Old school classroom winners?

Chart paper all the way! Love me some visible thinking

I make little booklets to track things sometimes and they can be very helpful.

Erin Cunningham I use the whiteboard to draw semantic maps and other graphic organizers to help visualize concepts and their connections.

What kinds of activities do you think work best using chart paper?

I love a foldable! What kinds of information are you generally tracking with these?

Do you generally have students create their own versions of these maps and graphic organizers? 

 Erin Cunningham sometimes, it's faster if I write on the board while we talk and debrief the reading together. Other times, I ask them to do it. Teaching them takes time, and that’s the challenge when time is an issue.

Graphic organizers help visualize how students conceptualize ideas. As I write this, I’m considering adding this activity when I assign reading homework.

Laura Massa said:

Teaching them takes time, and that’s the challenge when time is an issue.

That's exactly what I was thinking when I saw your comment! I love the idea of a mind map or a causal map, but they're hard to do if you're unfamiliar with their design and even harder when you're new to the content that goes into one. I think your modeling strategy is great so they can see and contribute to the connections without the added stress/mental load of having to also create.

I especially like using it for gallery walk responses, and "silent conversation" type of activities, but it also makes other things more fun, like the urbanization game, or basic graphic exercises, or  even for the contextualization tool.

What are your favorite old-school tools? Erin Cunningham Anne Koschmider 

I have a classroom set of small markerboards that come in handy for video notes, brainstorming, and review games. 

I've also been trying to incorporate some variety with low-tech review games. One example is Roll and Review, in which students get a set of questions (like this) and roll two dice to determine which to answer. They play in small groups.