Covid 19 has impacted education in many different ways; one way I’ve assisted my building admin is adapting our elementary whole school meeting.
My school has a monthly meeting where they introduce the theme for the month which correlates to an adapted version of Dr. Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Happy Kids. Each year they pick a single ideal to incorporate into the habits. Last year was “voice” and this year is “community”
In conjunction with each month’s theme, a student from each grade level is selected as that month’s ‘Community Captain’. To recognize them, we go LIVE to their camera (either webcam in class or their Chromebook camera in the Google Meet). I use an extension called, “Confetti Cannon!” (shown in the .GIF below) to virtually blast confetti on the student.
My building admin also like to have some sort of interactive component at each month’s meeting. These have truly challenged me. I try to almost one-up myself each month. Here’s what we’ve done (as of the typing of this post):
- September: Kick-off of a new school year, launch of the theme COMMUNITY
We introduced our wildcats (students) to Wyoming’s Mission Statement and used Mentimeter to have teachers and students vote on which word/phrase they felt was most important.
- October: ‘I am in charge of making my COMMUNITY a better place.’
Classes completed their mission statements which we explored by way of ThingLink and then used Padlet to share how they are going to make our school a better place.
- November: ‘I have a plan to help my COMMUNITY.’
We dove a little deeper in exploring the mission statements posted on a Padlet and used Mentimeter to create a word cloud of the most seen words from all the mission statements.
- December: ‘First my COMMUNITY, then my fun!’
We had special area teachers & Waffles (our school mascot) join in virtually for a version of Who Wants To Be A Community Captain (kinda like the TV show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”)
- January: ‘When we all work together, everyone in my COMMUNITY wins!’
This month we continued with scenario questions but everyone joined in through Kahoot! Teachers joined as participants and would poll their classes on their Google Meet for the answer to submit.
- February: ‘Listen to all the VOICES in the COMMUNITY.’
Using Mentimeter, teachers submitted, based on clues, who the member(s) of the community were.
- March: ‘My COMMUNITY is best when we all work together!’
This month’s was the craziest. We created single, digital, BreakoutEDU locks for each class to solve. Then they received a letter which was submitted through a Google Form which created a phrase (think ‘Wheel of Fortune’) [example embedded below]
- ***Update*** I wrote about this in a blog post for Breakout EDU’s Resources page. Read more here!
- April: ‘A well-balanced COMMUNITY is a happy COMMUNITY!’
This month I had a break. Our P.E. teacher led some yoga/relaxation techniques!
- May: ‘My VOICE + Other VOICES = COMMUNITY!’
We asked our ELL Teacher, Mrs. Salnick, to be our ‘Voice Collector’. She went around with an iPhone (joined on our Zoom call) & selfie stick, to ask students how they have used their voice this school year.
- June:
TBD