This video includes 50 ideas for using Wixie to support students and get to know them better as they go back to school. Students can create a custom profile image to personalize their learning while exploring the paint tools in Wixie. Simply go to your profile settings and set the image as your profile image.
Students can also design a shield about themselves and their family while following specific directions about how to use the different tools. Have students jump into the Wixie Photo Booth template to share their interests and passions. The template is attached to a folder of fun sticker props like hats and sunglasses that they can add to their picture.
Comics are a fun and easy way to get students to share information about themselves and we have a plethora of comic templates like this one to pique their interest and inspire their writing. Students can use a single page or multi-page book template to share information about themselves, their family, and things they are good at. They can also create a video ID card to share their unique interests.
Kick off the year with poetry and get to know your students by assigning the primary or elementary biopoem templates to learn things about your students that they love, fear, and dream about. Or have students create a wanted poster about themselves to reflect and identify their habits and people they like to hang out with. Teachers can also choose from contact and interest cards to share their favorite things with students and their parents.
Another way to use content students know is to ask them to reflect on their time over summer vacation. For example, they could recreate a favorite scene and put it on a snow globe like those in tourist hot spots or create a banner like those hung from the light posts along the main shopping street. Another fun idea is to ask them what others would have seen reflected in the sunglasses they might have been wearing during vacation.
A visual approach like these can help spark ideas to make their connected writing and oral storytelling even easier. Keep the fun of summer vacation going with writing projects connected to the idea of favorites. Your young and emerging writers can draw a picture and record their voice or use inventive spelling to share a favorite memory.
Older students can capture multiple memories through writing, photos, and even video in a multi-page memory book. Use the summer fun brainstorming template to get students started identifying important events. If you have each student create a postcard with a scene and short letter about a place they visited, you can hang them around the room to help students find common interests and experiences and read for both information and fun.
For ELLs and struggling writers, the small number of words in many poetic forms help keep language learners at early stages from being overwhelmed. Precise and purposeful word choice provides an opportunity for close reading at all stages and prompts rich vocabulary discussions as students debate multiple meanings, nuance, and author's intent as they share their work. Here are some fun picture books to celebrate back to school.
Many of the ideas I'm going to share can easily be done as a single page project by students and then you can combine to do one class book or you could even work collaboratively as a class to make a really fun adaptation. The first one is our class is a family and this is such a heartfelt story to kick off the year and share how students can contribute to a culture of kindness in your classroom. So students can make a fun poster and then you can post them around your room and then everyone knows Pete the cat and what a fun way to get students back into the routine of things by reading this fun story and then having students write a sentence about the different activities that they do at school.
Then they can color and decorate their pair of school shoes that reflects their unique personality. Next, we can have students create their own writing sentences about the different ways they arrive to school after reading this is the way we go to school. Then you can have students design their dream school and you can ask them questions like what classes they would like to see, what would they include, and really let their creativity soar as they come up with their perfect school.
First day jitters is a great one to have students reflect on how they felt on the first day of school. Students can start with a blank canvas to paint a picture and then write a sentence sharing their feelings. Then they can explore cause and effect by recreating this fun story about a mouse's adventure visiting your school.
Dear Teacher is a fantastic book and just so much fun. So after reading it, have your students write you a letter to share what they look forward to this school year. They can simply search friendly letter and Wixie to start from a template.
And then after reading the name jar, have students type things they are grateful for and then add it to their gratitude jar. We can even challenge our students with picture books. For instance, read Five Creatures by Emily Jenkins and then put your students into teams to interview each other.
They can collect data on their similarities and differences and then write their own collaborative version of this fun story. The Day You Begin is a beautiful story about starting something new and is a great opportunity to encourage your students to write and illustrate a story about themselves starting something new. They can get started with one of the many new book templates.
With Wixie, it's easy to get your classroom ready for back to school. For instance, you can use the tools in wixie to make your own classroom posters. And this is a great way to model risk taking as well as craftsmanship and a great time to show your students that you also know how to use Wixie.
You can also use the design tools to create your own unique classroom stationery. And this is a great opportunity to share with your students the art of writing thank you notes or even letters. And then you can use your unique letterhead to be able to ask for donations or even volunteers.
You could also create the perfect calendar for you and your students with a calendar template. So we can even use Wixie and all of its tools to help welcome students back. For instance, you could create a classroom website.
So you could use this background or simply adjust it to match your needs. Then use the image button to add your details and then just hyperlink each object or text resource to the resources that your kids will be using. You can even use this seating chart template as well.
So each of the desks and student names are separate items. So it's really easy to move everything around and make your seating chart perfect. And then you can even take it a step further and plan how you want to arrange your whole room.
I used a grid template here but you could simply start from a blank page as well. Showcasing the hard work your students are doing and also the fun they're having is so important. The gallery walk file is a really great one to showcase high quality student work.
So you can simply add images of their projects that you'd like to share. Then you'll just select that image and use a hyperlinking option to link it to that project. This way any viewers can simply select an image to view the entire project as if it were on display.
You can also make really fun book trailer intros for your students and this is a great way to get students excited about the books you'll be reading this year. So you can use one of the various video templates available in Wixie or let your design skills go wild by starting from a blank canvas. Then it's important to also celebrate the hard work that everyone is doing.
So you can search certificate on your Wixie home page to find a variety of options to celebrate your students achievements and then you can also encourage your students to become Wixie student leaders and take on that leadership role. So these students can provide additional support to maybe new students to Wixie or perhaps even new teachers or volunteers in your classroom and you can use this Wixie image to highlight their hard work. Did you know that simply writing down your goals puts you one step closer to achieving them? SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely, are a powerful way to kick off the school year.
Be sure to include a section for steps students can take to achieve their goals, helping them find the agency to make the changes and do the work necessary. Vision boards can help students see what success looks like and are most effective when paired with goal setting. Thursday, September 15th is International Dot Day, a perfect time to read Peter H Reynolds' The Dot and ask your students who they want to be and how they will make their mark on the world.
If you can enlist students in helping you showcase classroom rules, they take more ownership in following them. Better yet, engage them in helping you write what classroom rules should be. September 17th is Constitution Day and a great time to talk about rights versus responsibilities.
By this time, students have settled in and can have more productive conversations about the rules that are necessary for your particular classroom. Encourage students to play with technology for self-expression. Fun activities like scratch and rock art ask students to erase to create pictures.
They can choose symbols that demonstrate who they are or simply move the mouse to help ease anxiety and stress as they create designs. Mandalas are old forms of meditation where the creator moves from the outward to the center to find the essence of who they are and want to be. You can always use the team feature in Wixie to have students work together on a project.
If you search team at your homepage, you can also find a range of activities that help students build and practice collaboration skills and foster discussion between teammates. For example, in the successful team behaviors activity, students rank behaviors they think contribute most to collaborative success. All behaviors in the list are helpful and this is a fun way for students to get to know what is important to them personally as well as to their teammates before working together.
Many team activities in Wixie work asynchronously like this tangram challenge. You will also find other math challenges that work great for teams like using cuisinaire rods and working with fractions. While students can always write a kindness poem individually, this template helps students work together to strengthen collaboration on an existing team.
You may also want to work as a class to solve problems for others. For example, after students have settled in, encourage them to create a tour of the classroom explaining different areas and activities that you can use to support students joining your class later in the year or for families during back-to-school night. Any of these ideas are a great way to get to know your learners, help them learn how to treat one another, and help set the tone for student-centered learning and making all year long.
