student engagement

The Answer Lottery: A Low-Stress Way to Motivate, Assess, and Engage Students

Angel BoucherLeave a comment

The biggest challenge in modern classrooms is obtaining and maintaining students’ attention. Research from the American Psychological Association shows that the average American’s attention span is shrinking. As Dr. Gloria Mark points out, hardly any of us have gone a day without a distraction from our phones or computers. We are inundated with social media, news alerts, emails, text messages, and more. This attention span is worse for students.

In an age of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, students struggle with videos or reels that are longer than a minute or two. If they do catch one that is longer, they often use the speed-up option to get through it faster. If they struggle to focus during their leisure time, how do we expect them to concentrate in class?

In addition to the lack of focus, we face a world of rewards and challenges. When we face challenges or a system of rewards, we tend to work better and more focused to achieve success. How can we gamify a lesson to motivate students to work towards success?

Take Boring Questions and Turn Them Into a Lottery

Tired of the old sit-and-get method of reading a passage and answering questions? You don’t want to deal with sharing answers or grading each student’s paper? Are you worried about students “cheating” by changing friends’ answers while they grade? Turn formative assessments into an answer lottery.

What You Need

1-100 Number Chart

The first thing I do is pull up a 1-100 numbers chart. You can find all of these online. You can save it, create a custom number chart, or print it. I personally love projecting it on the Smartboard so students can choose and see where their friends are, how many slots they have, etc. You can also use a larger numbers chart, but I’ve found that 1-100 works best for classes of 30 students or fewer.

Suggested Links:
1-1,000

Text with Questions (or Made Ones)

You could use any form of media as a text. It doesn’t have to be a passage for students. You could use a video clip, lyrics, a song, an audiobook, a podcast, a passage, a book being read in class, etc. To introduce this concept, I’m going to use a traditional passage with texts.

Suggested Links:
NewsELA
CommonLit
ReadWork
ReadWriteThink

Optional

An answer sheet allows the students to keep track of the questions and the responses. You can put the questions and answers on the same sheet for reference, or use an answer sheet.

Prizes are always motivating for students to do well and win. My students personally love Jolly Ranchers. I buy bulk Jolly Ranchers from Sam’s Club.

How It Works

Students will read the passage. You can do this the same day or on separate days. If you want a deeper analysis of the text, I suggest doing the deep reading one day and the lottery questions on another. Regardless of how you do it, do not introduce the questions until you are ready to move on.

This works best in partners, but you can do individual students or groups of 3. Anything above 3 gets a bit messy.

Provide the students with the questions and the answer sheet (I highly recommend short responses). Place these questions face down on their desks. Let the students know they shouldn’t flip their paper until you say so. If you catch them flipping the paper, they will be disqualified from the lottery and required to answer the questions individually.

Explain the rules. These rules can be modified as you see fit (as everything else in teaching):

  1. You can answer any question. You do not have to go in order.
  2. You must use the R.A.C.E. strategy.
    • Restate
    • Answer
    • Cite
    • Explain
  3. Once you believe you have the answer, you raise your hand to check your answer.
    • Other Ways to Check:
      • Buzzers
      • Have them approach you
      • “Take a Number”
      • Online Response (with timestamps)
  4. If your answer is correct, you and your partner can place your names on a number. If your answer is wrong, you must correct your answer before placing your name on the lottery board.
    • It is up to you whether both names go on the same number or on different numbers. This is why I say any more than 3 in a group can get messy. We know not every student pulls their weight in groups.
  5. Only after they have listed their name on a number will they return and do the same for another question. Again, these questions do not have to be done in order.
  6. For every correct answer, they will both place their name on the board. There is no limit on how many times their name can appear on the board.
    • This eliminated the stress of being the first one done, language barriers, etc. It allows students to participate and practice while relieving some stress and giving them a chance to win.
  7. At the end of the questions, you spin, roll, or choose a random number selector to pick a winner.
    • You can have more than one winner. If you have more than one winner, it is up to you whether a group can win more than once. Having more than one winner gives those whose names aren’t on it a chance to win still. I’ve had students with their names on the lottery board just once, and still one, while others were on it 5 times and never won.

You cannot erase anyone else’s name. If you do, you will do the assignment on your own and receive an additional consequence.

Why This Works

Students love competition. If they can compete with each other to win something, it motivates them to work.

It encourages collaboration. This activity will allow students to work together and discuss their answers before writing anything down. This can help students process their answers before submitting.

You give immediate feedback. This allows students to know what is right and wrong before answering for a grade and/or others. It will enable instant correction while still allowing them to get their name on the board.

It is truly random, so there are no claims of favoritism. It provides equal opportunities for all learners to participate.

It gives students a mental reset after each question. They can physically stand to write their name on the board, which incorporates movement and allows their brain to refocus when they return to the next question.

It allows choice in their work. Because you are allowing students to complete questions in any order, they can review all the questions and pick the ones they are confident in before moving on to the more challenging ones. It still allows you to assess their ability to answer the questions before they move on. This will enable you to correct any mistakes so they do not get into the habit of poor responses.

3 Methods of Modeling in the ELAR Classroom

Angel BoucherLeave a comment

Modeling in the classroom is vital for helping students do their best. As educators, we often strive for perfection in showing students how mechanics should be completed, whether it’s fluency, compression, writing, editing, or revising.

But the reality is that even teachers need to model mistakes in a classroom. It makes teachers human and allows kids to connect with their teachers and release the pressure of perfection.

1) Write Without Organization

One of the first things I model with my students is brainstorming and writing. I don’t worry about details, paragraphs, word choice, introduction, conclusion, setting, etc. I just write.

Whatever flows from your mind should be processed on paper. You should never try to make the first attempt perfect – not with grammar, spelling, content organization, etc. Students should see you struggle as they would struggle. They should note any mishaps you have so they don’t feel pressured to be perfect at the start.

If you teach middle or high school, you likely have multiple classes. It would help to have an imperfect draft as a model. If you have time, it’s suggested that you write in front of them for every class. One way to spice this up is to create a different prompt for every class so you have multiple stories to tell.

Why is this important?

Sometimes, students feel the pressure to be perfect in their writing, which can cause brain fog. They get so wrapped up in needing all the literary elements that they forget the story’s basics.

Allowing a student to write freely lets ideas flow and run through without stress about perfection or judgment. Students who “just write” often find it easier to adjust their writing and revisit their content to ensure greater success.

Allowing them to write will also enable students to choose what they want YOU, as a teacher, to focus on during revision. Once the student gets the basic story on paper, you can focus on differentiation through small-group instruction.

If you allow them to write before creating a graphic organizer to separate the organization into paragraphs, you allow them to gather their overall thoughts before trying to break them down into big ideas. They can take apart their own essays and place them into “categories,” which become the paragraphs of the paper.

This can also make grading more manageable for you by allowing the student to focus on one thing at a time.

How to implement a small group after “just writing”:

Some small groups could be the standards that push students to the next level, which automatically leads to revision:

  • Theme
  • Thesis/Claim
  • Character Development
  • Sensory Detail
  • Introduction/Conclusion
  • Supporting Evidence
  • Use of Text/Graphic Features
  • Organization
  • Setting
  • Word Choice
  • Grammar
  • Conflict-Resolution

2) Marking the Text

When introducing a new concept, it is important to mark the text. This is best done color-coded. I personally enjoy different colored highlighters or colored pencils. I have the students match my colors as much as possible to ensure they have the same notes I do.

How to implement:

For example, when we learn about CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning), we use three colors. I like to use blue, red/pink, and green, but any three colors will work. I often do Blue for Claim, Red/Pink for Evidence, and Green for Reasoning.

During the first read of the passage, we just read, think aloud, and process what’s being said. We may pause and discuss chunks, summarize chunks, or find methods to help us “remember” the paragraphs of each section.

On the second read, we often look for the colors, focusing on one at a time. We will discuss what the claim is and how we know it’s the claim. Once the claim is identified, we often discuss the various ways it can be stated. As we read, we highlight in blue any mention of the claim. We discuss why the author repeats the claim throughout the passage, not just at the beginning and end.

On the third read, we focus on the red/pink for evidence. When we discuss evidence, we look for statistics, references, citations, etc. We look for facts about the topic. We avoid opinions, thoughts, and unproven methods. Whenever we see evidence, we highlight it in red/pink. From there, we discuss how the evidence supports the claim and why it’s essential to include it. This deepens understanding of how authors are intentional in their work.

On the last read, I focused on the green for reasons. Reasons support the evidence, which supports the claim. Reasons are the explanations for why the evidence is important. We draw attention to this to help students see the author’s thought process for supporting their claim.

Why it’s important:

By color-coding and modeling this, students can see the paper’s organization and better understand the author’s craft.

This gives a visual representation of writing for students. This allows students to see whether their own writing mirrors the author’s and make adjustments as needed. Students can go back to their papers and color-code their papers. If they do not see all three colors, they can revise to help their claim.

This method works for any genre or standard. The important thing is that there is a color-coded key for students to follow and refer back to often, ensuring they have a reliable reference for their own use.

3) One-Pagers

One mistake educators often make is believing students are familiar with certain classroom strategies. Though students may have a concrete background in most strategies, treating each strategy as brand new is essential.

Modeling one-pagers is vital because everyone has a different idea of what a one-pager should look like. The expectations should be drawn out as you grade a student’s one-pager. Sometimes, having a good and a “bad” example will help the student understand the difference. Students don’t need to be artists, so it’s essential to show that they don’t by incorporating stick figures, too!

How to implement:

One of the first activities I do at the beginning of the year is a one-pager about myself. On this one-pager, I put information strictly about me there: my interest in reading, writing, cats, traveling, pens, favorite snacks (Skittles, Doritos), shopping (Amazon, Target, Ulta), drinks (water, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper), and general information about my family (like two brothers, two nieces, two nephews, etc.).

When I do this, I incorporate different lettering, page breakdowns (how the one-pager is organized), images, colors, and more.

Why it’s important:

This is a great way to build relationships with students and set expectations for one-pagers. I only make one for this, even if I teach multiple classes, because it takes so much time. Sometimes, I will create or add to them in each class so students can see my progress. Having it already created allows me to think aloud with the students on the one-pager and explain why I chose what I did and how it ties to the rubric.

Modeling Doesn’t Stop There

Modeling is incredibly important for students, whether in first grade or eleventh grade. It allows students to see the process in action and process their learning with it. There are millions of ways to model within the classroom. Starting small with one of the methods above is easy and not too time-consuming. It doesn’t require much adjustment.

One of the biggest benefits of modeling is that it allows you to identify and address any misconceptions students may have during the creation process. I always told my students, “I never give you anything I haven’t done.” I do this not only to determine misconceptions but also to determine their interest in the topic at hand. If I’m bored, they’re bored.