Introduction Project

I wanted to do something fun with my students for the first week of class. Something that was familiar to them, but allowed them to be creative and share with me a little bit about themselves. I found these awesome worksheets while scrambling to get things organized for the first week and it was an great activity.

The worksheets were called Poppin' Into 6th Grade.  I got them from The Peanut Gallery with a film themed welcome back packet. I am all about the movies, so it was a perfect pack to help me orient myself. The students LOVED working on these. I then took their pictures and we taped them into the little photo spot. Then I hung them on the bulletin board in our classroom just in time for Open House. Students were excited to show them to their parents and then show their parents their friends from elementary school. The bulletin board had a filmstrip border with "I'm a Star" as the center. Apparently this is a popular border, as I've looked around the school and seen it in many, many classrooms.

When the students finished the Facebook style page (complete with a banner they could design), the students filled out a survey about themselves so that I could gather more information. Some of the students didn't want to put down "favorite" because they do not have a "favorite" anything, but I had to remind them to put down something that they like alot. Some students didn't have a favorite or even a liked TV show or movie. They said they  never watch TV or that they are never inside, because they are always outside playing sports. While there is nothing wrong with that, I wonder if someday they will realize how silly that sounds. Sure, we don't all watch TV, but most kids have seen movies and have ones that they like. Either way, the students enjoy working on it. I let the project guidelines be unstructured so that the students could really express themselves, but I suppose they needed more structure than I thought they did. I am actually surprised at how much structure and rigid guidelines they still need. Hopefully by the end of the year they will be a bit more independent and thinking more personally about decisions.

I wish I had pictures of the board, but I forgot. It was a great way for me to learn names and put them with faces right away in the first week. Next year I would have the students share their pages before I collected them. They were all moving at such different paces that it was difficult to make the presentations work this year.