Post It Notes need to be your new best friend

Who doesn’t love sticky notes? Different colors. Different sizes. Plus . . . you know, they’re sticky. But they’re easy to underestimate. I mean, they’re literally a single use, throw away, forget about because their job is done, sort of thing.

But I was reminded recently by a friend of mine that sticky notes can be used in a lot more ways than just as a simple reminder stuck the corner of your computer monitor. There are lots of cool ways that we can use them to support historical thinking and the collecting / organizing of foundational content.

The simpliest way?

We all use exit tickets. But I like the simplicity of having a kid write down a few quick things on a sticky note and just whacking it on the door or bulletin board on their way out of class. The prompts might be: something new, rate its importance 1-10, how it connects to something else I know. Or try one of these sentence starters:

• One thing I knew already was
• I’m confused about
• I learned . . . and now I’m thinking
• One idea that challenged my thinking is
• I agree or disagree with
• One thing I got done today was

Maybe even have kids color code their ticket. Green for something that made sense to them. Red for a question.

So . . . how else can you use a sticky?