Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Sometimes You Just Have To Let The Students Have A #GoodTime #EdChat

My first and second hour had been working so hard in my class and others the past few weeks and I noticed they were burnt out. It is so frustrating to see kids who care so much about school be beaten down by the stress of school and teenage life.

We are in the home stretch and morale seems to be down across the board, so I thought it would be a good idea to remind the students and staff that it is going to be all right and that "It's always a good time" at Grosse Pointe South.

The directions were simple. Use this song and stay in the room. Everything else was up to them. I am very proud of the work they did and the responses from the staff after I shared the videos has been great. Please share the videos and leave comments for the kids. They would love it.






Giving up a couple of days for silliness is going to be huge dividends later in the year. How does your class have a "Good Time"? I would love to see other classes do their own versions. You have been challenged. :-)

Nick

15 comments:

  1. AWESOME! AWESOME! AWESOME!!!

    Love the acting, the glow sticks, and, without a doubt, the banana suit. Both classes nailed it. Well done.

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  2. Fantastic! Sending the link for this posting to our HS staff here in Novi to see if any of their classes are up to the challenge!

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  3. Love these videos, love to see kids smiling and having fun. As an adult, almost all of my learning is social, in the context of a "good time", why shouldn't kids have that experience as well?

    Middle school kids at my school recently created CD covers and song lists to go with a book they were reading. The kids were thrilled to imagine the book at as a movie and create the soundtrack. Learning can and should be fun!

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  4. Love LOve Love. I may take on this challenge

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  5. This is wonderful! What a great way to spend a day at school....perhaps even better than being out of it. But I have to ask....banana suit, horse head, are these things just lying around the classroom. If so, I want to go back to HS (I never did graduate) and be in Mr. Provenzano's class.

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  6. A little bit of distraction & fun works wonders. Also tried that with my 1st year students at University. 3/4 into the semester and already on the finish line the moral seemed to be a little down so we decided to do something about it (http://youtu.be/mIfboP5rQoU). Looking forward to seeing more teachers taking on your challenge! :)

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  7. This was an awesome video! I showed it to all my Korean middle school kids. Our kids get burned out really easy in middle school. They would love to do something like this!

    A big thank you for the video from South Korea!!

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  8. Creative videos! I couldn't help but smile while watching them. These are the small things that make a BIG difference in morale for students and teachers. I am sharing this challenge with my colleagues.

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  9. Loved watching the videos! What a great example of students working collaboratively to finish a task. It's always great to see them have fun too!

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  10. My school in Taiwan is in. Response coming :-)

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  11. Nick, great work on the videos!

    My Creative Writing class was struggling with writing short stories and poems so I challenged them to write, film and edit a web-show series that had to be uploaded to YouTube by midnight each week. This is the result. They definitely had a good time.

    Cheers, really liking the blog.

    https://www.youtube.com/user/BACreativeWriting

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  12. This is from a co-worker of mine who was utterly enthralled by your most recent post and these videos:

    Greetings from snow-bound Alberta, Canada! I love the energy exuding from the students in both videos -- And, yes, the banana was “a-peeling”! (That pun will make the nerdy teacher cringe.) I also liked the gorilla and the other animal caricatures. Kudos to the limber-limbed dancer in the first video! But who was that sedate, bespectacled old gent lip-syncing in the last segment of Video 1?

    Students, your vitality is heartwarming! All of you celebrating yourselves, presumably not under the influence of anything other than your own spirits and your inspirational, albeit nerdy teacher. Keep dancing and singing your way through life!

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  13. I'm the computer teacher at an elementary school. I showed your class videos to my 5th and 6th grade Tech club and they got so excited to make their own. They found the Video Star app and planned the project and I just got out of the way. We posted it to YouTube yesterday! Thanks for inspiring them (and me!)
    http://youtu.be/l0ZIP5i5JEg

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  14. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_ieww-1K48
    Here is one of our faves. This was done by a group of 5th graders.

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  15. So fun! The kids look like they're having such a great time and it's a perfect way to just let loose and have fun! I especially loved the costumes in the first video :)
    Also, I'm in the process of getting my teaching certification to teach high school English and happened upon your blog, it has already given me some fantastic inspiration! Now I wish I could student teach with you so some of your charisma could rub off on me. Keep up the amazing work.

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