The End is the Beginning

This experience has been a Disneyland-like adventure ride. I wasn’t quite sure where it was going, there was a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), and I am still staggering under the weight of what was intended but, maybe not fully absorbed.

That’s it. It was like a lottery.

Or, maybe a shot-in-the-dark.

Staring the School Day with Writing

Well sports fans, this blogfest is ending with a beginning. The start of this writer’s school day will begin with a ticket to enter or as the authors called it, the admit slip.

The admit slip asks the student to bring to class a short piece of writing the next day. This sounds suspiciously like homework. My experience with 8^th grade homework was that it was the least participatory activity of the day, the quarter, the entire grading period. But, that is an unnecessary digression.

The admit slip can be written on a note card that can actually be made to look like a ticket to a great event. The only limit to realism is the teacher’s creativity and use of artistic skill. Art, science and mathematics are all process oriented. Therefore, we science and math teacher types should be able to make short work of the creation phase.

So, what’s the deal with the assignment? Students should reflect (there’s that word again) upon the previous evening’s reading assignment (the homework ogre again) or something that happened during the last class meeting. Student arrival triggers the start of the class period. Hmmm….it sounds like it has a strong relationship to the “ticket to leave.” The major difference the authors point out is that the teacher hasn’t had a chance to read it yet.

A Possible Remedy

My sense of the obvious tells me that the admit slip is more complicated because the teacher has little control or ability to get cheerful cooperation. It is again, homework.  I favor a frontal assault on the problem. The admit slip should be an everyday requirement. If a student arrives without it, he or she must stand outside the classroom to complete it before being admitted to the class. The idea is to make sure there is no incentive for non-compliance. I meant, cheerful cooperation. Cooperation versus compliance. That is what we strive to achieve in developing our classroom management style (E. Emmer and C. Evertson, Classroom Management for Middle and High School Teachers 2013, P 6, Paragraph 4).

I think making up admit slips is going to be funnnnnnn. Admittedly admit slips (no alliteration intended) are a tough writing to learn tool to embrace. Below are some of the author’s creation suggestions for different content areas.

Social Studies

·         How would the United States have been different if FDR lost the election in 1932?

·         Of the three main causes of the Civil War, which do you think was the most important and why?

English

·         What do you think would happen to this character is X happened? Why?

·         If you could submit questions to the author, what would you ask?

Math

·         How could this formula be applied to a real-life situation?

·         Pick one problem from chapter X and write down in words the steps you would take to solve it.

Science

·         Make a drawing of a plant near your home and explain how its structures are similar to those found in your text book.

·         Explain the advantages and disadvantages of indicators versus meters.

Finally, I believe that admit tickets and tickets to leave are both writing to learn (WTL) and classroom management tools. This blog has talked about the use of the WTL. As a classroom management tool the tickets are valuable as routines.