And we'll have FUN FUN FUN...

FUN in the classroom is ESSENTIAL. Especially in the Middle School. It keeps you stimulated as an educator and it keeps the students engaged. But there's more to it than that. There is BRAIN BASED RESEARCH to support that fun is MORE than just ok in the classroom, it stimulates learning!

The Neuroscience Behind FUN!

When students experience joy in the classroom, it is scientifically proven that their minds are MORE OPEN TO LEARNING! The endorphins that are produced as a result of positive experiences allow them to be more receptive to learning. In addition, those endorphins are addictive. The body remembers the positive and safe feelings that are associated with the environment and will produce those endorphins each time the student is in the environment. This means that you'll have created a situation where the student's physiology will be biochemically altered to perceive your classroom as a safe place for risk-taking that is necessary for learning.

Fun and engagement comes in many ways. There are tech integration strategies like: gamification augmented reality, virtual reality and scavenger hunts, and non-tech options like: Escape Rooms (Breakout EDU), costumes, skits, joke telling and more. There are so many other ways!! Even the little things can engage and ignite interest in your students. So here's ONE way you can incite a room full of giggles....FAKE student names.

Fake Names

When beginning a lesson that requires note taking, I often start that lesson by modeling the heading on a student paper:

Rather than dry, droll note taking, that ONE little element of levity can capture student interest and provide a small smattering of giggles. It seems simple, but it's fun, and as we now know, it helps set the stage for learning!

Here are some of my FAVORITES!!

Avery Goodyear

Rita Book

Moe Mentum

Neera Nuff

Dewey Hafta

Obie Quiet

Constance Ubervision

Igor Beaver

Les Ismore

Doris Shutt

Moe D'Lawn

Russell Papus

Laura Deboom

Amal Shookup

Linus Scrimmage

Isabelle Ringing

Paige Turner

Arty Ficial

Ed U. Cation

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Special thanks to Amy Hysick New York State's 2017 Teacher of the Year for sharing with me the science behind fun!  See her AWESOME Discovery Education article here!

and of course, thanks for

For more on the neuroscience of learning, try:

Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist and Classroom Teacher

or

Teaching with the Brain in Mind, Revised 2nd Edition

Gamification: Ready or Not!!

Ready or not, here they come! Those digital natives have migrated into our classrooms. Their fingertips poised and ready for swiping, flicking and clicking. Their brains wired for digital notoriety in the form of badges, XP points and leader boards. But are our classrooms ready for them? Can we engage these hypo-electronically stimulated kids?

Gamification is a GREAT way to reach those digital natives and certainly keeps them motivated and engaged.

What is Gamification?

If you've never heard of classroom gamification, it can be described as:

Feeling motivated to give this exciting strategy a try, I wrote a gamified curriculum unit for the following Social Studies Standards:

6.6c Islam spread within the Mediterranean region from southwest Asia to northern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. 

- Students will examine the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, noting how the introduction of Islam changed the societies and cultures each conquered, blending with those societies and cultures and creating dynamic new Islamic societies and cultures.

CHECK OUT THIS GAMIFIED WEBSITE I CREATED USING WIX!!!

 http://mrsmaryhoward118.wixsite.com/pillarsofknowledge

What Makes It Gamified?

In this unit, students work towards obtaining their knowledge by completing tasks that are associated with earning caliphate 'coins'.  **Please note, no ACTUAL coins are ever distributed!!!**  Students understand that the coins represent the value of the task, and as a teacher what I've done is secretly level each task based on it's difficulty!!! (Thank you Dr. Benjamin Bloom!)  In the end, the more coins earned, the better grade the student will receive.

How do Students Demonstrate Their Learning?

Response assignments use DIGITAL TOOLS (yay!).  Some tools that I used for assignments were:

• Padlet (Activate background knowledge)
• ScribbleMaps (Label a map)
• Google Documents (Type a paragraph)
• Google Slide Activities (Create a labeled image)
• Fodey Generator (Write a news article)
• Timeline Activities (Create a timeline)
• Venn Diagrams (Compare)
• Bubbl.us (Create a word map)

Students submit their responses by 'turning it in'  on Google Classroom (Edmodo works great too!!).  For the Google Documents/Google Slides, they just submit their work.  For Bubble.us, Scribble Maps, Venn Diagrams, Timelines, they 'snip' the work and submit the image.

Teachers/students can also skip the digital component and respond via this worksheet or have students print and attach their work:

CLICK TO GET COMPLETE ACCESS TO THE UNIT PLAN

Gamified Instruction....now THAT's

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