Write a letter to yourself, graph students’ learning, and hold a scavenger hunt!
Looking for new ways to start the school year off on the right foot? Look no further! Here are some tips to help students set goals they can look back on at the end of the year.
Create progress Trackers from the beginning to the end of the year. Break the ice, create an inclusive class environment, and teach social skills with these tips:
- Measure Students: Measure students to track their physical growth alongside their mental growth! Some kids get quite a kick out of seeing how much they’ve grown in a single year, as do parents. Extend the activity to review how to represent data visually by creating a graph of the heights of all students in your class.
- Note to Self: This can be changed depending on the students’ age. They can simply write a couple of wishes, or they can write a full-fledged letter with thoughts, hopes, and secrets to be opened at the end of the year. In this way, students can track their own progress by seeing how far they’ve come and what goals they’ve completed at the end of the year.
- Scavenger Hunt: Write clues leading to a final edible goodie. After eating the goodie, the students make a map of the school based on what they learned scavenging and a book describing their scavenger hunt. This isn’t so much a progress tracker as a fun way to start the year, but students also learn the layout of the school and gain a book to look back on at the end of the year.
- Learning Analytics Tools: A digital platform is an excellent way to both teach students and bring them together. It is also an excellent way to track student progress via learning analytics tools. These tools are built into the best digital platforms and track a students’ learning so the teacher can easily identify their student’s blindspots and which activities are best to catch them up.
From a reflective letter, to learning analytics tools, we’ve covered a lot. Whether writing letters to self or searching the school for cupcakes, we’re excited to see how you put these tips into action brightening your classroom.
The Smile and Learn app is a digital platform designed for students ages 3-12, available in six languages, and accessible for special needs. It also includes Teaching Experience, an intuitive tool that tracks students’ progress individually or by group. Teaching Experience even comes with tutorials and a search engine so you can learn within an hour to track students in real time and change their learning pathways to best fit their needs. With thousands of activities, six languages, and special needs accommodations, the Smile and Learn App is perfect for any enterprising teacher.
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