Author: Terri Eichholz

Terri is a curriculum and tech integration specialist, speaker, and author with a passion for engaging and empowering learners. She delivers engaging professional learning, consultations on a variety of educational needs, and professional articles for various outlets . Find out more about Terri on the About page in the site menu.
Motivation, Videos

When Teaching Meets the Unknown: Navigating the Twilight Zone

Terri Eichholz

It’s National Teacher Appreciation Week in the United States this week (May 8-12), and I was browsing through a calendar of special days in May only to discover that May 11 is “Twilight Zone Day.” Coincidence? I think not.

So, I thought I would see if there were any Twilight Zone episodes about teachers. And there were. The first one that came up is called, “Changing of the Guard.” “Great!” I thought. “Let’s find some clips.”

So when I caution you not to recklessly watch old Twilight Zone clips during your procrastinatory moments, you should definitely take that advice to heart. The first clip that I watched from the episode had me in tears. And not the good kind. (Side note — who knew “procastinatory” was actually a word? I was as surprised as you when I typed it and didn’t get a vicious, red underline beneath it.)

“Changing of the Guard” is a about a professor who has been forced to retire, and he definitely does not feel good about it. He muses that he has accomplished nothing in his life and becomes deeply depressed. The worst kind of depressed.

But just as he decides that it’s all too much to bear, standing beside the grave of Horace Mann, the school bell rings again and he finds himself back in the classroom for a reunion with former students.

I don’t want to give too much away. But let’s just say I cried again. The good kind of tears, or mostly good anyway.

If you want to see what happened, here is the clip I recommend. Just do not say I didn’t warn you to have a box of tissues nearby.

Fun fact: Rod Serling began teaching college courses in his 40’s, and continued until his death at the early age of 50.

Oh, and it’s also “Eat What You Want Day,” which seems like a fortunate confluence of events. Celebrate them all. Tell the teachers who made a difference to you (because I promise you that most of us have no idea whether we made an impact or not), eat a great big doughnut, and take this advice from Rod Serling:

Teachers: Don’t forget to sign up for a chance to win a free, self-paced course by midnight, May 12, 2023! More info here!

Teaching Tools

Enter For a Chance to Win!

Terri Eichholz

I know, I know. If you receive my posts in your school e-mail, the embedded video below from @Abbott ElementaryABC is probably blocked. But I couldn’t resist the clip because it’s equally touching and funny. If you’re a teacher, you know the constant tug of war between your awareness that you never went into this profession for the money and the natural human-need to feel valued. Hopefully, you can visit the link for the video or watch it outside of school if you didn’t have a chance to catch this episode of Abbott Elementary.

@abbottelementaryabc It’s #TeacherAppreciationWeek! Join #AbbottElementary ♬ original sound – Abbott Elementary

In the meantime, I want you to know how much you are appreciated. Over the years, I’ve reached out to some of my former teachers to tell them what they meant to me, and I hope that you receive those reminders, too. From the bottom of my heart, I feel immense gratitude to the teachers who shaped me into the person I am today as well as the incredible colleagues I worked with for 29 years.

To show my appreciation, I am giving away free tuition for two of my online courses: Harnessing Hexagons and Genius Hour. There will be one lucky winner for each, and everyone who enters will receive my newsletter that will contain a coupon code for 50% off each course. Entries need to be received by 5/12 at midnight CST. I’ll use a random drawing extension to choose the two winners. You can still enter to try to win the free courses even if you already receive my newsletter. Since these are online and self-paced, they are the perfect way to earn some credits when you don’t feel rushed this summer or, if you prefer to protect those weeks off by not doing school-related tasks there is no deadline.

It’s hard to find ways to give back to a profession that gave me so much over the years, but I try my best to share free downloads and tips with the hope that you will receive my heart-felt message that I respect and value you so much.

Thank you!

Creative Thinking, K-12, Teaching Tools

May I Help You With Some Resources for This Month?

Terri Eichholz

Well, it happened. May snuck up on me and here we are. It was amusing to wake up to some Twitter drama about Teacher Appreciation Week, which is generally the first week of May, but Google has deemed that it doesn’t start until next week. Supposedly, whoever actually decides these things decided TAW needs to be during the first full week of May, and when the month starts on a Monday instead of a Sunday that doesn’t count. I don’t really know who is in charge of these seemingly arbitrary calendar declarations, but I do think the cherry on top is that it’s actually Principals’ Day. So, Happy Principals’ Day to those of you who are one or are aspiring to be one. And for goodness sake, just appreciate teachers every day and that dilemma will disappear once and for all.

May Wakelet

I do have some Teacher Appreciation links in this month’s Wakelet if you are so inclined. I also have May the 4th (Star Wars Day), Cinco de Mayo, and Mother’s Day resources. And — I know some of you are going to grit your teeth in frustration, but remember some schools actually started their years in late July, early August last year — the link to my End of the School Year Wakelet.

Other Wakelets

If you haven’t checked out my collection of Wakelets, you may find some other desperately needed resources here. From Brainteasers and Puzzles to Fun Stuff, if you are trying to survive testing or just the sheer exhaustion of making it through this many months of the school year, there are plenty of options to help you keep putting some “zing” into your lessons even if you feel like you’ve used them all.

Celebrate with a Pool Party

And, if worse comes to worse you can always download my Summer Pool Party Creative Thinking Packet. It’s free and I’ve used it with all ages to give students the opportunity to practice their S.C.A.M.P.E.R. skills.

from my Summer Pool Party packet
Poem based on Fasano Prompts
3-12, Creative Thinking, Language Arts, Writing

Crowd-Sourced Poetry from Joseph Fasano

Terri Eichholz

Weirdly, it was a collection of Joseph Fasano (@Joseph_Fasano_) quotes — compiled and presented to him by his students — not his poetry, that first brought him to my attention on Twitter. They compiled a notebook of the “craziest things” he said in class throughout one semester and gifted him the 152 page book at the end. Below is one example, which I think most teachers have either said or wanted to say at numerous points in their careers:

You can read the rest of his pinned thread of hilarious quotes here.

The Teacher/Poet

It turns out Fasano is not just a teacher with a sense of humor, but also a gifted poet. He began his academic career studying mathematics and astrophysics at Harvard, switched to philosophy, and then did his graduate studies on poetry at Columbia University. He has published several books and won numerous awards. Find out more about his biography and publications on his website.

Daily Poetry Themes on Twitter

Each day, Fasano suggests a new poetry theme on Twitter and offers an example. Responses pour in as readers share their favorite poems that center around that theme. For example, today’s theme was, “Wildness,” and he included this poem by Ada Limon to illustrate the topic:

The Poem That Made Me Cry

While I enjoy reading Fasano’s threads each day, and I am often moved by the beautiful pieces offered by people around the world, I wasn’t prepared to read the following Tweet, which includes a poem written by a woman with dementia based on one of his prompts:

A flood of people responded to this poignant Tweet, and Fasano was kind enough to Tweet the prompt so more people could try it out. You can read the thread to see examples from poets of all ages submitted in the thread.

The Prompt

Fasano Tweeted recently that he is working on a book of poetry prompts that teachers can use, and hopes to have it available soon. In the meantime, here is the prompt for the above poem. Other prompts and the creative responses to them can be found in his Twitter stream.

More Resources

While it’s almost the end of National Poetry Month in the United States, I think that we all know that our lives deserve to be enriched by beautiful writing and moving verses year round. Consider doing the above exercise with your students as the year comes to a close, or maybe to open next school year. You can find more poetry lesson ideas here.

Canva Choice Board made with Bingo Card app
3-12, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Teaching Tools

Make a Canva Bingo Card/Choice Board

Terri Eichholz

Canva for Education has many bingo card templates, but did you know that it also has a Bingo generator app? This means you can not only make Bingo cards, but also even create choice boards that look engaging. I’ll go through the steps that I used to make a choice board in a few minutes.

Get Your Words

What do you want to put on your Bingo Card? Maybe it’s vocabulary or famous people for a bingo game, or maybe it’s tasks for a choice card. Maybe you don’t know. If you don’t already have a list, you can open a Canva Doc and use the Magic Write feature to generate some ideas. (There will also be a limited amount of pre-formatted lists in the Bingo Generator app.) I went ahead and gave Magic Write the following prompt, “9 tasks for 3rd graders to do to demonstrate their understanding of metamorphosis. Each task should be 4 words or less. You will want the prompt to specify the number of words if it’s generating tasks or the sentences will be too long for the generator to fit properly in each cell.

Get Your Template

Once you have the words/short phrases you want on the card listed, highlight and copy them. Then, it’s time to find your Bingo Card template. Do a search on Canva’s home page for “Bingo Card” and choose the one that looks close enough to what you’d like in design and number of cells. Open the template. Delete anything that’s already in the cells, and design your card. If you think you are going to want multiple cards that have the cells randomly rearranged, make that many duplicates of your card when it’s design is ready.

Find the App and Paste in Your List

Since I have been using the app, it appears in my left menu as “Bingo Cards.” I can click on it, and the generator menu that you see above appears. However, you may have to locate the app the first time by clicking on “Apps” in the menu and searching for it. Note that if “Bingo Cards” does not appear in your search, you may be using a design in which that app doesn’t work. For example, you can’t find it when you are making a Doc.

Paste your list in where it prompts you to “Enter some words.” Then select the grid size and number of cards you would like to generate as well as the font. I turned off gridlines because I already have a pretty template and don’t want the lines.

Create Bingo Cards

When you hit the purple button, cards will be generated on the side as you can see below. These are actually transparent images that you can drag over to your template, resize, and fit them as you like.

The generator went a bit wonky with the font sizes, I’m guessing because I went with phrases of different lengths instead of single words. I’m okay with that because it still save me a ton of time, the words are legible, and the template makes it less stark.

Conclusion

Once you do this process one or two times, it gets even faster. You can probably even have older students make their own Bingo Cards or Choice Boards, and they will enjoy the magic. Let me know if you think of any other ways to utilize this Canva App! Check out this post if you want to learn more about how I combined AI with Canva to make differentiated Choice Menus.

K-12, Teaching Tools

Would You Rather AI Generator from Auto Classmate

Terri Eichholz

The “Would You Rather” AI Generator from Auto Classmate was first brought to my attention in a newsletter from the fabulous Donna Lasher over at Big Ideas For Little Scholars. (You should seriously sign up for her newsletter. I learn new things in every edition!)

What is Auto Classmate?

Auto Classmate is one of the millions of sites that have popped up recently in order to leverage the power of AI. However, it is one of the few that has the sole mission of serving educators. “We strive to provide innovative and ethical resources to transform the future of education and–ultimately–the world.”

To that end, the site currently has three AI tools with more on their way. The tools are: Would Rather Question Generator, Activation and Engagement Activity Generator, and Lesson Plan and Activity Forecast Tool. Feeling a bit of spring-time fever, I decided to go with testing out the Would You Rather Questions for a bit of fun. I may feature the other tools on later blog posts.

Would You Rather Wear a Garbage Bag or Pick Up Trash?

The Would You Rather AI Tool is very easy to use. No sign up or registration is required. Just choose the grade level, type in a topic, and decide the tone you want for your questions. I went with 5th grade, Earth Day, and (of course) Absurd and Hilarious.

screenshot from Auto Classmate’s Would You Rather Tool

It took less than 30 seconds for the generator to give me these suggestions which I could then copy and paste, download as a PDF, or add more details to refine the questions:

Why Do This?

The bottom of the response page in this Auto Classmate Tool offers suggestions for using these for warm-ups, as part of an assessment, or as brain breaks. That’s why I love the options for choosing the level of seriousness and the grade levels. If you’d like an idea of how I’ve used Would You Rather questions in math (kind of a combination of the serious and the absurd), check out this post.

More Resources

I’ve written about a few other AI tools specifically designed for teachers such as Curipod and Conker AI. I’ve also written about how I’ve used Chat GPT for differentiation ideas. To find these articles and a plethora of links to sites that will help you teach your students about Artificial Intelligence, you can visit my Wakelet collection here. I’ll be adding this one to it as well as to my “Fun Stuff” Wakelet for those of you in the midst of standardized testing who just want some brain breaks.