Be the wild Card
Think about the last time you heard a student beg to go inside from recess or not want to go out because he/she is so excited to be doing whatever activity you have going on in class. That's one of the best feelings a teacher can have...to hear your students beg to learn more. If we are honest, it probably doesn't happen as often as we'd like. So, how can we increase the amount of times we hear that? Enter, the book The Wild Card. It's a new best-selling book by Hope and Wade King. They are married teacher powerhouses that teach together at the famous Ron Clark Academy.
This book is a game changer for student engagement. There is so much creativity in this book. My favorite topic is covered (as a means for engagement is room transformations). For several years, I created an extensive classroom theme for the year. Students looked forward to it and could not wait until my classroom reveal each year. Past students loved to look in during the first week of school to see what the theme was for the current year.
This year, I decided to do something different. I was trading classrooms and starting to teach a new grade level. I decided to keep things super simple by going with a theme based on some basic colors instead and just throwing in a few accents of llamas...one of my current favorites. The excited feeling of a theme was a once-a-year thing. But what if you could create that feeling more often, throughout the year at unexpected times?
So in their book, Hope and Wade both have amazing classroom themes, but beyond that, they incorporate special themes throughout the year by creating temporary room transformations. I ABSOLUTELY love this model as a way to shake things up within the classroom and create a sense of excitement.
I have used a few of their ideas inside the walls of my own classroom. Some of the transformations I have created have been:
1) a chemistry carnival to celebrate our learning during a unit on states of matter
2) a surgery room during our unit on contractions: students operated on words by performing surgery and taking out some letters to create a new word that was a contraction. Words were tied together with apostrophes they wrote on bandaids.
Some other room transformations that I have also done are:
1) A Greek day during our study on the summer olympics. Students were invited to dress in togas and we spent the day learning about the culture of the ancient Greeks. You can see that over here.
2) My most recent transformation was my football transformation. I created a football theme that took a bit of time but was pretty easy. We used it to review content on a 1/2 day.
One of the things that Hope and Wade talk about in their book is to create excitement by being unpredictable. When they don't know what to expect (especially on the delivery of the content) the students will be excited to enter your classroom each day. So I encourage you to reach for this book. You will not be able to put it down. It has so many practical ways that you can change things up in your classroom to create an atmosphere of engagement. And when you have engagement, the students WILL want to learn.
So a few years ago I decided to turn my half days into fun days of learning. First, a lot of parents don't send their students to school on half days, which I get. But that makes it hard to continue with learning when you know you will have to reteach the missed information to many students while trying to continue on with the curriculum. It makes much more sense to introduce some type of fun learning or review.
A few years ago, I decided that for that year, I would introduce students to different countries on half days and do a bunch of hands-on learning about the country to make it fun and engaging.
Today, I wanted to push myself even farther with a room transformation. I have done some before and they are so much fun. Students love them. So since the super bowl was yesterday, I decided to focus on a football theme as my transformation.
The great thing about this transformation is that you can use it for any grade or any subject area. A couple of years ago, I did a small football theme during the super bowl, but this time I wanted to bring my A game.
I started by researching ideas on Pinterest. I did not find a lot of ideas, but I did take a lot of inspiration from Pocketful of Primary, a YouTuber.
For the set-up, I purchased a huge green tarp on Amazon. It was seriously so big that I had to fold it a bit to get it to fit inside my classroom! I then added lines with masking tape. Then I added some numbers to some of the lines to show the yardage lines. I also purchased a referee shirt and whistle and paired it with white pants and my Chucks. Over the door of my classroom, I hung streamers that the students had to enter through. This was a simple way to build excitement and make it feel even more special.
Here is a run-down of how our day went. We started out by doing the Star Spangled Banner. We also watched a video version of the book, Game Day by Tkii and Ronde Barbar. It's a great read.
Afterward, we drew a name out of a bag. (I had previously divided all my students into groups of five, since I have 20 students in my class.) As I called my students one by one, they were able to open a folded paper with their name on it. Inside, it told them which color team they were on.
The first activity we did was one that I got over here. It was a freebie from Pocketful of Primary. I started with five bags filled with related items. One bag had school items. Another had things that you might have while watching a movie. There was one all about hair styling and one about the beach. I also had another bag with sports things that I used whole class to guide them through the process of finding a topic for the bag, the details, and then coming up with a main idea sentence. The students did really great. We have been studying topic and details in writing lately, so this was the perfect way to reinforce what we've been doing. When you put each set of items into a sports bag, it ties in nicely with a football theme.
The second activity we did was a twist on one from Pocketful of Primary. I got the idea, from her, to create a multiple choice game by labeling small footballs from Dollar Tree with the letters A-D. Each team got four footballs, preferably in the color of their team (although I wasn't able to match all the team colors, so I just chose another set). I added a field goal that was made from pool noodles. We focused on vocabulary review for this game. I divided a small easel type whiteboard into fourths. In each of the fourths, I wrote one letter from A-D. Afterwards, I chose four vocabulary words and put one word (which was written on a card) under each of the letters (A-D). I read the words for the students and then called out a definition that matched one of the words. Students worked as a team to figure out which vocabulary word went with the definition I had given. Then one students, who was chosen to play quarterback, put on one of these cloth helmets that matched their color. That student had to bring one of their footballs that had the letter that matched the multiple choice for the word their wanted to choose. The student then threw the football through the field goal, scoring a point for their team. After each round, students rotated the helmet so that all students could be the quarterback for a round.
The final activity that we fit in today was one that Pocketful of Primary used. We started with a popcorn container full of subtraction sentences. Each subtraction sentence was wadded up and put into the box, making it look like popcorn. Next, I set up paper bags labeled with numbers up to 20, one number per bag (in hindsight I would use popcorn boxes instead of bags because they kept falling over and you can get a set at the Dollar Tree for one dollar for I think two boxes.) Students worked as a team to solve one of the problems and then they had one student run to the bags, find the correct answer, and drop it inside. You can just give students a certain amount of time, like ten minutes, to do as many problems as they can.
We had another activity that we did not have time to complete. I will allow students to do that tomorrow because it goes along with the math unit we just completed. It this scoreboard game by Pocketful of Primary. It uses double digit subtraction by finding the difference between the two scores listed on each scoreboard. As groups solve one of the problems, they have to bring their paper up to the teacher for it to be checked before going on to another problem.
To end the day, I had football themed muffin tins that I filled up with popcorn and two football shaped candy corn candies. It was a great way to celebrate our learning and engagement throughout the day.
