Teaching Outside the Box

Often, ideas suggested to teachers are time-consuming, preparation-heavy or require special resources or materials. Teaching Outside the Box encourages teachers to develop a low-preparation toolkit. These toolkits should have adaptable activities that are available to use time and time again, regardless of their teaching context. All teachers have a toolkit; a collection of tools that help them get through their lessons. This includes physical and digital tools, but it also includes their mental toolkit. Furthermore, this mental toolkit contains ideas, experiences and knowledge that allow teachers to adapt and react in their classrooms, and enables them to think creatively outside the box. This book is full of ideas to help teachers develop their own toolkit. Consequently, teachers can apply and adapt these ideas for different levels and ages of students, and across different teaching contexts. They are not necessarily whole lesson ideas, but small nuggets that you can drop to reinforce an idea or to change the energy levels of a class while staying close to the aims of the lesson and the context you have created. This book aims to inspire teachers to make use of resources readily available to them, without requiring hours of preparation work. It encourages them to take a simple idea or resource and get the most out of it. Each activity includes a rationale and an explanation of the procedure, followed by suggested adaptations. These adaptations may include suggestions for different levels, a variety of ages, fast finishers and more. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking activities are only for certain ages, levels or classes. However, it often only needs a small tweak to make an activity appropriate for a different circumstance. This book encourages teachers to develop their own toolkit to help them say 'What if I tried this differently?'