Wordle is all the craze! It is a web-based word game that has people of all ages hooked and challenged on a daily basis…that is, of course, if you play! Earlier this year my students asked me to do more activities that promoted soft skills, especially those that encouraged them to be social and to be leaders. What better way to accomplish this than to do “Wordle Wednesday” in class where each week one of them is in charge of coming up with a class related word and running the show!
When I begin my unit on getting a job, I always, always, always start with employability skills. This is where The Puzzle Factory: Employability Skills comes in. This activity is a super fun and engaging way to help students understand hard and soft skills associated with the world of work. Read on to learn how this works!
When I first started teaching about employability skills, my lesson was pretty dull, a real snoozer! Over the last few years, I’ve reworked the lesson to make it more interesting and engaging for my students. One of my all time favorite movies, The Pursuit of Happyness, is also incorporated into this lesson because it contains a ton of examples of employability skills in actiont! Check out the lesson below if you need to spice up your employability skills materials!
I spent time this past summer browsing on the internet and reading teacher comments on Twitter. One of my favorite things is to watch TedTalk videos. I kept coming across ideas that what we teach students will be obsolete in 40 years, many future careers have not been invented, how fast knowledge doubles, advances in artificial intelligence, brain research, etc. So, what’s a teacher to teach? Or more importantly, what is it that students must be able to know and do to thrive in a future world full of unknowns? You may have additional thoughts but some of mine are students must be literate, be adaptive, be problem solvers, be able to think-outside-of-the-box, use technology, communicate effectively with others, work with others, and re-invent themselves in the workplace. Then, for the first time in my long career, my school adopted a partial block schedule with the first 2 days of the school year being block days. Students need to have positive experiences so they want to come back the next day plus I didn’t want to bore them. So, I wrote the Gidgee Gadget lesson. Take a look below to see what it’s all about!
