15 Sticky Notes Hacks For Your Classroom
It all started nearly 40 years ago when the sticky notes made their first appearance. Even after all this time since the moment that they were introduced to the market by 3M, their popularity is still very high and rising.
They come now in different sizes, colours and shapes that you can imagine apart from the simple traditional yellow one to the ones shaped after our favourite movie characters.
Their application is unlimited. Especially, if we take schools into consideration, as a matter of fact, the teachers and students can use sticky notes for planning or during the lesson to explain, to mark a specific process …. the list of applications is endless.
Listed below are some pretty clever ways that teachers can use sticky notes in the classroom.
- To share what their students are currently reading.
You can easily use the sticky notes to share and collect info at the same time during one session. Ask students to write the title of the book they are currently reading and to include the page number they are on and also a small comment on what is their impression of the book so far. This is a very helpful way to keep track of the progress of the class and helps accumulate a lot of useful information that can be applied later on in the classroom to help the students with their questions. Source: Head over Heels for Teaching - Simplify division.
Divisors and differences can be pretty confusing to your students. You can use an ingenious way to explain by assigning each number with a different colour and guide your students during each exercise. Source: Middle School OCD - Sticky notes Sudoku.
Well, it is just a little bit different from the original game of numbers but it is an excellent exercise especially for younger kids. For the older ones, you can make it more fun by increasing the size of the grid and use sticky notes to write different numbers or use different colours instead. Source: School Time Snippets - Pixelated art design.
This is a wonderful way to keep your students busy as it might seem easy to draw something but using this method you engage them in using math to measure and create a very precise order of how they will proceed in order for the image they are drawing to take form. This is pretty challenging as well as the students have to create a puzzle and at the same assemble it while creating. Source: Here Come the Girls - Name writing.
This is a very useful technique for young kids as they can use the sticky notes with the letters written on them to put the letters in order to create the name and then try and write it on their own. Source: Teacher Bits and Bobs - Sticky notes words.
A very useful technique to teach younger kids how to pronounce words and how to spell them as well. You can easily use sticky notes with different letters matched in ways that form the word you need. Source: Teaching High School Math - ‘Write it and prove it’
This method is very useful to check on the progression of the class. Before leaving the class give all the students a question and on the way out they should stick a note with their name written on it and the answer they think is best suited to the question you asked. This will allow you to create an idea of how the class has assimilated the lesson. Source: Teaching High School Math - Individual goals
Have all the students post a goal for themselves or the entire class. Each goal can be written on a ticket and all of them will be in a group. Achieved goals will be celebrated. Source: Reflections of an Intentional Teacher - Sticky notes wall art.
To give a chance to all the students to display their creativity and show their work you can give each one of them a sticky note and let them draw something of their choice. Considering the fact that they are drawing on a very small canvas there isn’t any limit on how many designs can be displayed. Source: Art of Teaching via Instagram - The perfect lesson plan.
You would be amazed at how easy is for a teacher to turn a simple pack of sticky notes and a notebook into a fully functional and well-organized lesson plan. It will help you organize your daily work and it is a lot cheaper than buying a lesson planning book. Source: The Wise and Witty Teacher - Story map.
Use the sticky notes to explain to your students a story in the book you are reading. Take different colour sticky notes and use them to map out each story character, the theme and more. Source: Growing Kinders - Text marking
Close reading is a technique used to help kids read parts of the book which help with the concept they are studying. So you make them read on purpose. If the book is property of the library or it is a school-owned book that is where the sticky notes come in handy. You can use different colours to appoint different concepts that are part of the text. Also, you can put notes on them for each concept when it is needed. Source: Performing in Education - Help is needed.
This hack is pretty easy. Give your students a green, a yellow one and a red sticky note. Make them stick a note on the side of the desk during each individual work to show how they are proceeding. This will make the class a lot more organized and each student will get help without the need to talk or interrupt others. Source: Love. Teach. Inspire. - Connect four reviews
You can easily make something stressful as the pre-test review into a fun game. Divide the students into different teams and give each team a different colour. Ask them questions and for each correct answer they get, they can place colours into the board the team that connects four squares first wins. Source: miss5th via Instagram - Draw sticky note portraits.
In this twist on sticky notes art, students can practice drawing to a grid. Source: Mrs. Crosbie
