Old school classroom winners?

I love my table top white boards! Though- those might not be so old school. 

I do find myself rotating through high-tech and low-tech options a lot. Anytime students (and adults) get too used to a routine - it can feel a bit boring or mundane. A sheet of loose leaf folded down the middle for a pro and con chart can totally bring new life to a lesson where the chart might have been digital - if digital is the way you usually go. I try to remind myself to switch things up for this reason. Also- a great hype up for the material works too! 

My students got me thinking today - while creating causal maps, I noticed one group had a different approach to their layout. When I mentioned that it reminded me of a blueprint or floor plan, they said they were inspired by Block Blast. I still need to work out the details, but I think explaining how "blocks" (labeled with events) fit together has potential! Kind of like a new take on hexagonal thinking. 

OMG- Tetris! I knew all those hours I spent playing that game as a kid would pay off someday. I’m down to help plan this one for sure.

Well this is depressing lol, but when we learn about genocide, we look at 4 case studies, and I have them make a little booklet for each of the 4 cases where each page has one of the 10 stages of genocide on it, and they keep track of various events that fall in to each stage. So... that is a depressing application haha. But you can do it with any framework really. Like in my African American history class we are dong the civil rights unit right now and we're using this framework to track what roles are played in each action https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1x0H9mLoneB1linFUInTJdJIw2bbVOLXywkxzZBMsadQ/edit?usp=sharing so you could make a booklet of that too, and have each page be one of the roles, and the kids put examples as they go.

Oh ok, I totally get what you mean. I like a little tactile project as an alternative to an essay. Your assignments remind me of an assignment I created for my AP Euro class for the "hot" wars of the Cold War.

These are great examples! Thank you for sharing. It can be so much more fun and meaningful to manipulate paper and markers and glue than to try to move around text boxes on a screen.

Thanks for the roll and review activity! Low-tech and easy to prep but still fun and effective.

Honestly all the whiteboard comments are making me think I need to ask for some! I've done a bootleg version where I put I sheet of white paper in a sleeve protector and called it a whiteboard 

I totally agree with you on needing to switch up modes every now and then. And folding some paper can go a long way especially if you find a lesson wrapping up sooner than expected. Switches on a different part of the brain.

So cool! I love when the ideas originate from students! Sometimes I get so lost in my own thinking that it becomes too detached from them. I'd really love to see how this idea materializes.

I found some printable Tetris pieces here. My sophomores are starting the Cold War soon and I was thinking they would appreciate something tactile during our upcoming PSAT test days. Maybe they could "build the Berlin Wall" by combining blocks labeled with factors that led up to the wall's construction?