Gooood morning!!
I am currently on spring break (hence the happiness), but the weather is crummy so I begrudgingly decided to think about school for a just a little while. My April has been SO busy. I’ve missed blogging! I’m excited to share some insight this morning and to do some blog hopping!
I want to share a little bit about how I encourage my students to extend and enhance their learning at home.
My second graders are absolutely bursting with curiosity! Whenever I introduce a new topic, especially in science or social studies, we get way off track because my kiddos have so many questions they are dying to get answered! I do make them wait until after my lesson, but afterwards I spend a good chunk of time answering their questions. I love that they love to learn!
To give my students extra opportunities to research and deepen their knowledge of academic concepts at home, I offer optional enrichment projects about once a month.
I like to assign projects on Mondays and have them due that Friday. I give homework passes to students who complete the projects. Many of my kids do the projects simply because they want to, but some of them do it for the homework passes. It cracks me up that they put so much work into a project to earn 1 measly homework pass, but I’m not complaining!
My absolute favorite enrichment project that I assigned was a math scavenger hunt. Towards the beginning of the year, we talked about how we use math every day and how important it is to our daily lives. Students had to find and bring in an example of how we use math every day. Then I placed the items on my designated math bulletin board, and it has stayed up ALL YEAR LONG.
Lazy or genius? You decide.
