Unification will save you a lot of time - worksheets and interactive presentations done in one shot

Let me be quite frank here. I am suffering from a bug that is called perfection. So when I am making my own worksheets, I want them to have a cool layout, challenging tasks for my students and of course at the end of their work I want to make sure that they have achieved the "right" solution. Preferably I want to check that with the whole class to have a final discussion and comparison of results.

So now let us face the music together:

• I have to design my own worksheet - usually I did this in Word.
• I have to setup a presentation to share the "right" results with my students.

Unnecessary double work in my eyes - but I will come to this in a bit.

Right now I am teaching single lessons of 45 minutes and it's not rocket science - the lesson is over before we can finish our result check in class. Especially if I am asking students to present their results at the front of the classroom.

So how to reduce work and enable students to check their solutions even after lesson time is over.

Powerpoint is the key!

What I am doing is that my usual worksheets are right now are produced with Powerpoint in landscape orientation. 

Basically they will also be my end of lesson presentation.

So my students are working on e.g. clozes. The gaps are covered with simple shapes (rectangular) and so if the PPT is printed, the solutions are covered and students will grind their teeth while filling them with correct solutions.

For the use with the projector I have modified the shapes with an animation - they will disappear when clicked on. A faeature that is available in Powerpoint - albeit just in its windows version (i.e. my reason to work with Parallels on my MacBook Pro).

Anyhow - the printed worksheet has gaps for the students to fill in. The Powerpoint projection has the same gaps and they can be filled in at an interactive whiteboard.

And if time is getting too short, the emailed version of the Powerpoint will provide a beautiful opportunity to the students to look up themselves if their results do match the expected outcome. This can be done as homework once I have shared the presentation after the lesson via Moodle, email, ... .

Take a look at this sample - in German language, but I reckon you will get the hang of it. 

Any questions or suggestions? Comment, please!

Individualised lesson materials for students

I am feeling like I am a fence sitter sometimes. On the one hand there is the expectation of my supervisors and parents to educate students fulfilling the following requirements:

• keep teacher focussed lecturing and phases of instruction short
• provide working materials for my students which challenge and also support them on an individualised base
• create or use teaching materials which satisfy today's possibilities (digital publishing)
• work sheets and instructions are providing an individually fine-tuned amount of support, possibilities of further studies, etc.

On the other hand there is my life and the fact that there is a 24h day and I want to spend a decent amount of time with my family and my own little son.

Well, let me say that some things fell into place for me combining those expectations with tools that I have been using for years now. Overall time from thinking about all the point in having created a PowerPoint that can be used as a presentation during lessons, a base for an online lecture, to create 3 differentiated worksheets and for a debrief at the end of the lesson....

20 minutes - and let me add that I chose to do it in English as well - and you will be able to see and hear that it is not my first language. At the end of it all there is still the possibility to create a flash from this as well.

From picking a topic till saving the endproduct 20 minutes, i.e. the time it took my son to drink 8 ounces of formula milk.

You can do this as well - let me teach you how to - by hiring me for a workshop at your school.
:)

It is too easy for you to miss out ...