So it’s that time of the year again when teachers have to dust their books, come up with new ideas and “suffer” the stress and excitement of the first school days. It sure feels great to be among your beloved students and embark on a new journey of learning, it’s those first moments though that play such a huge role in making everyone feel comfortable and bonding the class as a team. That’s why I always try to come up with ideas that can be both exciting yet personal in the sense that the student ends up creating something that is individual and expresses who they really are and what they want to achieve this year.
What do I definitely want to try this year then?
1) Personalized book covers: One of the things I remember growing up is how important a book’s cover was to me. And most of the times I either loved or hated a book just by looking at its cover. Well, I’m sure there is at least one book -most frequently the grammar one- which students simply detest just by glancing at it. So I run into these :www.frugalupstate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/IMG_4664.jpg
and I thought why not give my class some paper and try them in class? Apart from doodling though, I also think it would be awesome to ask students to write their own wishes and hopes for the new year, give their books names etc.
2) Ziplock bag Aquarium. This is an idea that dawned on me while I was washing some ziplock bags in order to reuse them. Instead of asking students to write/speak about their summer holidays, you could hand out ziplock bags, ask them to fill them with water and put in 3 objects that remind them of summer. Then, they’ll have to say why they’ve chosen each one of them and present their summer bag in class. Now, if your school has a tank you can fill it with water and put all students’ objects in so as to have a summer aquarium throughout the school year.
3) Write postcards to summer! Ask your students to imagine they’re writing a postcard to summer, talking about their memories of it, how exciting/boring summer was and what they’re looking forward to doing next year. Then, glue them all on construction paper, ask your kids to decorate it and there you have it! An official “Bye bye summer!” poster.
4) Make a shadow box or a class drawing . If you don’t have enough time or space to create a bulletin board you could make a class painting or even a shadow box!
5) Poems from magazine words. Cut out words from magazines, split your class in groups and ask them to create a poem for the new school year!
6) Personalized T-shirts. This is a bit extreme but if you and the kids can afford it, you can ask them to bring plain white T-shirts which their classmates will have to decorate and also write wishes for the new school year. If you can, you can bring a white T-shirt yourself, decorate it in class and then frame it and hang it on the wall!
