Current Events Done Right
Think back to your school experience. Your history teacher assigns current events. Go home, cut out a story from the newspaper, paste it onto some construction paper, and provide a summary. Easy. You go home, wait until the last minute, pull out the first story you see, and get the scissors and glue. The next [...]
Demo Day: Escape the Room!
March is one of the longest months of the school year. The month brings about unpredictable weather, daylight savings time, and hopefully, the end of “cabin fever.” How do we keep our students engaged? There are various ideas for crunch time, but one of our favorites is Escape the Room. All the rage in towns across the US, escape the room challenges students to solve problems, collaborate in a team setting and also apply learned concepts. So how do teachers take the fun team building activity and bring it into the classroom?
Incorporating escape the room into your classroom can be as quick and easy as you want it to be. Create scenarios, challenges and puzzles to create a highly engaging environment! For those more competitive classrooms, offer a reward to those teams that escaped in time. Check out our demonstration lesson and let us know what you did! [...]
Crunch Time: 5 Ways to AMP Up for the Final Stretch
Can you believe it? Depending on your geography, we are halfway through the third quarter or finishing up the third quarter. It is crunch time! Talk of the state exam is well underway, students are on the brink of not passing for the year or even worse – on the brink of not graduating. Some [...]
Planbook Plus Demo Day: Real Life Application
Planbook Plus continues to give educators the tools to plan for a highly engaged classroom. Planbook Plus is suitable for any subject ranging from Pre K to high-level calculus. Tools of the trade to create a highly engaged classroom range from using humor in the classroom, playing to student interests and applying the lessons learned to real life. Math class poses challenges when it comes to creating a highly engaged classroom. “When will I ever use this?” “How does this apply to me?” Sound familiar? Real life applications to math lessons help put the lesson into perspective for our students.
Take correlation. Correlation for many students is a bunch of dots on a graph. For math-challenged students, it is guessing “yes or no” and “strong or weak.” However, it doesn’t have to be that overwhelming for students. Check out or “demo lesson” on determining human wingspan and height. Feel free to adapt to your needs! [...]
Four Fun Post-Winter Break Activities and Tips
After a busy weekend, Mondays can be a struggle. So just imagine how hard the Monday after winter break will be! A prepared teacher will have those first days after holiday break planned. Planbook Plus has put together some ideas for educators for the opening week of 2017! [...]
It’s the Most Unproductive Time of the Year!
Depending on the calendar year, the time from Thanksgiving and Christmas Day can be between 27 and 33 days. There are still two weeks between now and the holiday break. As a teacher, you cannot afford to lose these days to distractions. How then do you keep students focused during the most wonderful, and unproductive, time of the year? [...]
Volunteer this Holiday Season
Welcome to the month of December teachers! Chilly mornings and festive greetings can be found wherever you go this month. Last week’s Thanksgiving feast is now in the record books and with it we’re now officially in the Season of Giving. Now is a great time to create activities that can inspire your students to volunteer this holiday season and do some good in their communities.
To help reinforce this Season of Giving, December 5th was International Volunteer’s Day. Volunteering to help others kindles happiness (something the world can always use a bit more of.) Here are some jumping off points to get your students engaged with volunteering in their schools: [...]