When I begin teaching my unit on dating, I always begin by looking at idealistic, realistic and unrealistic relationships! This activity is used as a springboard into other dating and relationship topics and always generates some interesting discussion! It’s low prep and you can pick and choose from the below examples or do them all! Either way you’re sure to get some lively student responses!
Instead of having students make the busy books at the end of the Piaget Relational Concepts lesson, I created this Piaget based Play-doh mats project. In doing so, I found students to be just as engaged, if not more so, the projects were a lot neater and overall, found it was a more interactive and creative assignment that reinforced the relational concepts! It’s a keeper!
COPE24 is seeking to partner with school districts, specifically high schools that have identified that student behavior is often a direct result of what is going on in their home. To break that cycle, COPE24 is looking for schools and teachers who recognize the need to make parenting and child development education a priority within their educational structure. Continue reading to learn more about the COPE24: Grant Opportunity.
“Convenience Foods & A Can Do Struggle Meal Challenge” was another lesson I shared with Missouri FACS teachers during their July conference. This challenge was a big hit with my students! As a teacher, I love to see my students in full collaboration mode as they create, plan and execute their ideas!
Most colleges today have many safety features in place all over their campuses to put students (and their parents) at ease. However, students still need to be aware and think about what they can do to apply good safety practices as they participate in various college life and activities. This Staying Safe HyperDoc is great way to help them explore ways to be safe in a variety of situations. The beauty of this assignment is that it could easily serve as a flex learning activity for those days when school is cancelled, but school work must go on!
Many years ago Carol Erwin, of Nebraska, shared an activity with me that gave students the chance to analyze the work of the family. Students enjoy reading about different families in children’s books as they complete a series of prompts. It’s important for children to see how families interact and be able to recognize and relate to different family structures, stages of the family life cycle, and family functions. So if you have access to a variety of children’s books about families or a local library, you may want to grab some books and check this lesson out.
Once again, I was in need of another way to teach cooking methods to my foods class that wasn’t a copycat of what I teach in the foods unit of my comprehensive FACS class. As always, I wanted a lesson that was engaging and interactive for my students. So, the cooking methods jigsaw puzzle project was created! This lesson assigns a cooking method to each student who must do the research to complete the informational puzzle piece. Once completed, students move their way throughout the room as they collect notes on all of the other assigned cooking methods. Students will use their notes and apply the techniques as they move through various cooking labs.
As children, my siblings and I played outside everyday mostly because we loved it and wanted to, but sometimes because our parents insisted that it was too nice a day not to! I know, I know…it was a different time. But sadly, have you ever noticed how few children you actually see playing outdoors anymore? I decided to poll my students and see what their thoughts were on the subject and then take a hard look at why we need to bring nature & outdoor play back and get children engaged on a regular basis!
In July I had the privilege of presenting at Missouri’s State FACS Conference! For one of the presentations, I shared a series of lessons created around themes found in the Struggle Meal video series hosted by Frankie Celenza. “Let’s Get Stacked: Pancake Wars” is just one of the interactive lessons and lab that I created using this free, short, upbeat video series. Periodically, I will be sharing more lessons based on this series, but for now, check out how to teach and prepare savory pancakes in a very unique way!
Looking for a fun, interactive and somewhat challenging activity when teaching about portions? I was! Since I love using breakouts, I created “Escape Portion Distortion” that can be done with the locks and boxes if you have them or digitally, using Google Forms if you don’t…win-win for everyone!
