This year has me feeling a bit nostalgic as our traditional holiday get togethers are in question due to the increase in covid cases across the country. Because of this, I decided to devote “Food Traditions: Mock Blog as my second quarter writing topic for my Exploring Foods class. Let me explain….
Erik Erikson’s theory of development is one my students have always enjoyed learning about, and pre-COVID was taught in a more hands-on way. Since many of us may be teaching with both students in the actual classroom as well as those taking the class virtually, in real time, I’ve updated my lesson to Erikson’s Theory of Development to incorporate Iron Chef & Instagram activities, making it more tech friendly and usable in both teaching worlds!
The Parent Readiness Activities are a flexible set of resources that could be used in any parenting, child development or family living type of class. Last year when I taught this, I was able to set it up as stations for my students to work through in small groups. This year, due to social distancing, I had to rework it so that students could complete it individually whether in the traditional classroom or in the hybrid, virtual classroom. So, read on to see what’s included in the Parent Readiness Activities!
Anticipating the possibility of having to teach remotely or a blend of traditional and virtual, I’ve been trying to revise some of my hands-on activities to make them more compatible with 1:1 technology. The Baby in Progress Hyperdoc is a digital lesson that incorporates the prenatal development concepts learned in the Pregnancy Towers index card activity. The beauty of this Baby in Progress Hyperdoc is that the Pregnancy Tower group activity can be subbed in for the digital “What Month Am I?” activity if traditional teaching returns!
I recently watched an episode of Adobe for Education and Matt Miller author of Ditch that Textbook (affiliate link) was on as a special guest. This episode focused on being creative while teaching remotely. His advice was to think outside the box, provide a fun twist when asking students to recall or share what they’ve learned about a particular topic. He suggested students share what they’ve learned in an unboxing video! How creative is that! My wheels started turning and I thought of so many ways that this could be used in our content. So join me, if you will, as I share “Unboxing Video Topics for the FACS Content! As always, if you have other ideas or you develop a specific project or assignment, please share and I will add them to the list!
As the end of the school year draws near, I thought it appropriate to assign this distance learning activity titled, My Life in Song to my Individual & Family Studies classes. My Life in Song is a reflection activity that asks students to sum up their life in a minimum of 5 songs similar to how James Taylor did in a recent Parade Magazine interview. As with many of my recent assignments, this can be an E-learning activity as well as a traditional classroom assignment.
The Family Resume is a great project to culminate a family unit as it asks students to apply the information and concepts learned to their own family. This family resume project has E-Learning written all over it, but can definitely be used in a traditional classroom as well!
Several months back, I received an email about updated resources from The Dibble Institute. This update included an article about a university study, titled “What Youth Seek in Partners,” that sparked this life long partner shopping spree activity. I thought it would be interesting to recreate the study at the high school level and compare the results to the actual survey results. Initially my students thought this would be an easy activity, but on the contrary required much thought on their part. What was rather unique about the outcome of my survey, were the similarities of answers. My results, completed with two different classes, almost mimicked those of the university rankings. Read on to see other activities associated with this lesson/activities.
To say that I’m a little obsessed with one-pagers would be an understatement! While worksheets are fine for assessing students on their knowledge of information, they don’t offer the creativity and engagement that one-pagers do. In this post I am sharing how I use “reinforcing family concepts via movies and one-pagers” as an alternative to a worksheet assignment. Two different program options are included just in case you don’t subscribe to Netflix.
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!
