Voice saver

Make an audiotape or videotape of some of your basic lessons in your subject area to play for students on those days when your throat is rough or you are recovering from laryngitis, suggests Joan Holmes of Babylon, N.Y. The tape could also be left for a substitute when you are out or used by students for individual review of class work.

Primary cuts

High school social studies teacher Matt Guttman of New York City suggests a way to make primary source documents (such as the Declaration of Independence or the Preamble to the Constitution) come alive for students. First discuss the document, make a copy of it and cut out all the complete sentences. Then paste/tape each sentence onto a sheet of paper, place them in a box and have students pull out sheets. Students then travel around the classroom to put the document together in the best order they can; the final product is attached to a large board in the front of the room and analyzed. "The kids love to see how close they came to creating the document in the original form." Sometimes Guttman will also change the historical conditions under which the document was written and have students predict what the impact would have been under different conditions.