UPDATE 10/13/2021: You can now see an updated list of all of the Halloween/October resources I’ve collected by visiting this Wakelet!
As I’ve been going through some of my “Halloween-ish” posts from previous years, I’ve recognized some updating that needs to be done. (Hard to believe I’ve been doing this for nine years now, and wow, have things changed!) For example, I used to do “Misunderstood Monsters” with my younger students, and many of the resources I mentioned in that post from 2012 are no longer available. Fortunately, the adorable short video, Monster Box, (also on YouTube) is still free and easy to access. When I pondered the changes I might make in a current lesson using this, my mind immediately went to the Visible Thinking Routines from Project Zero. One routine that I think would be powerful to use with Monster Box would be the “Step Inside” routine. There are three questions students can consider from the perspective of different characters in the video:
What can the person or thing perceive?
What might the person or thing know about or believe?
What might the person or thing care about?
I would have each student choose a character from the video (shopkeeper, young girl, one of the monsters…), and answer those questions with evidence from the story. Another facet that could deepen the discussion would be if the answers to these questions change throughout the story.
You can see some examples of how to use “Step Inside”, and access some templates, from Alice Vigors here.
My previous post included some templates to use if you were discussing Ethics (from Kaplan’s Depth and Complexity), and those are still available. I also went ahead and made this new Google Slides activity for the “Step Inside” Thinking Routine with a template from Slides Carnival that is free to copy and use. There’s even a slide with monster parts, so students can build their own monster!
Of course, you can extend this activity by creating your own monster paper circuits.
For other posts on Visible Thinking Routines, with links to more templates, check out this Peel the Fruit activity for Google Slides.
if I embed slide students are unable to type or interact is that correct?
Correct, if you embed a Google Slides presentation on a website, it is not editable. You can share an editable version with them through a link or in Google Classroom. You can also download a slide as an image (jpg) and use it as a background in a slide, Padlet, or Jamboard for students to write or draw on.