To multitask on your drive home or while you make dinner, listen to this edition of 5 GOOD THINGS for TEACHERS, click here.
Usually I believe in collaboration over competition, but nothing pulls in a middle schooler like a competitive challenge. One of my favorite ways to engage my students is through these fun, trivia brain break quizzes. The ones I’ve listed below are timely and relevant to March’s holidays and current events. They are also a sneaky way to get your students to read 300+ words while building background knowledge.
To see the full playlist of my brain breaks, click here.
Personally, I like to have students work in teams that I keep together for an entire unit or quarter. Every time we do a trivia brain break, we record their scores on the leaderboard. (Click the image below, or here, to get a downloadable PDF.) Even students who don’t love the class content get sucked into the competitive energy of the repeating challenge.
Bonus, you can then use these game/brain breaks as a motivator to get through class content. I have frequently told my students, “If we can finish our work for chapter 7 with quality,” OR “If we can get 12 students to offer up opinions in this discussion,” OR “After we fill-in-the-blank, then we can do another trivia brain break.”
Hopefully you are able to find similar success with these activities. I’m currently up to 37 different trivia quizzes and adding more all the time. If you have a request for a topic, holiday, theme, just hit reply and let me know.
** Remember, I've been updating the videos and answer sheets, so if you used links before, they might not work. The links I've included in this email and all links on printables have been updated and should get you to the right place. As always, email me if you can't find something! **
Tapping into personal interests is another way to engage those hard to reach students and nothing makes a bigger splash in the spring than the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. Hook some reluctant, sports obsessed, readers with the incredible titles in this basketball themed First Chapter Friday Playlist.
March Book Madness, run by Tony and Scott, two teachers from Ohio, is an online bracket-style tournament that matches books in one-on-one "games." It capitalizes on all the buzz and excitement of the basketball tournament and pairs it with reading. A perfect duo if you ask me!
The match ups will be decided by a simple vote on a Google Form. You can have students vote individually or you can have a class vote. After each round of voting, the bracket will be updated and the next round of voting will begin. PDF files of each bracket are also available in case you want to skip the online portion and just run the brackets in your classroom. BUT, it’s kind of fun to participate online and see alllllll the schools, world wide, that are playing.
To see this year’s middle grade bracket, click here.
To see this year’s young adult bracket, click here.
You can see past champions (aka: great reading recommendations!) here.
If you do choose to participate, you can use these FCF videos. I don’t have videos for every book in the bracket, but a good handful of them!
This week is Read Across America week. It might be too late to plan activities for this year, but I’ve seen some amazing ideas that I want to pass along anyway. Maybe you can tuck these away for next year or use them in a spring literacy week later this year or for summer school!
My son’s elementary school is using these dress up days and reading prompts to inspire a week of fun literacy activities.
Another good resource for ideas is the Week Jr. It's a staple in my house. The magazine is awesomely informative and covers everything from current events to pop culture, from domestic topics to international, from arts and photography to sports. Both my kids and I love reading it.
This week the magazine featured an article and info-graphic showcasing a book that takes place in every state in the US. Connecting literature to kids directly through geographic location and home-state pride is an excellent hook! I know my ears perk up any time something “Wisconsin” comes across my radar.
This above image came from their Instagram feed. If you want to learn more about this magazine, click here. It would be an excellent addition to your classroom.
(Side note: I do not earn any affiliate income from The Week Jr… I just really like them!)
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of spending the day visiting a school in San Antonio, Texas. I haven’t had the chance to do many of these since the world changed with COVID and it was a true joy to be back in a classroom as an author, sharing my love of words with students.
With the 4th graders I talked about the 7 Pieces of the Storytelling Puzzle and explained how I construct my stories and what “being an author” really looks like. With the 5th and 6th graders I did an interactive workshop called “Stories that POP” and we worked to write a short story, focusing for a bit on each of the major story elements and how writers can make the most of them. In another interactive workshop, I challenged the 7th and 8th grade group to “Eliminate Snooze” from their writing and boy did they deliver!
Less than a day back at home, here are two pieces of feedback I received:
“My 6th grade students are begging to continue writing their stories they started with you yesterday!”
- Teacher
“I really liked it. I liked how she didn’t just tell us what to write, she helped us understand the steps and how to put it together.”
- Student
If you are interested in having me come to your school to fire up your readers and writers, or to energize and inspire your staff with new ideas, I’d love to plan something amazing with you!
In this Google Doc you can see my current presentation list and pricing to jump start your ideas. Then, hit reply and we can get a conversation started. :) My April is already pretty full, but I have room yet this May and June. It’s also not too early to start talking about next year.
Alrighty, that’s it for this edition of 5 GOOD THINGS for TEACHERS. I hope you found some real boredom busters in the line up and that you have a great rest of your week (and an even better weekend).
Amanda
P.S. If you want to say thanks for all the GOOD THINGS I send your way and fuel future content creation, click here to buy me a virtual cup of coffee. (Almost as good as the real thing!)
Thank you to Kristy, Deb, Jeanne for your contributions to my Ko-Fi fund! :)
