Thursday, April 25, 2013

The World Would Be More Awesome If...

To say that my students are obsessed with Kid President would be an understatement!  Because this week has been our state tests (the CRTs), I had them watch his pep talk.  They begged to watch the other videos he has, and I told them if they did their best during the tests, we could check them out in the afternoon.  When we watched the video below, I stumbled upon a writing assignment!  Gotta love that - best part? They WANTED to write!  Even better!

Here is the video we watched:



On the video, Kid President asks:


He originally asked the question on Facebook, and here was one of the responses he shared:

My students asked if they could respond as well.  I told them that if it was ok with their parents they could follow Kid President on Twitter or Facebook - a few said they would and a few said they weren't allowed to.  One of my gems asked, "Couldn't we just write about it?"  Love when they give themselves an assignment!

I made this quick brainstorm template on the Smart Board:
 
Then it was time for some turn and talk with their partners to fill in some ideas of what would make the World more awesome.  I listened in and had a few volunteers write their thoughts on the board.
 


Here was our final product:

Then I turned the students loose to brainstorm independently in their notebooks.  Here are a few brainstorms.  I love how they used a variety of graphic organizers to brainstorm.

 
 
We will use our brainstorms to compose an essay and also a tweet similar to the Facebook responses shown in the video - it will be a great way to work on summarizing!  I will show you their final work next week.

Have you used Kid President in the classroom yet?


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