What I did last Summer…

This should be the name of one of your first lessons in September and the content of that lesson is about to be created by you wonderful pupils…..let me explain……

July in the UK means only one thing, “School’s Out” and 8.4million pupils will happily recite the Alice Cooper lyric “No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks”!

The last thing most of of those pupils will want to happen is for you to give them some ‘homework’ to be completed during the Summer period but this break should be seen as a great opportunity to get pupils to get creative about their experiences.

The books and pencils that Alice referred to in the song were pretty much all they had in 1972, but their 2015 digital replacements (tablets, laptops, notebooks, smart phones etc.) mean that almost all students will continue to have access to a device similar to those used in school, during the the Summer break.

Safe in the knowledge that your pupils will have their ‘pencils and books’ very much close to hand, why not make the most of it and get them to use their devices to record and share their holiday experiences in as many ways as possible – you will have a fantastic resource available to you in September and potentially hours of wonderful teaching material!

Some of the ways in which the technology they have available to them can be put to use to create a record of their Summer break are:-

Twitter:- If your pupils have accounts, get them to use them to tweet the School or their class or create and use your own unique #hashtag and use that! When you come back to school you can view all of the tweets using this #hashtag and see who was where and when! If they don’t have accounts, create some!

Pinterest:- A really nice way of collating images from pupils throughout the Summer. Create a board and invite students to ‘pin’ their photos to it over the course of the Summer.

YouTube For Schools:- The video specialists. Create your own private YouTube Channel and get Students to upload their holiday videos to the channel.

Blogs:- Staff and pupils alike can write their own blogs over the Summer and you can read more about how to get started in our previous blog here.

Learning Wall:- You can create your very own Learning Wall and allow your students to add content to it in the form of links to their blogs, Pinterest Boards, YouTube videos, Twitter Feeds etc. and display all of the above resources in one simple to access location. Learn more by reading our previous blogs on Learning Wall 2.0 or searching our archive.

There is plenty here to keep your students busy, but there are thousands of other ways that they can record and share their holiday experiences – find the ones that suit you and your school best and use those.

Do not forget to remind the pupils that ‘Every Day is a School Day’ and if they share what they learn, they will all become the wiser for it!

Engaging your School community is also a key component of School life,  so remember to share your Summer plans with parents and carers so that they can help their children contribute wherever possible.

Have a great Summer break and we look forward to reading, viewing and listening to the rich and wide variety of your pupils experiences over the course of the Summer.

Enjoy!