5 "Back from Break" Activities To Support A Student Centric Classroom
In a student centric learning environment, teachers create positive experiences when they structure activities with agency, opportunity, and community building. The open ended learning activities below will help students integrate back to classroom learning while feeling valued and part of the group. Share how these activities work for you on social media and tag @cueinc and hashtag #backfrombreak.
Phenomenal Photos: Use awe inspiring photos (from NGSS Phenomena) to boost creativity and build vocabulary. Post a photo for students and ask them to write or draw 5 wonderings about what they see. Encourage students to ask questions about what they see and write them down. Here is a Canva slides template to get you started.
Listmania: Warm up student thinking by providing a topic and ask students to type, write, or draw as many things they can think of related to that topic in 60 seconds. Let students share 1-2 things they jotted down so others can add to their own lists! Starter ideas: Winter Words, Cold Things, January. Get more topic ideas here.
Return Rally Cards: Using slides, docs, or paper, have students write a welcome back greeting card for a classmate. Ideas to include: 3 fun things I hope we get to do before the end of the year or What are 3 ways you know you are back at school – list one thing you hear, one thing you see, and one thing you smell). Get a Return Rally Card Template to use with students.
Odd One Out: Play this Google Arts and Culture game as a whole class, in pairs or individually. Can students spot the odd one out? Guess the AI generated “imposters” hidden among the artworks on Google Arts & Culture. After playing the game let students share in pairs or groups what clues they looked for to help them determine which images may have been AI generate.
Quick Draw: As a class or individually, students can help teach a neural network by adding their drawings to the world’s largest doodling data set. In Quick Draw drawings are shared publicly to help with machine learning research. All individuals draw differently and students can participate and help contribute to machine learning with their own unique style.