So thankful to my colleague, M.C. for making a Holst sign for my classroom. It matches my pirate colors wonderfully.
4 strategies of how to add CREATIVITY to your lessons
We all have heard of the 4 Cs: Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, and that last one is the one that captures my heart: CREATIVITY. It is one thing to tell teachers that creativity should be included in our lessons, but no one really gives us ideas of how to do it. Here are four strategies that I learned from other creative educators.
FIRST CREATIVE STRATEGY: DROODLES
If you haven’t read Brian Housand’s blog, I highly recommend it. At a recent training he gave to the teachers of gifted and talented kids in my district, Brian introduced me to DROODLES. These are simple sketches that used to be drawn on napkins.
I turned “droodles” into a competition for one of my warm-ups. I put an image on the screen and gave the students one minute to write down as many things as they saw in this image. Is it a bear hugging a tree? Is it four heads looking down a well? Is it an arm with chicken pox? Wait until you see what the students come up with for you. Caution: They aren’t very good at this the very first time. Now, I don’t share my ideas with them until they are done, but once I do, they realize they should look at it from all sides, and your answers don’t have to be serious; they just have to make sense.
Teaching Tip: You could see who has the most answers in the class and have them read them aloud to make sure they make sense, or you could have them see who has the most at their table. Always do this more than once in order to give kids a chance to try it with a different picture. If you google, “droodles,” there will be many examples.
SECOND CREATIVE STRATEGY: MAKE A MEME
Are your students as crazy about memes as mine are in middle school? Showing a lesson on Google Slides? Include a meme. Need some funny posters on your wall? Include a meme. Doing gamification and need a new challenge for your students? Have them create a meme for your subject area. There are many websites out there to create meme, but my favorite one to share with students in BIGHUGELABS.COM. I learned about this website from Lisa Van Gemert, the Gifted Guru. Not only is the website free for students to download their meme, but there are many other choices of how they can show their learning visually and creatively.
THIRD CREATIVE STRATEGY: PLAY “QUESTION THAT” WITH THEM
The memes can take a little preparation, so I like this one because it can also be a great way to sum up a lesson at the end of class. I learned this one from the great Dr. Bertie Kingore. I like this one because it doesn’t take any prep time, unless you want to take it a step forward. It’s as simple as this: the teacher gives a one-word answer, and the students must come up with the questions.
Teacher: The answer is 3.
Student: How many little pigs were there? How many steps should you take when speaking in front of a classroom? What is 6-3?
Teaching Tip: Once again, you could turn this into a competition to see who can come up with the most questions in three minutes. Or you could have two people face off and each one has to come up with a question in less than five seconds until the other person can’t come up with any more questions. You could also have them write them on sticky notes and post for others to see on the wall. You could even have them post them to padlet so others could see the questions right away.
FOURTH CREATIVE STRATEGY: CREATE A SLIDE COMPARISON
This is another strategy that I learned from Brian Housand. Brian made me realize how important it is to give students time to EXPLORE a topic on their own, before you started teaching about it through direct instruction.
Brian shared with us a graphic that showed the US had 1.39 billion pounds of surplus cheese last year. Now, I didn’t know I even cared about this surplus cheese until he gave us ten minutes to just research everything we wondered about it for ten minutes. What the heck? I started slowly on my research because really, who cared? I read through some articles on Google that I found and soon found myself becoming more interested.
It wasn’t until Brian told our group that we needed to create a slide for our class “slide show.” It needed to show a comparison to the number 1.39 billion pounds. Now, he had my full attention. Yes, peer pressure set in. Of course, I AM A MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER, so I wanted to compare it to…POOP. Yes, I said poop. My group, also made up of middle school teachers, gave in my request to find out how much this number equaled in the amount of poop excreted in the world. Here is what we found and the slide we created:
We added our slide to the link shared to the whole class, and we presented it with a lot of pride. This also worked in the other three Cs: collaboration, critical thinking, and communication.
Teaching Tip: Assign each group a slide number if you are using Google Slides. This helps so that one group doesn’t start writing on another’s group’s slide.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
If you’re looking for a way to engage students, that also gives them a chance to be creative, I highly recommend one of these four strategies. You will reach every type of learner, and the students will ask for more. Who doesn’t want THAT to happen in their classroom? It is like you invited them to a creativity party.
Sketchnoting – When Students Take Visual Notes
I love when you teach sketchnoting to a 6th grader in another teacher’s class, and she still uses what you taught her the following year in your own class. This is her sketchnote while learning about how to create a “killer” slideshow presentation.
You can read more about sketchnoting on my old blog by clicking here.
You can see why students love sketchnoting by watching my students’ video about it.
Teaching Tip: Get Your Students Thinking Like MacGyver!
What Would MacGyver Do?
Do you remember the television show “MacGyver”? It was one of the great television shows that started in the 1980s. MacGyver was a secret agent who could get out of any problem just by using ordinary objects around him. There’s nothing like hooking your students when you tell them they get to be secret agents!
Getting Started
Choose three volunteers to come to the front of the room. Those three are secret agents who end up in a precarious situation and have to get themselves out of it by collaborating together. Ask three different students in the audience to name an ordinary object. For example, the three objects could be: a rock, a purse, and a pinecone. Then give the “agents” a life-threatening situation (or ask the audience for one). For example: You are hiking in the Rocky Mountains and encounter a zombie. Working together, the three agents act out how they would use the three objects to escape their situation. I usually give them a minute or two to discuss their scene before they start. Remember to discuss what public speaking skills they used after this activity.
Using It In Different Content Areas
Tip: You could also relate the content that what you are teaching. The agents could be locked in a pyramid or tomb, or they could be in a “sphere” with no windows or doors. Their tools might be something you use in science (microscope, funnel, googles).
Why This Works
If you’re trying to think of a way to engage students in your content area, while also working on their critical thinking skills, then this MacGyver activity is the way to go. You could change to the title to, “What would a scientist do?” “What would a mathematician do?” “What would a historian do?” Of course, my favorite part is that it gives students a chance to work on their communication/collaboration skills.
If you’re looking for another great way to engage students for your vocabulary unit, check out my recent post, “Vocabulary Improv.”
A Day in the Life of Teaching Middle School
Some days, your students make you laugh without meaning to; it is one of the joys of teaching. This is one of those examples.
I have a birthday board where I post birthdays daily, and the students can write messages to the birthday person on the whiteboard.
Girl: Ms. Holst, what grade is Taylor in? I see that it’s her birthday.
Me: She’s in 6th grade.
Girl: Has she had her period yet?
Me: (Looking at her strangely) What? Why would you want to know if she has had her period? That’s weird.
Girl: Nooooooooo. I mean, has she had your CLASS PERIOD yet? I wanted to know if she would see what I wrote.
Let’s just say I cried laughing, and I couldn’t teach for awhile after that one.
18x Dirtier Than a Toilet? My New Favorite Gadget: PhoneSoap
Being slightly germophobic AND a teacher just doesn’t bode well at times. Imagine you’re standing in the front of the room, and you look out at your students. You see that one student digging heartily into his nose because he thinks no one is looking. Later, that period, he walks over to your desk and picks up your stapler. Yes, that same stapler that you have to use for your papers.
Or picture this…you set your phone down on a student’s desk in order to show her what to do on her computer. You haven’t had a chance to wash the desks in awhile and your students’ hands, feet, or booties, have touched that exact same spot. You don’t think about that when you set your phone down.
Or you could have a mouse stuck in the vent above your desk, and it knocks down the dust/dirt/mouse poop over everything on your desk all day. Unfortunately, you also set your phone down in that exact spot. (So thankful to our custodian who has taken care of THAT problem.)
It was at this moment that I started searching for something to disinfect my phone. During my research, I discovered that our phones are 18 times more dirty than a toilet. Umm….ewwww! I was excited when I came across a product that was on Shark Tank (and I LOVE Shark Tank). This product, called PhoneSoap, has clinically proven results that it will kill 99.99% of germs using UV-C light. REJOICE!
It only takes ten minutes and fits any size phone. You put your phone inside the container and it gets right to work. (It says you can put your credit cards and keys inside it too, but…why would you?) You can also charge your phone at the same time. Obviously, I have to trust that this is working, plus I read the reviews of people that have tested it. All I can say is that this is my new favorite gadget. I can now go to sleep with a smile on my face while the PhoneSoap is helping to prep my phone for a new day of adventures at work.
My Story: Trials as a New Teacher
Once Upon a Time…
My story as a new teacher probably started before some of you were even born. It started in the early 90’s when it was difficult to get a teaching job. Can you imagine? When I graduated from San Diego State University, I applied to a few public schools in the area to no avail. Then I saw a job opening at a Christian private school in San Diego. My first few years were filled with times of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” (and no, I’m not just talking about my 90’s hair.)
The Good…
My first job was as a kindergarten teacher in a 100% African-American school. Man, I loved my little babies. I can still name each one by name. I can’t believe that they are around 31 years old now.
I relished teaching my kids how to do the morning calendar in both English and Spanish (I wanted to be a bilingual teacher), taught them to read up to small chapter books (it helps when you have them all day), and laughed, sang, and danced a lot. I loved decorating my room (decorations bought with my money and donated by my awesome teacher aunt), learned more about the Bible through our Bible studies, and thrived on learning about my students.
The Bad…
I taught for 9 hours a day, for $10/hour, with no benefits. We didn’t have a plan time, and the teachers served the students their hot lunch in between bites of our own. The women had to wear panty hose and dresses every day, even if we were doing art or PE later that day, and the men had to wear ties.
The Ugly…
Around January, a main pipe broke and our school flooded. My classroom was on the bottom floor. There went all the materials bought with my money! My classroom was moved to the WOMEN’S BATHROOM LOUNGE in the church across the street. Yes, I just said I taught in the bathroom. (At least the kids didn’t get lost on the way to the toilet.) I taught my 17 kindergarteners in the bathroom for a month until we moved into the public school next to it while that school was on break. I shared a classroom with the other kindergarten teacher and her twenty kids. Well, at least until she decided to quit.
Now, I had 38 kindergarteners to myself, and I was now making a whopping $15/hour. Hard to believe. This went on for a few more weeks until our school was ready to move into again. It was like the first day of school starting over with new materials bought with my money and putting up new bulletin boards.
Second Year of Teaching Story
For some reason, I don’t remember a lot about this year, except for one story. My students were doing an art activity, which included scissors, glue, glitter and markers. After art, it was nap time. Nap time was heaven for me. It was the only time I could grade papers and plan my lessons. The students would sleep under the pod-shaped tables with nice quiet music playing.
Well, it was quiet until I heard a blood-curdling scream. I ran over to the girl who was yelling only to find her holding one of her pigtails in her hand…and it wasn’t attached to her head anymore. One of the boys had stashed a pair of scissors in his pocket and decided to cut off a girl’s braid. She screamed all the way down to the director’s office and continued until her grandma picked her up. I felt terrible!
A Strange Occurrence
I made the big move up to second grade my third year of teaching. I had many of my same kids as my first year, so we became very close.
What I remember most about this year was a strange event. A park was across the street from the school, and we would take our students there to play at least once a week. I would go into the bathroom and ask the drug dealers to leave. They were kind and left with no arguments. One day, we decided to just stay at the church playground, which was connected to the park, because the other teacher wanted to keep it simple.
Suddenly, I heard a bunch of shots fired, and my students hit the ground. Being the city girl that I am, I just figured it was a car backfiring and didn’t react much until my students yelled at me. Come to find out, there was a drive-by shooting at the park, and one man was down! I rushed my students back across the street while they were crying and scared. Questions of “Why does God let that happen?” were asked many times by my kids that week. Of course, I didn’t know the right answer.
You Want Me to Teach What?
After those first three years, I decided it was time to move on to a public school. I applied as a substitute teacher to get my feet in the door. One day, I received a substitute job as an 8th grade language arts and social studies teacher in a school in Santee, CA. I was incredibly nervous because those kids were going to be scary. I was wrong. (What was scary was the fact that I didn’t have to have a credential in teaching history, and I had to teach American history now.) Let’s just say, from then on, I knew I had found my right age group to teach, and luckily, I was pretty good at faking my history knowledge, even before the internet. Middle school teaching never entered my mind…not even once, and yet, it has become my favorite. Yes, on some days I question my sanity, but on most days I laugh many times throughout the day.
27 Years Later
This year marks my 27th year of teaching. A lot has changed throughout the years; some occurrences have been good, some bad, and some ugly. Would I do it all over again? Yes. Do I wish things were different for teachers today? Yes. Can I look back at over the 3,000 kids that I have taught and smile? Definitely, YES!
So, the question is, would you go back and do it all over again?
Teaching Tip: Keep it Real
“And the YouTuber of the Year goes to….”
One of my favorite parts of teaching is creating new units for my public speaking students. Each semester, my students vote on the projects they want to work on in my class. A lot of the time, I haven’t even created the unit yet, but I have an idea of how it can look. That is what happened with my “Rant and Rave” unit this month. The students voted on doing a “rant” speech, and I wanted to find a way to keep it real with their teenage lives…I just wasn’t sure how to do it yet.
How It Started
The idea for this unit started when some of my students were talking about the YouTubers Logan Paul vs. KSI. I totally pretended like I knew what they were talking about (and Googled it later), and I found myself watching Logan Paul videos for a little while. Of course, I had heard of him, but I had never watched his videos. I wondered how this guy became so famous. I started thinking about how I could tie in my students’ love of YouTubers with their speech, so I texted my niece, Gabrielle, who is the Brand Director for Ace Content in New York. She has worked with YouTubers in the past, and she taught me how YouTubers become paid by different brand companies. I also learned the term “friendertainment” (when people feel like they are getting their media through a friend), and why that is important as a YouTuber.
Next, I looked up YouTube videos where people are ranting about something that bothers them. I needed exemplar videos to show my students, in order for them to get the right idea. There are some hilarious videos out there (check out the one by Tobuscus about changing your password), and we enjoyed critiquing them together. I also came across a great unit on Teachers Pay Teachers by Room 213. If you are thinking of trying this unit, you definitely need to check it out.
Of course, I also know how much my students love a good competition, so I decided to make this speech a competition to see who would win “YouTuber of the Year.”
The Results
I loved this speech unit. It was hysterical to find out what bugs teenagers (bathrooms, parents, teachers, people who write checks at grocery stores, elevators, etc). The students did a great job, and since it was only their second speech, it was fun to see how their skills had improved since their pre-assessment speech. We learned a lot about each other, and laughed…A LOT!
YouTubers of the Year
When the students finished their presentations, each class voted on the “YouTuber of the Year” in their class. Of course that person won a big prize (not), but they did win bragging rights. If you would like to check out some of the student videos, you can click on them here (they have been shared with the student’s permission):
Leave Me Alone When I’m on the Phone
Teaching Tip
When you start to create a new unit, think of how you can keep it real with your students. What do they talk about with their friends when they think you aren’t listening? How can you tie that topic in with your curriculum? Take a chance. Try something new. You never know, your students might actually surprise you.
TEACHING TIP: Vocabulary Improv
Do you have an extra five minutes of class, and you aren’t sure what to do with the time? Wouldn’t it be great if you had a fun way to get your students to practice their vocabulary? It doesn’t matter which content or grade you are teaching; your students should always learn academic/content vocabulary. Next time, try “Vocabulary Improv.”
HOW TO SET IT UP:
Choose a couple of volunteers to come to the front of the room. (I always love when you ask students for volunteers and so many raise their hand before they even know for what they are volunteering. The first time they do this, I usually thank them for volunteering, and then tell them they need to pick their nose or something when they come to the front; you should see their faces…but then again, I teach middle school.)
START WITH VOLUNTEERS
To start “Vocabulary Improv,” give the volunteers a situation. For example, “Joe, you are the dad. Sarah, you are the daughter and you just brought home your report card for your parents. Act out the situation and use as many of the vocabulary words as you can.”
Even better, ask the students in the audience for a situation. (In middle school, sixth graders are not thrilled about acting out anything that has to do with dating or relationships, but in eighth grade, the students can really crack you up.) If you want to make it competitive, have another student tally the amount of vocabulary words used correctly by the pairs in a one-minute situation.
TEACHING TIP
It does help if you have the vocabulary words posted on the wall somewhere. If not, write out the words on the board ahead of time.
If you need some ideas for improv scenarios, here is a great website to use.
Teaching Tip: Create Interest When Students Show Up For Class
I’ve learned that it’s easy to get students excited for class by changing up the little things when they enter the room. Today, I loved seeing my students smile when they showed up for class. It was more fun to do it this way than to hang the sign on the door. This was the first day of our “And the Award Goes To…” speeches. Who doesn’t love to be called a “VIP”?
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