Team Teaching Tuesday: Share a Teaching Tip

I'm linking up with my buddy, Stephanie, and sharing a teaching tip. This year, I started providing answer keys for my station activities, to make my students' work self-checking. This has really been fantastic for several reasons.

1. It has made my students better editors because they need to concentrate in order to find and correct their mistakes.

2. It has made them accountable for their work. The harder they work, the less errors they make.

3. It has taught them how to use editing marks. They cannot erase their mistakes. They use a "grading pen" to fix their errors, using editing marks when appropriate. The grading pens are just pretty, colorful pens, sitting in a pretty, colorful cup. Once they have corrected their paper, they can put on a sticker or give themselves a smiley face or an A+.

4. I always look over their paper just to make sure they didn't miss anything. It is much quicker for me to look over a paper that has already been corrected, so, this process has saved me lots of time. If a student made multiple errors, I always work with them one-on-one to make sure they know whey their answers were wrong and to make sure they understand the skill.

5. I keep all my answer keys in a 3 ring binder, in page protectors. When students have finished their work, they come to my teacher table, grab the binder and the grading pens, and check over their work.

6. Even my kindergarten students check their own work!

Try it! You'll love it!