At the beginning of every school year, we do icebreakers with our new advisory. The problem is, usually these students already know each other well, so many of the icebreakers games don't really work. Many icebreaker games you can find online are also very superficial or better suited for children, (I also have stumbled upon a few very adult ones...oh dear).
I decided to put together some icebreaker questions that will:
I would print these, four slides on a page, shuffle them and random select them - or I would go through slide by slide. The slides itself are not very pretty, but this was to make them easier to print! Please send me suggestions for more prompts to add! Feel free to make a copy of the presentation - you can find it here. We spent a good amount of time at the National Gallery of Art. The first hour of our visit was spent with a museum docent, in small groups, looking in detail at a work of art. I was desperately hoping to do the activity with the paintings of London, and was thrilled that this was assigned to my group! The following is an activity delivered by the docent - not created by me - but easily recreated by you! As a Londoner, I have been passed this location many times. I know it inside out. I've been inside the houses of parliament many times and walked and bussed over Charing Cross Bridge more times than I can count. It was interesting for me to hear the students reflections throughout the process, especially those that did not know the location. Here is what we did:
After this we
The National Gallery of Art have many educational resources, including information for High School groups visiting and lessons you can do in your classrooms.
You can also explore over 42,000 pieces from their collection through the Google Cultural Institute here. During our trip to Washington DC we took a night bus tour to explore various monuments and memorials. We visited monuments for individuals, for wars, for groups and more. I really enjoy the bus tour, including everything the tour guide tells us, and it definitely helps fill some gaps in my American History (I'm British). I also like learning about a lot of the symbolism and thought that went into the creation of each one. The next evening we spent time together at the hotel and sharing our sentences, phrases and words. We talked about the importance of the different monuments and what message and guidance they can give us today. We then split up into our advisory teams for a special challenge! The students were to design a monument or memorial. They were given only three minutes to decide as a group who/what they would make their monument/memorial for. Students picked Michelle Obama (my group!), Steve Jobs, Malala, Mr McMahon (one of the advisors), Gandhi, animals for had helped advance science and more! They were then given a selection of limited supplies, including play dough, toothpicks, colored paper and felt tip pens and were given only 12 minutes to create their model. Finally they had to pitch their monument, in only one minute, to the grade level. Staff who joined us, who did not have advisories, were judges. Students seemed to really love this activity. I was worried that a lot of students wouldn't participate, but everyone contributed. I believe the competitive element, the timing (including us announcing throughout how much time was left), the limited supplies and knowing that they would share their work with the team really helped build the excitement. Here are some photos of their creations (all wildly different too!) students really thought hard about the information they received on the bus tour - as they were telling us exactly what materials their real monuments would be made of, where they would be located, what direction they would be facing and they explained the symbolism they put into their works in great detail too!
This was a really great activity - and something you could easily do in your class without visiting these places. ALSO In my last school I was the MYP Design teacher. I wrote a unit about Monuments and Memorials, where we explored famous ones around the world. This was quite a heavy unit, so we ended with something a little more light - students would research different animals that had been to space, and they would each create a monument or memorial for them! This was inspired by an activity I did on a Facing History workshop, as well as a room, with paintings of space dogs, in the Museum of Jurassic Technology! I've already shared some of the activities we created for our Washington DC trip, including our activity for the National Museum of African American Culture and History, The National Gallery of Art and the Atlanta Airport, but wanted to share more now that we are back. All of our activities were designed as small prompts for students to explore throughout the trip. We did not want to do lengthy tasks which would take away from them exploring the museum freely, but we also did not want our students to explore aimlessly. Each prompt has been linked to an IB MYP Global Context, and students reflect on the activity as a group in the evenings or after the trip in advisory. Smithsonian Air and Space Museum!United Station Holocaust Memorial MuseumWe reflected on this as a grade level in the hotel that evening. The students gave detailed, thoughtful responses. I am super impressed with this grade level and this was one of the key moments they blew me away! The National ArchivesAs an international school we think about identity a lot. Currently Grade 10 have a history unit where they are exploring American Identity. Several Grade 10s have also chosen Personal Projects which link up to this theme (one has just received her Green Card, so is looking at her own experience of American Identity - another is going to explore refugees experiences, through having refugees create artworks).
|
Archives
June 2023
|