Okay, Mr. Battle. I tried your hotsy totsy Tag Team, astounded as I was that you would try any improvements to the, as you correctly term them, the Venerable Big Seven ... and, I must admit, it worked Stinkin' Wonderfully!! And so, I'm going to see you and raise you NINE more!!!
Try any of the following ... in WBT poker, it's called a 9 Card GRAND SLAM.
1. When you say "Teach," your students say "Okay" and use the traditional Teach-Okay method.
2. When you say "Tag Team," your students say "Okay" and use your Tag Team.
3. When you say "Props," your students say "Okay" and use a prop, a pencil, pen, book, whatever, as part of their explanation to their neighbors.
4. When you say, "Air Blackboard," your students say "Okay" and draw an imaginary blackboard in the air, with big gestures, and then they "draw" on the blackboard to illustrate your lesson to their neighbor.
5. When you say "Hand Puppets," your students say "Okay" and then use their hands, as if they were sock puppets, to explain concepts to their neighbors. Hand Puppets are particularly effective if you want your students to exchange controversial views, to speak Pro or Con on a topic. One partner is for a controversial topic and the other is against it.
6. When you say "Action Figures" your students say "Okay" and then they use two fingers as a Two Finger All Terrain Action Figure With Anti-Gravity Boots (TFATAFWAGB)) to "walk" or "jump" up their arm or across a desk as they retell important events in a story. As you can imagine, TFATAFWAGB is extremely popular with kids.
7. When you say "Example Popper" your students say "Okay" and make a gesture like they are pulling an example out of the top of their head and use Original Examples, a very important critical thinking skill, to explain your concepts.
8. Best of all for critical thinking skills, when you say "Compare/Contrast" your students say "Okay" and then lace their fingers together while they compare two concepts and bump their fists together while they contrast two concepts.
Of course, you would introduce these over the course of a year, explaining each one thoroughly, adding them as needed to continue to add powerful jolts of Educational Tomfoolery. And, of course, right before you say Teach (or Tag Team, or Props or whatever) you would clap your hands twice, or whatever, as a preface to your command. And, more of course, these are advanced methods that you would ONLY try after you have throughly mastered the basic Teach-Okay method.
9. (Here comes the GRAND SLAM) And, you could OBVIOUSLY COMBINE THE ABOVE. So, you could say, "Tag Team Props" and kids would use the Tag Team Method with Props or "Example Popper/ Air Blackboard" and kids would combine the Example Popper with the Air Blackboard.
So, my dear colleague. Do you fold now, or later?
Chris "California Slim" Biffle
Forum
