Assignment pizzazz
As most teachers know, if a student buys into the assignment, they will work harder (and generally do better). Sometimes its all about making the assignment look cool or adding just a little bit of something that makes it look "fun." Below are a few tools I like to use to add some "umpf" to my assignments.
The Newspaper Clipping Generator
Ideas for use:
Breaking News Generator
Ideas for use:
Fakebook
Ideas for use:
Fake Text Conversation
Ideas for use:
Twister Fake Tweets
Ideas for use:
Magazine Cover
Ideas for use:
The Newspaper Clipping Generator
Ideas for use:
- Have students write an editorial over a topic and present their arguments
- Have students be a reporter with eye-witness accounts of historical happenings like the signing of the Magna Carta
- Have students use dialog from novels to create an informative article - for example, using the character quotes from Where the Red Fern Grows to explain how the Championship Coon Hunt ended
Breaking News Generator
Ideas for use:
- Students locate an appropriate image and then write the new story that goes with it
- Students present an account of a current event or past event
- Students can present fictional accounts as well - for example, they might have breaking news on the fire at the church in The Outsiders where Johnny worked to save the kids
Fakebook
Ideas for use:
- Recreate a Fakebook for a Fictional Character and show his interactions with others
- Recreate a Fakebook for a Historical Character that shows you understand his/her importance
- Create a Fakebook for a Country, City, or Place to show you understand Geography
Fake Text Conversation
Ideas for use:
- Create chat between two people that never chatted - for example, have President Lincoln give tips to President Obama
- Create a chat between two fictional characters in a novel (or two from different novels - Rob from A Day No Pigs Would Die and Billy from Where the Red Fern Grows)
- Create a chat between Historical Characters - for example Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
Twister Fake Tweets
Ideas for use:
- Teaching Tweets - have students summarize what they learned in class or their "ah ha" moment.
After learning about the Age of Exploration and how an explorer brought back porcelain and spice, I received the following tweet: "Props to @VascoDeGama for being a boss captain. #Toilets #PumpkinSpiceLatte" Later on in the unit, we discussed the Line of Demarcation and the Treaty of Tordesillas and I got the following: "Nice job deciding to use the Line of Demarcation. Didn’t even work! #PopeIdea #MoreLikePoopIdea" - Historical Character Tweets
- Ficitional Chracter Tweets
Magazine Cover
Ideas for use:
- Students create a magazine cover and then generate 2-3 articles that would appear in it. In the past, we studied pollution and students generated the cover and created an article over each type of pollution - great for collaboration work as they work through create not only the cover, but the articles as well!