The Back Story
I teach at a private school, always have...for 20+ years. We have a ton of 1/2 days. Students and parents have been known to blow these days off as if they aren't "real" school days. I mean, I am always shocked to get a phone call from a parent asking if we are doing anything on the 1/2 day. Ummm....yeah, we are doing school. Anyone else have these conversations? Anyway, so I started thinking about ways I could make students WANT to come to class on these short days. The most logical thing to me was to throw in active learning, a lot of fun paired with rigor, and TRANSFORMATIONS!! Transformations can really pack a punch and leave kids talking about the experience for years to come...."Remember when we had a Toy Story transformation? A Mario one? They are just so much fun, no matter the content you pair them with. Kids continue to talk about them for years to come because the magic of those days does not ever wear off.
Last summer at the Get Your Teach On Conference, I was in a room that was decorated in an Angry Birds theme....it was awesome! I was thinking about how I could bring this theme into my own classroom and of course I had to rein myself in...I wanted all the things...the plushies, the slingshots, you name it, I wanted it if it was going to bring more Angry Birds vibes to my class. In the end, I decided to go the budget friendly route and I do not think my students could have been any more excited, even if I had spent a fortune.
DIYing the Transformation
I collected a bunch of different sized boxes...thanks to all my Amazon purchases the past few months...and also found some other boxes that I had at home or school. I went to Dollar Tree and found a few rolls of kraft wrapping paper (it looks like what a brown bag is made from). I also picked out some different colors of poster board and some white as well. At Walmart, I found some pompoms of a decent size in bright colors that matched the poster boards and I grabbed a new pack of Black Sharpies (which was the most expensive item I purchased for this transformation).
At home, I wrapped the different boxes with the wrapping paper and used a Sharpie to give the boxes the look of being made from real wood. I used pieces of the brightly colored poster boards to write a letter on each box and also a point value. The smaller boxes were worth more points, like 5000 while most of the bigger boxes were lower values, maybe even in the hundreds.
At first I thought about creating several items and purchasing some clipart to create with, but in the end I was running low on time, so I decided to just free-hand draw some of the characters to scatter around on the boxes and honestly, it turned out perfectly.
My son had a slingshot that he got from his grandparents a few years ago so I did not need to buy one. At school, I had a red plastic tablecloth that I used to cover a table. I set the boxes on it and scattered the characters around them. Then I placed the pompoms and sling shot on the table, ready for the activities. I placed a line a few feet away from the boxes to mark where the students would have to stand while using the slingshot.
Bringing the Rigor
Some people, mistakenly, believe that a room transformation is all about the fun and just full of fluff. Done correctly, nothing could be further from the truth. It is the perfect way to bring even more rigor that normal and can easily be done because when the stage is set to capture the attention of students, they will give 110%. You have them basically eating out of your hand, willing to listen more closely, dig deeper, and go farther to learn the content because they want to.
I teach in a multi-grade situation with students from grades 3-5, so I always have to prep more than more level of an activity. I wanted to stick to math standards for this transformation and since it was only a 1/2 day, it was perfect to pair it down to include just one subject area.
In math, third grade was learning the basics of area and perimeter. Fourth grade was also studying area and perimeter, but they were learning the formulas p=(2xl)+(2xw) and a=bxh. Fifth grade was not studying either area or perimeter, but were building on that same idea with finding volume, so they were not that far apart.
I decided to create some rectangles from the poster board and used that to teach all the skills for both third grade and fourth grade, including finding unknown numbers. For the 5th grade, I gave them strips of paper that included details about the boxes that were wrapped up for our transformation. They had to use that information to find the volume of the boxes and also some had unknowns that they had to solve for.
I created little booklets for students to record their answers in. I just quickly grabbed some free clipart off the web and added some boxes for their answers. There was space to show their work...super simple.
Bringing the Fun
Students had between 10 and 13 questions to solve. I gave each group the activities that they could choose to do (individually) in any order. However, they did have to write the answer to the question in the corresponding box on their booklet. Students were given instructions to do just one problem at a time and then check in to see if they were correct. If they were correct, they were allowed to shoot the slingshot one time. They shot at the boxes, trying to get the highest amount of points possible. Whichever box they hit first with their pompom, represented the number of points they received. If they missed the boxes, they received zero points for that round. They wrote the points they earned in their booklets each time. The students were so excited to use the slingshot, they were highly engaged in finding the correct answer. Students who sometimes choose to not work carefully, were working carefully to make sure their answers were correct. If someone did miss an answer, they were given instructions to fix it before coming back to check again.
To add an edge of competition, I told the students that anyone who finished their challenge would receive a Jolly Rancher, and the person in each grade level who got the most points would each receive two Jolly Ranchers.
Final Thoughts on the Transformation
Overall, I thought this new transformation was a smashing success. The students were engaged. They had fun learning. There was rigor, and the environment was perfect. I would most definitely repeat this transformation. It was magic.
Next time, I would begin working on the creating part several days before instead of just the afternoon and evening before. It was a lot of work to create everything by hand, but it was definitely worth it.
What the Students said about It
It was fun!
A few days later, one of my students said to me, "I figured something out about you...." When I asked what they had figured out the student said, "I figured out that you just want us to have fun!" That was a huge compliment and one of my missions in teaching. I want students to realize that learning is fun! If they see how fun it is, they will be life-long learners as I am, and that is a win!
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