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Two Teacher Hacks

You Gotta Ring Them Bells�&�Never Forget Exit Slips Again

Sam Shah @samjshah samjshah.com

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Access the contests here:�http://bit.ly/TMC17Slide1

When I was in high school, I did this mail-in math contest. I was sent 5 problems and have a month to solve them, and then I’d get another set of problems.

When I finally cracked the shell of an impossible-seeming problem, my insides were bubbly and fizzy. I was ecstatic. My heart pounded, edorphins were streaming! I was so happy! And I wanted to share that with someone else. My mom was the unfortunate victim, and had to listen to me babble on about something she had no understanding of.

When I was reflecting on why I loved math, I realized I don’t think a lot about that in my math classroom. I think a lot about how to get kids from A to B, but not explicitly about “joy.” I sat down trying to figure out how to make joy something actionable in my classroom, part of my class culture.

And after a lot of brainstorming, I stumbled upon this idea:

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��Access the blogpost here:�http://bit.ly/TMC17Slide2

The hotel bell. I tried it out with only one of my classes this year -- a class I felt comfortable with. On the first day we used them, I gave one per group, and had each student ring the bell. They needed to touch the bell and realize it isn’t something they should feel scared of ringing. I didn’t want the bell to be a sacred thing that not everyone felt they could use. After that, I talked to kids about moments of math joy I’ve had, small ones and large ones, and then asked them to think about moments of math joy they’ve had…

After a minute pause, I had anyone who wanted to share their moments. It was awesome. Kids remembered moments from kindergarten to moments they had in our class, and everything in between. I had them ring the bells one more time.

Finally I said “at any point in our classes, if you have a moment of math joy, ring the bell. Don’t worry if it’s small or tiny. Your brain lit up and you were happy? That’s enough. You struggled to get something and then felt proud when it clicked? That’s enough.”

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��Access the blogpost here:�http://bit.ly/TMC17Slide2

Access Sarah Carter’s cup �blogpost here:�http://bit.ly/TMC17Slide3

And then I let them use it. I didn’t hand out the bells every day. I would hand them out the same days we’d use the red-yellow-green cups, which were days with lots of group work time where kids are doing most of the mathematical heavy lifting.

Kids didn’t over-ring. They didn’t under-ring. Some days one or two rings, some days eight or ten rings. Imagine if you were in a class and you heard a bell ring. You wonder what you’re going to discover that would make you excited! Sometimes a kid would have an a-ha moment when I was nearby and I’d say “that sounds like a bell-ringer to me if I ever heard one…” Sometimes when I heard a bell, I would go over to the table and ask what happened. Sometimes I wouldn’t. Sometimes at the end of class I’d ask anyone who rang a bell to share what happened. Sometimes on days when I wouldn’t hand out bells, kids would say “this is a bell-ringer moment”... and the more ambitious kids would go to the cabinet to get one to ding.

It was an experiment. I didn’t know if it would work. But at least for this class, it did. We had a sound for math joy. And I found a way to make math joy turn from an internal “thing” to an external “thing.”

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http://bit.ly/exitslipTMC17

Go to this page on your laptop or phone!

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Pick

“E band Precalculus”

and

“Exit Ticket E”

(or try out any other exit ticket!)

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fin.