Saturday, December 14, 2013

Blessings in Disguise!

After watching Lindsey Roush's video of her fabulous Whole Brain classroom, I was inspired to try "Disguise Cream" with my students!

To use "disguise cream," students pretend to open a bottle of cream, spread it all over themselves and a partner, and turn into something else! In Lindsey's science lesson, her students turn into armadillos and explore their adaptations.

After our state acuity benchmarks, we have been working very hard on multiple-choice questions.  Part of analyzing a multiple-choice test is identifying the "tricksters," or answers that are designed to distract students.

After a perimeter lesson, I showed students some perimeter problems that had been solved incorrectly.  They used disguise cream to turn into professors on an error analysis team.  They took transformation very seriously!  They put on mustaches, bow ties, straightened their jackets, and even talked with "proper" accents! Several students adjusted pretend glasses and straightened up as they talked with their fellow "colleagues."

They still used "teach-ok," but this time they were old professors.  Students continued the accents and gestures even when teaching their neighbors.  As I walked around, I realized that nearly all students were able to detect the errors.  Using the "because" clapper, they were also able to state how they knew it was an error! Teacher heaven!



Try disguise cream with your students!

Other uses for disguise cream:

  • Numbers turning into other forms of numbers
  • Becoming historical figures
  • Becoming authors to discuss reasons for writing a piece
  • Becoming characters in a book
  • Becoming detectives looking for clues (inferencing, test prep, context clues)
  • Becoming plants, planets, animals, or other scientific objects
  • Multiplication problems morphing into other forms (repeated addition, equal groups, commutative property)
  • Numbers morphing into other equations (12= 6*2, 3*4, 10+2, a dime and two pennies)
Happy disguising!


1 comment:

  1. I love the video. Sometimes you can talk about it, and that's good. But when you can actually see it in motion and see how engaged the students are, it is amazing!

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