Just in case you didn’t properly ration your Teachers’ December Survival Kit, and you are finding yourself desperate for ways to make it through this final week before the break, here are some more activities that I’ve found from some of my favorite bloggers:
Ugly Sweater Challenge (I love the Ugly Sweater fractions!)
Toys Go Out (scroll to the end of this post for a great book idea and a link to lesson plans!)
Quiver and Holiday Writing – augmented reality fun for the holidays
Just to clarify, I knew all of the people involved in last night’s chat would be great. I was just worried that I would mess up as host – spell something wrong, forget the hashtag, lose my wi-fi connection.
I almost didn’t have a wi-fi connection. But that’s a long, boring story. Suffice it to say that only a few people looked at me sideways as I camped out in a booth at a local restaurant with a caffeine-free Diet Coke, my laptop, an iPad, and my iPhone blanketing the table.
You can see my concerns about last night’s chat here. I have a Storify of the entire chat here. (I apologize for all of the duplicate tweets – not sure what happened there.)
I’ve participated in lots of chats. It surprised me how interesting it was to be the “Questioner” as opposed to an “Answerer.” To be honest, I couldn’t think of a lot of great answers to my questions when I was writing them. I obviously don’t have the vision that many other people have!
It’s hard to pick a few highlights because there were so many great responses. I’m just going to randomly choose a few, and encourage you to visit the Storify when you have time.
What would you SUBSTITUTE for grades? (Lots of consensus on this one!)
What other venue would you COMBINE a school with? (Rackspace was a frequent answer!)
How do you think schools will need to ADAPT 20 years in the future?
Many seemed to agree with Amy on that answer!
MODIFY! If you could make anything bigger or smaller about school, what would it be? (This is where we had a LOT of really creative answers!)
PUT TO ANOTHER USE – What is another use for teachers? (Thanks to Julia for posting this question yesterday!)
What would you ELIMINATE from schools today? (And yes, testing was a popular response!)
And, finally, how would you REARRANGE the curriculum?
Thanks to all who participated. Don’t forget to join us next Monday for #neisdpln, 7 PM CST. I have no idea the topic or who is hosting, but it’s sure to be a fascinating conversation!
I’m not sure how I get myself into these things. After all, it’s been little more than a year since I participated in my first Twitter chat. But somehow I ended up agreeing to host this week’s #neisdpln chat. Not only have I never done this before, but I’m not even sure where I’ll be at 7 PM (CST) tonight as I will be in the middle of my weekly marathon carpool. But that’s usually how I roll – jump out of the plane and then start reflecting on where I last saw my parachute…
You’re welcome to join us tonight even if you aren’t in NEISD. It’s going to be a kind of brainstorming session. I decided to make the topic, “S.C.A.M.P.E.R. Education.” Here are the planned questions:
Note that I don’t have a question for “P” yet. Any suggestions are welcome!
I forgot my wireless speaker yesterday. Usually, the week before our Winter Break, my students enjoy listening to Christmas/Holiday music. Our new computers don’t have C.D. players, so I have a few playlists on my phone. However, the phone doesn’t sound very good without a speaker.
Podsnack to the rescue! During my planning time, I quickly put together a playlist of virtually all of the same songs I had on my phone. When the students returned to class, the songs were ready to go. Click here if you would like to access my Holiday Playlist. (The Straight No Chaser songs are a huge hit with the students, by the way!)
Podsnack is a free service. You can access public playlists that have been shared by a link without even registering. If you do register (for free), you can create your own playlist by adding tracks from your computer (not iTunes), Dropbox, or YouTube. There is a Premium version of the service, but I haven’t needed that.
Of course, make sure Podsnack is not blocked if you are using it in your classroom. And always preview the songs before playing them to make sure they are appropriate for your particular group of students.
Podsnack is great to use in the curriculum as well. You can read about one great idea from my friend, LeAnne Hernandez. She won the Teachers are Givers contest this summer with this lesson plan.
Below, you can see some of the creative thinking my 4th graders did yesterday while they were listening to our Holiday Playlist. Their assignment was to “adapt” Santa’s sleigh to a different environment. If you are interested in more ideas like these, check out this post.
Full disclosure: this first week of December is going to be my busiest week this year. Therefore, I decided to cheat a bit for a few days and recycle some posts from last year. I’ve done a bit of editing to make sure they remain current but otherwise they are the same. Hopefully you still find them useful!
Let’s face it. This month is hard. No one – including you – is feeling very focused on academics right now. To save everyone’s sanity, and to put smiles on all of the faces in the room, try some of these creative ideas:
Here are a couple I have mentioned before, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat.
Other posts in this series:
Logical Ways to Survive the Weeks Before Winter Break!
Physical Ways to Survive the Weeks Before Winter Break!
Telegenic Ways to Survive the Weeks Before Winter Break!
My 2nd graders have been doing some hard convergent thinking during our last couple of classes, so I thought it was time to practice creative thinking for a little while. They love doing S.C.A.M.P.E.R. activities, and I like to let them choose from a couple to keep things interesting. (You can visit this old post for an explanation of S.C.A.M.P.E.R. and some suggested activities.)
Yesterday they could choose between finding a substitution for snow to build a snowman or putting reindeer to another use for the 364 days of the year they aren’t in action. You can see some of their ideas below. I love that one student actually included a key on hers to explain the different parts!
You can see more holiday S.C.A.M.P.E.R. ideas here. Also, you can do a search on this blog for ideas for the rest of the year. Or, you can mosey on over to my TPT store. I’ve got Autumn S.C.A.M.P.E.R. and S.C.A.M.P.E.R. Through the Seasons – or you can download Superhero S.C.A.M.P.E.R. for free.