Wrap up the School Year with Just in Time Learning!

So many great lessons, so little time….

Wrapping up the school year is never easy.  This time of year is filled with disruptions, testing, field trips, assemblies, yearbooks and general havoc.  It is hard for both students and teachers to carry lessons on from one day to the next.  

I have found that students are always willing to get into a good argument if there is something they might feel passionate about.  Kids are very interested in and passionate about, well, other kids.  Why not use this natural enthusiasm to get them thinking?

Teachable Moment

I think that this local news story on a senior prank gone wrong is a great teachable moment to get students thinking and writing!  Have students apply SCAN, the critical thinking strategy to determine the issues surrounding the prank and arrests, assess what is important and develop a plan on what the consequences should be. 

You could start showing the different perspectives using this news video:

  

Police:  62 Students Arrested After Senior Prank at Teaneck High School

Have them select a perspective and read the following articles:

Parent: http://www.nj.com/bergen/index.ssf/2014/05/teaneck_students_react_to_prank_that_resulted_in_60_arrests.html

Student:

http://www.nj.com/bergen/index.ssf/2014/05/teaneck_students_react_to_prank_that_resulted_in_60_arrests.html

Principal:

http://www.northjersey.com/news/teaneck-high-school-senior-prank-leads-to-vandalism-arrest-of-62-students-1.1006861

Police:

http://www.northjersey.com/news/senior-pranks-a-teen-tradition-that-can-get-out-of-hand-quickly-1.1007219

Have all students read this article to see what alternative activities might be possible:

http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2014/05/messy_senior_pranks_at_western.html

If you have computer access, you could have students participate as individuals or in small groups in an online guided discussion using the SCAN tool at TregoED.org.   The tool is free and the class discussion will be in a private URL (students will not be identified (except to the teacher) - no passwords, registration, or email addresses are necessary).  Teachers can register at www. tregoed.org and learn more about this tool by watching this short video.

If computers are not available, students can be put in groups with like roles, discuss the issue and then jigsaw into groups with 4 different perspectives.  They should use the SCAN critical thinking strategy as their guide for discussion.

There are lots of great discussions going on right now that your students could and should get in on:  NSA and privacy, year round school, hashtag activism (300 Girls go Missing), and more.  Take advantage of these discussions and keep the learning going!

Engaging Activities for the Home Stretch

For many, Memorial Day weekend signifies the home stretch.  Testing is over.  Field trips, concerts, art shows, field days, book inventories, etc.  all signal the gradual shut down of the schools and with it the minds of our students.  Add to that the heat that can come in June (along with schools that are not air conditioned) and you can run up against some cantankerous kids. 

Back in the day, we collected their books and kids did puzzles on paper.  They thought that was a treat, until they got their 7^th one of the day.   When the VCR made it into the schools, we might even had showed a movie!  But alas, our students are more sophisticated than that now (and they have seen all the movies!).

How do you keep them going?

Thanks to my twitter PLN, I have come across a few great resources to help you get to the end of the year with your sanity intact:

1.   8 Digital Ways to Wrap up your School Year – includes some simple tools that can help you digitize your end of the year activities.

As the end of the year gets closer, sometimes technology becomes less available either because of high demand or disrepair, bringing low tech resources and activities to the forefront.

2.  “How to Rejuvenate Yourself and Your Students after Testiing” by Elena Aguilar has some great ideas on incorporating creativity with engaging activities.  I have to tell you that I personally am a big fan of crayons, markers and scissors.  I think you will find your students are too!

Kids bouncing off the walls?  Why not use some of that physical energy by incorporating movement into your lessons

3.   “Just Drop It,” has students examining the correlation between the height a ball is dropped from and the height that it bounces back to, the link gives you the complete procedure and all the science information you will need to make a great learning activity. 

Do you have your box ‘o fun from this blog “10 Simple Activities for Hands and Minds”? 

4.  Have students build a Rube Goldberg contraption.  Watch this video by Honda (it’s real, no trick photography) to give you a little inspiration! Start by telling your students to build a three step contraption that will get a marble in a cup.

Came across these great activities for ELL kids, but why should they have all the fun?  Check out some of these activities for building vocabulary.

5.  Wacky Story- a great game to help students reinforce the vocabulary that they have learned throughout the year.

6.  Word Links- Assign your students each a word and have them find a partner whose word is related).  They can search for opposites; one does something to the other, etc. Have them report out what their words are and how they are related.

There are lots of other great blogs and sites that have even more ideas.  Whenever you are looking for resources in education you can always turn to Cybraryman.   Check out Jerry Blumengarten’s (Cybraryman) resource page for more links.  Or you could even check out this previously posted  “Keep on Teaching:  Great End of the Year Activities.”

Experienced and connected teachers have all sorts of resources and activities up their sleeves for just these times.  Why not share yours?