Some Things I Did During Shutdown That I Liked

1. Minute to win it games. You can still do them online.

a. I videotaped myself looking like an idiot - that is, attempting some minute to win it games that I felt fit the framework of what we were working on - and taught the phrases I'm try to do x and I can do x. Example: I am trying to hold an oreo on my nose. I can hold an oreo on my nose for ten seconds. I am trying to move coins with a straw. I can move eight coins with a straw

b. Kids watched five videos of me looking dumb and responded to questions about the videos

c. Kids chose two they liked, involved their family members, and attempted those two. They used flipgrid to tape themselves doing this. At the beginning of the video, kids announced what they were trying to do, and at the end of the video they announced what they were able to do. The class could the access flipgrid and watch the videos (which were hysterical).

d. Kids had to watch five of their classmates' videos and choose two they wanted to talk about. They posted to my class discussion board using comparative adverbs, saying, "I like [Celine's] video, because Celine can do X [faster/more beautifully/more strongly/whatever] than ceteri." I insisted on the use of ceteri because (a) I wanted to teach ceteri and (b) I did notwant anyone singled out for insult.

This all took about a week.

2. I created a museum on artsteps.com. It took...a long time. And then we used it for two weeks, so it was handy. You can find it here. It was intended to help kids explore Pompeii from a factual place as well as experiencing personal experiences (of characters I absolutely mostly invented. except Pliny. Pliny is real). We answered questions on it, we had personal discussions about our thoughts, etc., and eventually the kids created their own version (using ppt. only two went mad and used artsteps, which is FUN but time consuming) for their performance final.

3. Food. My threes and fours were talking about types of flavors (dry, spicy, etc) and their effect on our humors, since we were reading about medicine. Having gone through a nearpod on those flavors, each student used flipgrid (nearpod enables flipgrid recordings within the nearpod itself! i encourage playing around with that!) to record themseles tasting a food of their choice, discussing what sensations/flavors they experienced, and what effect it was having on their humors. One kid ate dog biscuits. Among the more entertaining parts of my day that day. He's doing okay. Headed to college in the fall.

4. Jamboard. Here's one my students responded to: I asked them to talk about what their senses perceived around them, and they threw stickies on it. Anyone who contributes can see what everyone else contributes. Here's a vocab one. They had told me stuff about their lives/sent me pictures based on new vocab. I put some of those things up on a jamboard and asked them to respond.

5. Instagram. My fours created instagram accounts of a main character in a story we we read. They had to take photos based on the story and caption them, record themselves talking (from the character's perspective) and do written posts about their experiences. They were amazing. Some kids used jamboard for this instead.

6. Book creator. It was free during the last shutdown, but man, if your school will buy it for you...

Kids made me Ancient Roman WebMD. They did video recordings of themselves going to the doctor, wrote pages about what symptoms they were experiencing and what they thought about that, made charts, etc. The whole thing was readable as a book and viewable by the class. You can do video, audio, images, writing, and animation, and it's very easy to use.

7. Voiceovers. Kids read a text and took pictures or videos of themselves/a setup based on the text. I shared those pictures, and their classmates chose pictures and then did voiceovers of themselves reading the appropriate portion of the text based on the image they were looking at.

8. Goosechase takes some finagling if you don't want to pay for it, but it's a scavenger hunt website/app. It does require the app. But kids can take video of themselves, find items in their houses and post pictures, respond to questions, etc. Working on new vocab? Want them to relate to a cultural unit or text? Send them on a scavenger hunt. They're doing language and aren't tied to their computers.

9. TikTok. They can use its features to literally interview themselves.