7 Ways to Use Task Cards to Make Your Classroom AWESOME!

Task cards are one of my all-time favorite classroom tools. They serve so many purposes and can be used in so many ways to meet the individual needs of your students. I’ve used them in both my science and math classes as well as at the middle school level and the community college level. They are a wonderful alternative to a classic worksheet, and most of the time, students do not even realize that they are learning and working!

What Are Task Cards?
They are pretty much what they are called. They are cards that have tasks for students to complete. The tasks could vary greatly, ranging from identifying a definition, to drawing a graph, to creating a weather instrument. Students can record their answers or complete the tasks in their notebooks, on a pre-created answer sheet, on whiteboards, and more. The possibilities with task cards are truly endless, and I personally have an obsession with them!

How Can Task Cards Be Used in Your Classroom?

Around the Room/ Scavenger Hunt

This is the option that I choose to do most of the time and that I feel is one of the easiest ways! You can take the task cards and place them all around the room. It could be on desks, taped to the wall, on the counter, wherever! Your students can start at any point in the room, if you have a pre-made answer sheet, and go around the room until all of the task cards are complete. You can have students work as individuals or in partners. This is a great opportunity for you to walk around the room and help those students in need, or stick around where the more challenging questions are placed. My students LOVE to get out of their seats to do their work. They almost forget they are learning. To make it even more engaging, you can hide a few cards that they will have to search for. Make learning fun!

Centers/Stations

This is a fairly simple way to use task cards and is great when you are looking for activities to place in your centers, whether it be a science center or a math center. It’s very easy to set up, and students love to sort through cards. You could choose to place task cards at one center/station, depending on what else you have, or you could have stations all around the room with 4-5 task cards at each station, and students can rotate around the room until all centers/stations are complete.

Differentiation

There are multiple things that you can do to use task cards to differentiate. One thing you could do would be to sort your task cards by difficulty level and have the students work in levels. Once they finish the first set of task cards, they can move on to the next level. You could also use them as formative assessment, or as a pre-test, to determine your students' individual needs. From there, you can differentiate your lessons.

Early Finishers

This is a super-easy way, and a super useful way, to use task cards. If you have an “early finishers” section in your room, you can set task cards up for students to complete when they finish their work. They are great for extension and extra credit! I like to laminate mine and place them on a binder ring.

Test Prep

I personally have created my math task cards to cover every single standard for my state. We use the Common Core Standards. For science, we have the NC Essential Standards. If I align my task cards directly to the standards, I know that I am not missing a single thing that my students need to learn in order to be successful by state standards. Using task cards for test prep is awesome! I know that, in the past, I have been in a panic about what I needed to do to review all of the standards that I covered for A WHOLE YEAR before the test. Task cards are a great way to do this.

Spiral Review

Don’t like to wait until the end of the year to begin reviewing? Me neither! Task cards can be used for a spiral review. You can have students complete task cards throughout the year, covering different standards, so that the content stays fresh on their mind. They will not even realize if you use the same card twice!

Partner Games

Make a game out of it! You can set students up into partners, have students complete a task card individually, and then have them compare their answers. If their answers are different, they are able to discuss it. This is great for many reasons. First, it is self-checking. If students do not get the same answer, they are forced to go back and figure out what they did wrong. Second, research shows that when you teach someone, the material sticks better. It’s a win-win situation. Who doesn’t love a game? Set a timer, play some music. Make it fun!

Nutella Coffee

Although teachers have a TON to do in the summer, we do have a little free time. My goal for this summer was to learn some fancy new coffee tricks! I have spent way too much money at the coffee shops, so it was time I learned to make the sweet coffee myself.

One of my favorites I have made so far has been Nutella Coffee. This will definitely be a part of my morning routine when school starts back. If you have a self-serve blender, it's a breeze!


This is what you will need: 

2 tbsp of Nutella
Cup of Brewed Coffee
1/4 Cup Milk
1 tbsp of Sugar

Just throw all of the ingredients in the cup and blend! You can adjust the amount of milk/sugar as needed. I like my coffee super sweet! It does not take long to blend. Just blend until smooth.

Once blended, throw in a coffee cup and enjoy! This is one of my absolute favorites!

Citizen Science

One of the most significant things that I have done as a science teacher is implement a citizen science lesson. If you have never done a citizen science lesson in your classroom, I highly recommend it. I had a special opportunity when implementing my lesson, but there are SO many lessons out there to choose from that you could find to fit perfectly into your classroom.

I had the opportunity to be a part of the Kenan Fellows in the 14-15 Cohort in North Carolina. I was able to work with a mentor at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences to study Demodex Mites (mites that live on us!) ...yes...100% of us! As a Kenan Fellow, me and "team mite" had to create a curriculum from our experiences and then implement them into our classroom. Creating the curriculum was the most challenging task that I faced during the Kenan Fellows program, but at the same time, it was one of the most exciting! One of the challenges me and another team member faced was fitting the Demodex mites experiment into the 7th grade curriculum. It fit well into the 8th grade curriculum, but 7th grade was a stretch. It worked nicely while teaching scientific inquiry, which is the direction that we went in; however, science inquiry isn’t tested in 7th grade, which can cause issues with pacing. 

The most exciting thing of all was implementing the curriculum!! I truly built up the mite lab that we were going to do in class. I implemented my curriculum at the beginning of the year, so I barely knew my students. This was a wonderful introduction to my science classroom, and my students had a ball. We have the results of their question, “Do Middle School Students Have Mites?”. My mentor and other researchers know that these mites are on 100% of adults, but they do not know much else. As a class, by students swabbed each others faces to hopefully get mite DNA. We sent the swabs back to my mentor so he could analyze the data. My students were able to do REAL science in REAL time. The data was very valuable to my mentor. The students were also super into the lesson. They asked almost everyday over the year, "Do we have mites?", and we found out...they did! Not all of the tubes showed mite data, but this brought up more questions and conversations. Science never ends!

If you are interested in looking at other citizen science projects for your classroom, here is a link to an awesome site with many resources! SciStarter

Tablets in the Classroom

It's been a while since I have shared anything, but as you all know, teaching can get a little hectic!! However, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of those that donate to Donor's Choose. Just recently, I have received 5 Samsung Tablets through Donor's Choose. Although this is nowhere close to a class set, I have seen what just having 5 in my classroom has done.

We have a little bit of technology in our school, not as much as others, but we are blessed with what we do have. As far as I know, my tablets are the only ones in our school. I plan to do a lot with them, but as for now, I am just using them for "when you are finished" tools, and students can use these to play on the science apps I have downloaded.

I thought that my students may think that was sort of "lame", but I couldn't believe what a motivational tool that it has become. Students that usually may delay their start in their classwork are actually starting on time and completing their assignments correctly.

I am just so thankful to have these to use a motivational tools for my students. I cannot wait to see what else they may bring to the classroom!

Using QR Codes for Notes

I really wanted to use QR codes in some way this year. I created a QR Scavenger Hunt to begin my lesson on the Ozone Layer. I was really curious to know how it was going to go, and then I discover, the kids loved it! 

I created it for individual use at a desk and also for an "around the room" type scavenger hunt. I decided to just have the students sit at their desk and work on these individually.

Students used the app Scan on the iPods to scan QR codes. The QR codes lead to short descriptions about the ozone layer that students recorded on their note sheet. Later, student glued their note sheet into their interactive notebooks. I also had a few students use their smart phones. The students were SOOOO excited to use the iPods as well as their cell phones to take notes. You could tell they never did anything like this before, and they want to do it again. It's funny how I tricked them...they were just taking notes :)

This activity is in my TpT store, and I definitely plan to create more!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Ozone-QR-Scavenger-Hunt-1394909

Lesson Reflection Ball

I have spent the past few weeks thinking of easy things that I can do to make class a little more interesting. One of those things that I decided that I was going to do was to create a Lesson Reflection Ball. Can anyone name a kid that doesn't like to throw things in class? Didn't think so.

I just went to Wal-Mart and grabbed a rubber ball for $2.50, and started coming up with some questions. There where many different colors to choose from! It was bigger than I thought it was going to be, so that meant more questions, but I finally came up with 35.

1) What is one thing that you learned today?

2) What are some ways you could share this learning with your parents of family?

3) Why do you believe we’re studying this objective?

4) What’s one thing the teacher did for this objective that you really liked?

5) What is one question you have after today’s lesson?

6) Name 3 things you learned today.

7) What is one thing you found interesting in the lesson today?

8) What is something that stuck with you today?

9) Create a question based off of today’s lesson.

10) Name at least 3 vocabulary words dealing with today’s lesson.

11) What is one thing you knew about the objective before today’s lessons?

12) Today I learned about _________. I still have a questions about ____________.

13) What was the main idea of the lesson today?

14) How will this lesson relate to the real world?

15) Tell three key ideas from the lesson today.

16) Create a metaphor about today’s objective.

17) Today’s lesson: who, what, when, where, and why?

18) Sum up today’s lesson in one single sentence.

19) My favorite thing about today’s lesson was ______________.

20) Make up a true/false questions based off of today’s lesson.

21) I want to know more about ______________.

22) Make up a multiple choice question based off today’s lesson.

23) What was the easiest part of today’s lesson?

24) What was the hardest part of today’s lesson?

25) If you had to teach today’s lesson to another student, could you do it?

26) Identify the most important concept to know to understand today’s lesson.

27) How will you remember today’s lesson?

28) How did you make sense of today’s lesson? Explain.

29) Explain today’s lesson in your own words.

30) Could today’s lesson apply to another subject? How?

31) Give me 5 vocabulary words from today’s lesson. Go!

32) Make up a fill-in-the-blank question based off of today’s lesson.

33) What can you do to study the material you learned today?

34) Did you learn anything that surprised you today?

35) How might today’s lesson help you?

I can't wait to use it in class! It's perfect for that last minute or two before the bell rings.

Beginnings and Word Walls!

I cannot believe that the school year is almost here! Teachers go back in 17 days..wow! Where has my summer gone? Of course, always a teacher, I have been working on decorations for my room, and I decided that it was time to update my science word wall! I have added SO many more vocabulary words. I now have 128 vocabulary words for my word wall. I knew that my students looked at them so much last year, and they were fascinated with the pictures. When I'd ask a question that they didn't know, they would look at the pictures on the word wall cards to try to figure it out, so I knew I'd have to keep this curiosity going, so I created more! If you have already bought my science word wall cards, you will be able to print the update for free. If not, you can download them at TpT. They are perfect of 7th Grade NC Essential Standards.

TpT is also having a sell on August 4th and 5th. All of my products will be 20% off!