School year 2016-17 in a nutshell AKA 8 annoying trends of the year

School year in a nutshell or what a teacher has to endure through a year.

Starting a school year, you probably come across some expected and other unexpected challenges.

First expected obstacle when starting the year is getting to know your students one by one, their habits, learning styles, difficulties and strength to give them the right support. Setting up routines whilst you’re dealing with Pokémon hunt and Pineapple pen craziness. It was actually so popular that one of my students chose PPAP (Pen Pineapple Apple Pen) as his profile picture on our class blog. Don’t you know about it? You probably do. If not, here’s a reminder, a time capsule:

Pokémon Go

Parallel happening. “I play Pokémon go.” Well, that was not so bad. In fact I could use it for some formative assessment. I was hiding Pokémons with some questions on the back that kids needed to find and answer the questions to get points. It was like a treasure hunt. They enjoyed it so much that other teachers needed to prepare the same activity as their students also wanted to do it. Win, win situation!

The dab

Done with Pineapple pen? You think it can’t be worse? Who are you kidding? It’s only the beginning of the year! Here comes “I’m the best” gesture AKA Dab. And obviously they are the best at everything.

Water bottle flipping

Especially at flipping bottles. Flipping bottles everywhere, in the classroom, on tables, on the playground, the football pitch, changing rooms, school outings and your nerves.

However, if you teach maths, you might be able to use it for estimation and approximation. Be prepared for a noisy class. You might want some ear plugs.

The Mannequin challenge

December, time to write the first reports. But just before… No teacher should have forgotten to do the Mannequin challenge with your class. It made my ones super happy. Mannequin challenge

The slime

Then January and slime time arrived. Luckily enough we were at the transdisciplinary theme “How the world works”. Talking about changes of matter and mixtures. It couldn’t be better time to have some experiments with slime. Inquire and talk about how to make slime. Have some hands on activities with it. There were some successful and unsuccessful attempts of making our homemade slime. Kids were researching and finding answers for their success or failure. Recording their findings, making videos about the experiments, reasoning and taking about the science behind it.

Homemade/school-made slime

The Fidget Spinner

So another month passed. Spring arrived with blooming trees, sunshine, blue sky and the Fidget Spinners. I’m pretty convinced that all teachers have their own relationship and strong opinion on the topic. Love them or hate them but can’t be indifferent. I decided to embrace the opportunity and teach new skills using the fad of spinners. I’ve previously written an article about Fidget Spinners and how it made our classes better.

The floor is lava

And to finish this busy school year with we had our last challenge. The good old phrase were heard everywhere. The challenge is to get off the floor as soon as you hear

The floor is lava!!!

You have 5 seconds to find a safe place but touching the floor otherwise getting burned or injured.

And this is how we finished our school year.

Miss T.

Teaching since the beginning of time. Passionate gamer, traveller and collector of awesome shoes and matching bags.

“Rubik's cube just makes sense”

PYP nuggets from the trenches.