How is it that just a few favorite strategies like Questioning with Balls (formerly Circling with Balls) and One Word Images can be used over and over in all our classes if the “brain craves novelty”? It is because it is not the strategy that gets boring, it is the content, and with the strategies that we have come to use routinely here, although the strategy may be used in the same way from class to class, the content will be new each time. More importantly, the content will come from the students or be tailored to their needs and interests. Thus, lesson planning will become far easier – it will become just a matter of filling the strategies up with different content in each class and asking “the next logical question” not for reps but because we actually want to know the answer. Thus, we learn the art of enjoying class, and our cortisol levels go down, because we are not bowing down at the high frequency altar and its twin, the thematic unit altar.
