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?

3 Rules to Practice for Good Digital Citizenship

With lowering the legal age on Facebook in the news, it is even more important that our students now learn how to practice good digital citizenship.  Although there does not seem to be “rules” out there in cyberspace, students need to be aware that there are.  We should have the same expectations of tolerance, manners, and civil discourse that we have in face to face conversations.  Bringing these tools into the classroom is an excellent opportunity to gets our students engaged in content and teach them civil discourse and proper communication skills in a digital world.

Good digital citizenship is no accident

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice!  The same thing goes for teaching students good digital citizenship skills.  I have found that teaching three fundamental rules and allowing students to practice digital citizenship, got my students off on the right foot.  Mary Beth Hertz’s blog entry at Edutopia.org points out that we as teachers need to pay as much attention to teaching digital citizenship as we do teaching them to become good classroom citizens. 

Three Fundamental Rules

When practicing good digital citizenship, I taught my students three fundamental rules:

1. Show Respect:   Many people, adults and children alike, feel a certain freedom when they are “hiding behind” a screen name or computer screen.  Some use this freedom to express their opinions more freely and some use it to lash out.   Students using screen names and avatars in online discussions should be taught that the rules of class discussion – respect, staying on topic, and clear communication- carry into the online world.  Before you enter into an online discussion tool like SCAN from TregoED , Collaborize Classroom, or Edmodo you should make your expectations clear.  You can find a great set of rules to teach students to “Interact with Tact” or practice the 10 Core Rules of Netiquette.  These lists of rules point out seemingly obvious things like  “politeness counts” and “avatars are people too” and explain how they apply  to digital discussions.
2.  Practice Civil Discourse:   Before they go online, give your students the “Dos and Don’ts of Online Student Conversation”, a set of guidelines focused on teaching students how to practice civil discourse.   This set of guidelines from Collaborize Classroom gives students some great pointers like “critique the content and not the person” and comment starters to use when they are engaged in debate online such as:

·         I respectfully disagree with Lawrence’s assertion….

·         I really appreciate Deborah’s insight into….

·         Thank you, Manuel, for sharing….

·         Great point, Angela! Have you considered…?

Great models for practicing civil discourse.

3.  Stay on Topic:  It is perhaps a reluctant teacher’s number one fear that students will say something inappropriate online.  When students have the opportunity to talk in class, you run the same risk.   Why would you expect anything different in online discussions?  Although students may be more tempted to speak out of line in an online discussion, you will also have a clear record of it.  No more, “he said, she said.”  I find pointing this out, monitoring the conversation and addressing students that stray, can help teach them this very important lesson.

There are lots of opportunities, platforms and guidelines to have students practice good digital citizenship in any content area, that are free, flexible and private- perfect practice rooms to get students started on a path of good digital citizenship.  How do you incorporate lessons in digital citizenship in your classroom?

Could Money be the Key to Keeping Kids Engaged?

Who doesn’t like money?  Money could be the key to keeping students engaged in learning to the bitter end.   After just filing our taxes and trying to figure out the finances for elder care, calling financial literacy fun was the furthest thing from my mind, but the need for it was clear. 

Can financial literacy be fun?
Apparently, when you are a student practicing these skills it can be fun (just like practicing being an adult is more fun than actually being one!).  I recently talked to a principal who thought money could be the answer to increasing math instruction in her school.  She was not referring to spending money however, but offering students 45 more class period of math per year through financial literacy- a “fun” way to increase math skills.  I know another who used classroom money as part of her classroom management system.  Students would receive their pay coming in the door, the amount would be decreased if they came in late(just like the real world!).  She had a great system of "paying" students for proper behaviors.  Students could purchase items that she got free from conferences with their money.  They did think it was fun!

Will this cost us money?
It turns out that there are lots of free financial literacy resources out there.  I would start with the free classroom money pack which features money patterns, transaction sheets and teaching ideas- perfect for any classroom.   Another resource, from the blog post entitled “Financial Literacy can be Fun” is the BizWiz program from the BizWorld Foundation for free if you use it this year ($189 value).

Your tax dollars at work
You can find more fun financial literacy activities from The Mint or our United States Treasury offers free (your tax dollars at work) downloadable math lessons called  Money Math: Lessons for life.

Games for Sponge or Enrichment Time
Any teacher could offer these games to do as an enrichment activity for students with “extra time”:  Rich Kid Smart Kid or Money Island .

Looking to include some critical thinking?
Try out the Cleveland Fed’s free activity book entitles “Great Minds Think:  A Kid’s Guide to Money” for middle schoolers.   and have students work their way through some personal financial decisions.
You could also have students try out the “Money to Spend” SCAN scenario at TregoED.org where they will look at money issues from the different perspectives built into the scenario.

Looking for more?
Search for financial literacy at Teachersfirst.org or check out these additional resources from Edutopia. 
Please add your resources and ideas!