I have failed to finalize what I want to with the idea I've come up with for a lunchtime peer-tutoring program. I did enjoy my break though. I needed it. Teaching is literally a never-ending job. My loose ideas were:
A) A classroom that mimics a library. A "mathematician's luncheon". The purpose is for students to come away with work completed of 90% accuracy or higher.
B) Zero tolerance for disruptions. A place where the idea/theme of being there to improve is explicit and taken very seriously.
C) A very visible chart/graph/system of improvement where students can immediately see where they are and their level of progression
D) Higher level students peer-tutor struggling students
E) My role - to help everyone, tutors and peers alike, and make sure that everyone walks away with a stronger foundation and greater conceptual knowledge
F) An incentive. The kids are already familiar with tokens, so something along those lines. An "improvement token" was the first thought. As for what they'd do with them, not sure.
(Current) Kinks
A) What exactly do I want it to look like? What kind of work will students have? I want it to be separate from class. How will it be managed?
B) What sort of time-efficient system will be used to determine how students are improving? Furthermore, the improvement of students MUST be visible. This is undoubtedly the most vital piece. This is the big idea I had in mind and I won't start this until this piece is figured out. Making the assignments worth points, and/or having tokens align to points along with a chart (i.e. a chart listing points and their respective levels - 500 points = Math Apprentice, 1000 points = Math Guru) have all come to mind in the past.
This could be done a different way without points, where the chart just lists the number of tokens along with its respective level (i.e. 3+ tokens = Math Novice, 10+ tokens = Math Apprentice, 15+ tokens = Math Admirer, etc), and these amount of tokens can serve as "checkpoints", where students earn different prizes once they reach these checkpoints. 7th grade math teacher has a "device" (it's wooden..) where she uses these wooden pegs to move names. Perhaps I could use something similar.
C) What incentive do the stronger students have to tutor/help out? What incentive do the weaker students have to stay (we know the answer, but this has to be sold to kids...)?
D) If I use improvement tokens, what will the students do with them/use them for? How will they use them?
E) How often will this be each week with the other recognition pieces that normally take place on Thursday and Friday (and have been creeping into Monday thanks to holidays..). I can't give up my lunch period everyday. Perhaps 1 day out of the week to start?
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