The countdown until the end of the year is on. My sister and friends down south have just 2 weeks of school left. While up north here, we have 4 weeks of school left. I don’t know about you, but we have 3 planned assemblies, field day, and a book fair coming up. So in reality, I may only have 2 or 3 classes left to actually teach.
I have some good stuff going on with research in grades 2 – 4 (I will never again do a research project at the end of the year) and some cool Augmented Reality stuff going in PK – 1. Grade 5 is my guinea pig right now as I test out Classcraft with them (affiliate link will get you 2 free months of premium). There are a few classes that I have twice a week and I’m scrambling to keep up with them and keep them engaged as the school year winds down.
As I was finishing up a coding quest for my fifth graders this morning, I came up with a brilliant idea!
So that is just what I did. I created these two Academic Choice lessons for my 1st, 3rd, and 4th grade classes that have the extra special honor of spending two days a week with me. I really love these two lessons for loads of reasons.
1 – They can be used at any time of year. They are perfect for beginning of the year getting to know you activities, end – of – year let’s have some structured fun activities, or any time of year let’s show off our skills activities.
2 – They don’t require student, class, or school accounts. All of the sites included in these lessons are free and don’t require any accounts to be set up. Although, you could absolutely but a 3DBear subscription (I have one!), create a CSFirst class (I have three), or even have students sign up for Scratch or VOKI.
3 – They are steeped in student choice and voice! They can choose which application will best meet their needs, interests, and coding skillset. The personalization to complete the task is endless; they can choose how their character will look and sound. And they can repeat the activity as many times as they like. They can even choose whether they want to animate their name OR their own character (if I give them that choice). They even get to complete the task at their own pace. It could take them anywhere from 20 – 60 minutes to complete this activity.
4 – I get to choose which lessons to use with my students and how I will execute the lesson. I can give them the option of animating their name OR their character, or both. I can just give them the activity to animate their character, but still choose how they will share out. Maybe some of the classes I will have them share out with a partner, while others will share in a blog. I can even choose whether to give them the handout in Seesaw or put it out as a table top with QR Codes for them to scan.
If you are like me and are scrambling to keep kiddos engaged (because let’s face it, it also decreases behavior challenges) then grab the lessons here. Have fun! My students were already tinkering around with these ideas last week and were having a ton of fun.
