I am excited to announce the release of my book, Boredom Busters: Transform Worksheets, Lectures, and Grading into Engaging, Meaningful Learning Experiences!
Let’s imagine this scenario: It’s Monday morning. Fresh off a weekend spent with family, fuzzy socks, a healthy dose of sunshine, and an unapologetically unhealthy amount of screen time, you’re excited about the lesson you’ve planned. You printed, laminated, and cut your materials ahead of time, and they’re all laid out just so. You even took the time to decorate the room in support of the lesson’s theme. You’ve planned interaction, tech integration, and a check for understanding so you know who you need to meet with tomorrow. You’ve got bell-work posted, music playing, and are stationed at the door to greet your students with a smile or a trendy, personalized handshake routine. Your clothes are pressed, your shoes fashionable. Today, you rock.
And then you’ve got to do it again tomorrow.
And Wednesday.
And Thursday.
And by then, you’re tapped out. Your coffeemaker is on the fritz, brewing rust-colored water instead of coffee, spurting it across your counter--and your slightly-rumpled shirt--as you rush out the door, praying you beat that red Ford Focus that happens to drive the same morning route you do, just at about 12 mph slower than you’d like to go. Family time has amounted to chauffeuring one kid to soccer, another to theater, and entertaining the other while getting the hole in your tire patched since your car knows exactly when you DON’T have time for these kinds of shenanigans and has conspired with the coffeemaker to teach you some kind of lesson about patience. You gave up on the fashionable shoes and switched to tennis shoes by Tuesday afternoon. The morning staff meeting ran over, so now you can either post your bell-work OR take a potty break, so you sacrifice the bell ringer in the name of relieving your bladder since you know it will be exactly 4 hours and 23 minutes until you get the next chance. After the tech department emailed yesterday, letting you know exactly which sites a cluster of students managed to visit during class, you’ve vowed to pretend it’s 1983 and go fully analog. Tuesday’s small groups turned into a contest in which the students you needed to work with and the rest of the class competed to see who could be off-task in the most creative ways possible, so now you’ve given up on small groups in favor of crowd control. Today...today you are knee deep in The Thursday Problem.
We’ve all been there. Sometimes we have precisely the right activity for the objective and we can craft a truly memorable and valuable learning experience. But other times, for a variety of reasons, we find that our lesson plan amounts to “page 117.”
Yeah.
The Thursday Problem.
That’s where Boredom Busters belong. When you CAN craft a learning experience perfectly suited to your objective, do. But when you find yourself facing The Thursday Problem (even if it’s Monday), Boredom Busters are a sanity-saving way to engage your students in deep, meaningful learning. They are activity frameworks that can be adapted for ANY content at any time. They can become classroom routines as much as passing out papers or lining up for dismissal. In fact, teachers from primary grades to college campuses are using Boredom Busters. Many Boredom Busters require no special materials. All are easy to make or set up. And all bring added depth and value to traditional instruction.
Imagine your students’ reactions when you unfurl a giant game board across the floor or dump out a bag of ball pit balls, tell them to fold their worksheet into a paper airplane, or give them permission to dance across the classroom. Curious? They will be too. And they’ll want to come back for more tomorrow.
Boredom Busters releases from Dave Burgess Consulting August 23. Free book study resources will also be available for schools and groups interested in doing book studies together. When my DBC page is live, I will link that here as well. In the meantime, be sure to follow me on Twitter for updates!