ton. And they’re so creative.

Heidi
We especially like the sensory timers that give students a great sense of how much time is left. But they aren’t using numbers as a countdown. So just one example, they have a candle that just slowly burns down. Or another example is a ring that just is slowly filling in with color as the time passes.

Emily
Just keep in mind that some of these timers are very engaging to watch, so choose your timer wisely to avoid your students getting distracted, or you.

Heidi
Yeah, it’s very soothing. The site we mentioned has a paid version, but you can still access a lot of the tools for free. Just, you know, be aware that the free version does come with ads. And you never know how ads are gonna go.

Emily
Yeah, that could potentially be very tricky.

Heidi
So definitely test it out and see what the ads are before you’re projecting your timer to the whole class, if you are using that free version.

Emily
And if you give visual timers a try, we would love to hear which ones you like or which ones you’re going to try when school starts.You can come and share about that in our Teacher Approved Facebook community.

Emily
Our second teacher approved tip today comes from my friend Jennifer Martinez from Everything Just So. Let’s take a listen.

Jennifer
Hey there. I’m Jennifer Martinez of Everything Just So and I wanted to say a quick thank you to Emily and Heidi for having me. I am super excited to be here.

Jennifer
For those who may not know me, I am all about planning and organization. And today I’m here to share a quick planning tip with you. So I am a huge proponent of planning backwards. And I truly believe that it’s the best way to not only save you time and simplify your lesson planning process, but it’s also the best way to improve instruction to boost student engagement and even those end of the year test scores.

Jennifer
So one question I get a lot is how do you incorporate the backwards planning approach without starting from scratch, especially from those teachers who don’t have a lot of flexibility in their lessons? They want to know what they can do to adapt what they already have those scripts or textbooks.

Jennifer
And one of the easiest ways to do that is just to enhance the learning experiences within your existing lesson plans. And it seems or might sound a little bit challenging or not quite sure what that means. But we’re really just looking to identify small opportunities to foster higher order thinking skills and promote engagement.

Jennifer
So for example, transforming a simple recall activity that we all do as teachers or perhaps have done in the past. But just transforming those into a collaborative project can drastically improve student engagement in learning outcomes.

Jennifer
So I have one example for you for language arts. Traditionally, we might ask students to read a story, and then complete a worksheet where they have to identify the main characters, the setting the problem and the solution. So that activity is going to check to see if students can identify story elements, sure, but it’s not going to engage them.

Jennifer
And it doesn’t allow them to demonstrate a deeper understanding of how the elements work together. So instead, we could give them a collaborative project.

Jennifer
One example might be just very quickly, you could divide the class into small groups, and assign each one a different short story. And then their task could be to create a visual storyboard or a short skit that depicts the main characters, the setting, the problem, the solution in their assigned story.

Jennifer
So just by making a simple shift in the activity, you’re turning a recall based task into a collaborative, creative and engaging learning experience that also provides a better assessment of students understanding for yourself. These kinds of transformations are going to reach or actually help you achieve four goals.

Jennifer
The first one is it promotes collaboration. So students, we’re going to work to understand the story together, but then also decide how to best represent its elements, which is going to foster teamwork, communication skills, all of which are super critical for 21st century learning.

Jennifer
Second, is going to encourage higher order thinking. So rather than simply identifying story elements, students are analyzing and evaluating the story, interpreting its components and creating a new representation of the story.

Jennifer
And then it’s also going to enhance engagement. So creative and collaborative projects are typically much more engaging for students than traditional recall based activities. Even as adults, I think this is very true kind of goes without saying, but it’s super important that we keep that in mind in our plans.

Jennifer
And then last, they provide a richer assessment. So by observing the process and evaluating the final product, you gain a deeper insight into your students understanding as a whole.

Jennifer
And just by making a few simple tweaks and incorporating more engaging tasks, you’re not only going to differentiate instruction, which is going to meet the diverse needs of your students, which is always a positive.

Jennifer
But you’re also going to promote deeper understanding of the lesson content itself, which is always our end goal, we want our students not to be able to recall just a bunch of facts and content, but to be able to understand it and apply it to different types of content later on in their educational journey.

Jennifer
If you’re interested in learning more about how to incorporate small tweaks to boost engagement, and simplify your planning, I would love to have you join me for my virtual conference this summer. I’m going to lead a session, that’s going to talk more about the idea that I just shared plus give you four more ways to incorporate small tweaks in your existing plans.

Jennifer
And part of that session, I’m going to give you a resource that will provide very simple ways to implement activities to make planning for back to school even easier.

Jennifer
Now, I actually love Emily and Heidi, I adore them. And so as their listeners, I want to give you a special discount code that I’m actually not going to share anywhere else. And it’s for 25% off either the general admission or the VIP ticket. It expires July 1, so you have to act quickly before it expires.

Jennifer
But you can find the site at www.growpd.org/2023-linked, and the coupon code that you can use is secondstory all one word. So I hope you found this tip helpful. And again, I want to say thanks to Emily and Heidi for having me. I’ve loved being here.

Emily
If you’ve been a listener for a while you know how much Heidi and I love to talk about ways to boost engagement to enhance student learning. Jennifer has some amazing tips in there that will help boost engagement within your existing lesson plan so you don’t have to start from scratch.

Emily
You can connect with Jennifer at @everythingjustso on Instagram where she shares practical tips for planning, organizing and simplifying your teaching life.

Heidi
And be sure to snag your ticket to the Linked conference that’s coming up in July with a focus on community and practicality. Linked is the ultimate virtual event for teachers in grades 3-6. And we’ll link the conference directly in our show notes. So don’t forget to use the code secondstory and save 25% off your ticket until July 1 2023.

Emily
That’s it for today’s episode. Try using visual timers with your class and remember Jennifer’s teacher approved tip to enhance the learning experiences in your existing plans to simplify your planning and boost engagement.