Smart Tools

Summer Activities for your Students

In order to hit the high achievement mark students are expected to reach these days, sometimes it helps to give them activities that can stretch for two months, during the happy days of summer.

This keeps their minds keen on continuous learning, even if it’s vacation time. This would also be interesting for your students because it will be done outside the four walls of the classroom. How could this be done?

Through Information and Communication Technology, of course.

Here are two samples of activities that can be done despite the distance between teacher and student (distance learning):

The Content-Rich Reading & Writing Workshop

By teaching content, reading and writing strategies together, you can do a lot more in just one activity.

Using Scholastic’s online resource called The Stacks, students will:

  1. Evaluate and thoughtfully respond to literature
  2. Read, review, and reflect on a variety of written works by professionals and peers
  3. Understand why written reviews are important
  4. Recommend to peers different book selections
  5. Utilize reflections and assessments to improve writing quality
  6. Take part in an online book review community
  7. Learn how to maintain objectivity and accept criticism about one’s work
  8. Use technology tools to communicate with peers, experts and other audiences
  9. Use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively
  10. Use technology for researching different sources

For resources, check out Scholastic's online book reviews created by students (Share What You're Reading), Scholastic's video booktalks, online book reviews such as bookreads.com and goodreads.com, Sample book reviews, Tips for writing a book review, Book review rubric, Book review template, Online book review rubric, Setting the Stage, and Plan a Plot Diagram.

The step by step method of the workshop can be found here.

Analyzing Political Cartoons

Seeing as the national election is nearing, this could be an interesting topic for students over the summer. Politicians are coming out of the woodwork announcing their bids for city, provincial, regional and national posts, even throughout the summer. For the subject of government, social studies, journalism and art’s sake, try out this summer activity.

The aim is to get students to review political cartoons so they can gain a perspective of their importance and function, especially in the past. They can examine how political cartoons convey information, by working towards developing their own political cartoons.

A great thing about Information and Communication Technology in this day and age is the practice of most newspapers now to maintain archives. Procuring editorial cartoons published in a specific period is easier and faster when done online.

Here is an An Introduction to Political Cartoons for the teacher, and handouts such as:

  1. A Brief History of Political Cartoons
  2. Examples of Historical and Modern Political Cartoons
  3. Political Cartoons vs. Written Editorials
  4. 2004 Election Cartoon Analysis
  5. Election Cartoon Project

This is also a link to an editorial by Dick Morris on the political dangers of Bush's initiative in Iraq with embedded cartoons. For more cartoons, students can go online to Daryl Cagle’s website.

Since the students are out of the classroom, they can work on this individually, with reports, reactions and reviews emailed weekly. In the end, the editorial cartoon for presentation would also include a brief summary of the topic researched, the people or institutions involved, the timeline of events, the different viewpoints in the issue, and the student’s own opinion.

They can also brainstorm topics and issues surrounding next year’s presidential elections, and check out the online versions of local papers such as Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star.

More information about the activity can be found here.

Sources:

Akhayan, Nancy. “The Content-Rich Reading & Writing Workshop.” Retrieved April 15, 2009 from
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/lessonplan.jsp?id=1134
Timmons, Greg. “Lesson Plan: Analyzing Election Cartoons.” Retrieved April 15, 2009 from
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/teachers/lessonplans/socialstudies/Vote2004/political_cartoons.html

(Published 27 April 2009, Smart Communications, Inc.)