A fellow blogger Sarah, talks about managing screen time in the classroom and gives an example of playing handball for 5 minutes to get more out of her students.
Managing screen time in an increasingly screen dependent society has become more and more important not only in the home but at school as well. When the government bought laptops for students they effectively ensured that screen time would rocket during class time for students. No longer would screen time have to be planned in, but now it would be freely available and most likely used every lesson.
With this came a challenge for teachers to think of ways to keep students working effectively and not becoming disruptive students.
It is not as simple as googling strategies, although when you do many strategies do come up, they are all simply for parents of young children like Great Kids! and Empowering Parents. Although perhaps these sites would be more useful for primary teachers.
During my placement I, like Sarah used a similar technique to get students back on task during long screen time sessions. Instead of handball, I used this time to explicit teach skills like graphing and third person writing, all of the skills were relevant to the work the students were currently doing.
emmak440 