I call this blog post no-duh-content. But it took me too many years to make a concerted effort to improve my teaching in this area. I hope that you can take this advice to heart and reduce your work load. Here goes...
Stop Throwing Your Work Away.
I told you that it was simple. But hear me out.
One of my strengths as a teacher is meeting kids where they are and helping them take one step forward. My door is always open before school. Kids are welcome. I never eat in the teachers lounge. I'm in my room with kids. After school? Yep, with kids. Kids know that it is a safe place and the right place to strive. Because I spend much of my "prep time" (whatever that is) working with students, I have to be efficient. And a couple of years ago, I noticed something. I would write an amazing practice problem on the board, have the student work through it with me, and then erase the board. I figured that problem had served its purpose. And then the next day, I would repeat. And then at lunch, repeat. And then it struck me.
If this many kids are needing extra help and practice in-person, how many are waiting silently in the wings? And so I did something earth shattering. I took a picture. Posted it. Then took a picture of the solution. Posted that too. And then I did it again. And again. And pretty soon, there were whole practice tests written and stored on OneNote. There were entire subchapters that I could point absent kids toward. And what did it take? A picture on my phone and three minutes to post it.
I've continued snapping pictures and posting. And each year, the library of very unofficial-yet-helpful content grows. Parents ask how to help their kid. The key is practice, and it's all listed. Kids want to know what is on the test. It's just like the questions I posted. No need to write a study guide. It's posted.
I post problems, keys, full solutions, answers to the homework questions that stump kids, links to videos that help explain. And I did it all with essentially no more work than I was doing already.
Is it pretty? No. Is it in pdf form so you can have it? No. But the kids have it. And those that want to join in the culture of striving in the class will never lack practice.
I have pictures of my board, pictures of sticky notes, pictures on the back of napkins. OK, maybe not napkins, but you get the point. Stop wasting your effort. You write the best questions. You know how the questions will be phrased on the test. You know what you want them to know and be able to do. So show them. And stop erasing, throwing away, and redoing work that could benefit kids for the next years.
Here is a snip of my OneNote. Did I sit down and write all these pages just for the fun of it? Nope. I wrote them for kids. And because I saved them, now they all have them.
**And one bonus tip. shift+window+s is the snip tool. Like a question you wrote on an old test? Snip it and paste the picture on your site.
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