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I've had a couple of teachers ask me lately to explain just what Cut & Paste FollowSheets are.
So here goes:
I'm going to share with you the VERY FIRST one I ever did. It gave me chills. Really, I'm not joking here!
I had a Climate Change PowerPoint I wanted to show and I was trying something new that day.
I let my students choose any color of colored paper they wanted. They had to fold the colored paper in half hot-dog-bun style, so they had two long, narrow columns on each side of the paper.
Then I gave my kids a couple of handouts and told them to cut all the boxes out and lay them around their colored paper.
Before I started the Climate Change PowerPoint, I asked them to paste the boxes with Roman Numerals on top of each column.
Then we watched the PowerPoint, during which they were supposed to paste the rest of the boxes in the correct columns as we worked through the PowerPoint on Climate Change.
WHAT GAVE ME CHILLS WAS THIS: Every single student was working! And this was a class with a half-dozen malcontents sitting in the back of the room! EVERY SINGLE STUDENT WAS BUSY!
I'll be honest with you. This didn't happen very often for me! I rarely got everyone on the same wavelength at the same moment in my classroom. There were always one or two holdouts. Not to say I wasn't trying all the time to find activities that would capture every one's attention and get them involved. But it was very rare to get everyone doing the assignment.
I remember at the time telling myself to file this away in my memory because I would want to revisit it again in the future. I would want to remember what got them all so intent on paying attention.
I know it was mostly the active learning element and partly it was such a uniquely NOVEL WAY to watch a PowerPoint.
I hope you will try this type of assignment. It's good for more than one reason. Sure it gets them ALL involved. It also gives them good notes with the words I want them to have down to study from. It's a good active learning activity.
CONSIDER THIS: Try my Climate Change PowerPoint when you reach this topic in your curriculum. Use the Cut and Paste FollowSheet. OR MAKE YOUR OWN FOR OWN OF YOUR OWN POWERPOINTS!
FUN LINKS: Climate Change PowerPoint.
Climate Change Assignment
Climate Change Answers
