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Educational Theory via Airport Restrooms

Most airport restrooms are nothing to write a blog about. However, I recently traveled through the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and had a magical moment. With the push of a button, a sanitized toilet cover rolls around and covers the seats in their restrooms. That one moment of reprieve from the horror of an airport restroom was relatively inspirational.

In our classrooms, we sometimes need a sanitized cover to scoot out and save us. A quick refresh on a day when we're a bit in the dumps...so to speak. Perhaps we need a lesson for a substitute and don't have the energy to create it. Or maybe we did not get a lesson ready because our plan period was taken by a meeting or event. There are a million different reasons why our plans might be in the toilet, and we all have moments when we need something magical to save the day. 

Here are three things we can do to sanitize and refresh a crappy lesson day:

Premade Choice Boards

If we want an easy button lesson, try any of the various choice boards already created online. Dr. Catlin Tucker has a vocabulary choice board that could be used in any content area for a quick and creative lesson that takes little planning. Sam Kary, EdTech genius, did a webinar during Covid on choice boards and has a newsletter you can sign up for to receive freebies. Slides Mania also has several free choice board templates that could be quickly edited for a fun choice-based lesson any day that you need a break. If you want to provide more student ownership and make it even easier, have student groups create choice boards from a blank template and then pass them out to other groups to complete. Voila - Easy and engaging lesson that could be used in any classroom on any day.

Make it Visual

Whether it is a graphic organizer or sketchnotes, there are myriad ways to make learning visual. In addition to being backed by sound research, it provides an easy way for students to engage creatively and the teacher to take a necessary breather. Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook has an assortment of graphic organizers that could be used with any lesson. Provide a reading and graphic organizer on the topic and students can be engaged in an activity Marzano has been saying is effective for twenty years. When the need for a break has passed, students can use the graphic organizers for discussion, writing, or more hands-on analysis. Try out his Top 3 graphic organizer with any subject area and you have a complex thinking activity for the student and a simple planning activity for the teacher.

Similarly, sketchnotes provide an accessible and smooth way for students to visually engage with content. Shekou International School put out an IB guide to visual notetaking full of resources to help teachers and students understand the satisfying world of sketching. Whether you decide to have students sketch and stretch a lesson -- sketch an important moment in the reading, notes, content, etc. and then stretch it into a piece of analysis writing -- or simply take any reading or learning and work on making a sketchnote of the material, it will be an engaging research-backed activity that adds nothing to a teacher's load.

Competition, But Lazy

Students love friendly competition. We use games in our classrooms all the time to increase engagement and participation. One way to give the teacher's brain time to refresh while stimulating the student's brain is to create a bracket challenge with content. Simply use a blank bracket template, print it out, and give students time to brainstorm elements of the content, place them on the bracket, and fight it out to a winning team. The bracket can be based on something they sit and read together as a group or they can look through their notes to find important words and phrases to serve as teams. No matter how you do it, this activity engages students for a lengthy period with minimal teacher prep.

All of these strategies are good for student ownership and thinking while also being teacher time friendly. In the world of bathroom metaphors, I'd call that a flushing success. 


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