Category: Character

Community Service Ideas for the FACS Classroom

Once upon a time in my school we had what were called “Activity Periods” that altered the normal school schedule for one day a week, allowing students to join clubs that met during that period. Another teacher and I ran what we called “The Give Back Club” which was basically a club where we did community service projects that “gave back” to the community. Those activity periods gave way to more class time due to state testing long ago, but I still like to involve my students in community service projects throughout the year, depending on the topics, lessons and units we are covering. Below are a variety of easy, inexpensive projects that students can create to help give back to their communities. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know in the comment section below.

Ideas for Teaching about Gender Stereotypes

Lately there’s been a lot of commercials and public service announcements about gender stereotypes. Any teacher wanting to incorporate this topic into their curriculum would most likely want to choose the best ideas and pull together their own version of a lesson. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to pull together a variety of resources I’ve found that I thought we be great to use when teaching about this topic. However, if you have a unique way of teaching this topic or just a great activity or project, I’d love for you to share it at Kim@familyconsumersciences.com

Communication Skills Lesson & Activities

In today’s society, with the abundance of electronic devices that keep students and adults ever so occupied and isolated, communication skills have never been more important and necessary. This lesson and activities strive to teach students the characteristics necessary for effective communication skills in various aspects of their lives in a fun and interactive way, using a variety of techniques. I’m sure there are many other activities that could be used in addition to what you will find here so, if you have a great way to teach communication skills, please share at feedback@familyconsumersciences.

Project Brainstorm: Let us help you! This month’s topic is Stress

We are going to pose a topic and ask you to “help us help you” by just sharing one thing you did whether it be an activity, a video clip, infographic, reading, TPT product, etc. when teaching that topic. We believe everyone will win in the end as you’ll have a new lesson or at least a lot of new ideas and resources to pull from.

Social Media: Helpful or Harmful?

What do sharpie marker designs on fabric swatches and social media posts have in common? Can your social media profiles impact your future employment? This was an object lesson activity and question I posed to my new Careers class talking about employment and interviews. As with many topics, there are always two sides, positives and negatives, and this topic was no different. Needless to say it led to some very interesting discussion. This lesson explores both sides of the topic in more detail, challenging students to explore and evaluate their own social media activity and how it might potentially impact their future opportunities.

Tower Team Building Activity

I recently led a team building activity that was really a lot of fun–spaghetti and gum drop tower building. The object of the activity is to work as a team to build the highest tower in the set amount of time. This activity is not only easy to prep, but also fairly inexpensive to put together.

“A Slice of Me” Lesson

The students will discover differences and similarities in each other, which contribute to making them unique through this creative lesson plan where students make a paper “pizza slice” that represents their interests, personality, hobbies, etc. This is a great ice breaking kind of lesson for students to get to know one another.

Who Should I Consider? Lesson Plan

Who should I consider is a Socratic class discussion on how students’ choices effect the different “circles” of people in their lives. This lesson is intended to develop students’ sense of empathy and their role in a community larger than…

Emotional Equations Lesson

Emotional equations breaks down typical emotions into components much like a math equation. By learning emotional equations one can think about the ingredients fueling the emotion and make behavioral changes to change the emotion constructively.