I teach reading and English in a block, so we do a lot of work each day. Since I plan our days with several tasks in mind, the amount of "down" time is minimal. However, there may be times when students have time to read silently, if they finish early. However, there is always that one student that finishes with five minutes to go and just sits there! Just sitting is one of my BIG pet peeves.Sometimes it is a student who has everything turned in and is all caught up with independent reading, but other times it is a student that has done no independent reading all year! Just make an effort to at least look busy! >.<
In order to keep my sanity, I decided I need to make some challenge capsules. It should work great for the student who didn't bring their book to class, and we have five or ten minutes to go in class. Instead of having that student go to their locker (which might be their main objective), I can have them grab one of the challenge capsules and get some extra credit (maybe). I'm not sure I want this as another added part of my class or just for extra credit.
Here's my finished capsule set up. I have some of these items for sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I have a folder for my challenge cards and for completed challenge cards. To make my "challenges" I did a mix of tasks that are independent of my planned lessons (writing prompts and riddles) and comprehension questions on key content. I also put some tasks that could be recreated each week with vocabulary. These are essential questions that will gauge student understanding (as well as remind students - Hey, we learned this in September, I have to remember that?). I found that there weren't many junior high examples of challenge capsules, so it was hard to "just find" questions. I saw that a lot of the teachers used Mind Benders for their grade level.
I hope it goes well! It will be a different experience for students (and me) in any case.
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