Live, Laugh, Learn!

 Each year, teachers like to try new activities, lessons, and procedures with their students. What worked for one class may not have the same effect on another class, and vice versa. One of the many reasons why teaching is exciting is because no two days are ever the same! There is no way you can predict where exactly a lesson will go, or where your discussion will take you and your class! Students often are asking amazing questions, and changing the course of our learning to best meet their curiosities and ideas. I love this about education! 

Challenging myself, and my students, to try something new is easier said than done. So, last week, we had a teacher institute day. During one of our meetings, we decided to go through the steps of a classbuilder that we could turn around and use in our classroom the following week. It was an activity I had done before, and considered to be too challenging for first graders. I went through the steps with my colleagues and went about my day.

On Tuesday, I realized I made a slight scheduling error and had an extra 15 minutes before I needed to bring my students to the next class. My mind searched through the library of ideas I have in my brain stored from years of teaching. At the forefront was this activity from our meeting. I decided right at that moment that I was going to have my students give it a try! And guess what? It was AMAZING! My students understood the directions, followed the steps beautifully, AND best of all…made connections with their classmates and built relationships that were new and exciting. 

This activity was called “Picking Stickies.” The students are given 4 (6 in the upper grades) categories where they fill out something applicable to themselves on a post it. The teacher makes up the categories. For my first graders I had them think of favorite food, favorite sport, favorite toy, and favorite color. They filled in their post it notes with a picture (or words if they wanted to) to describe their idea.

Then, they walked around the room and met up with a partner. The partners both share their post its, and if you have something in common with your partner you can take their sticky note and place it on yours. The only rule is you need to leave them at least one sticky note so they are never out of ideas to share.

The excitement and smiles that my students radiated throughout this activity was contagious! My students were coming up to me to tell me something they learned about a classmate and how coincidental that they had the same interests as another friend! 

What I really love about this activity is I can do it again and change the topics of the categories. This will definitely be a go-to activity of mine and a wonderful way to share interests and get students connected to each other!