Summer Woos Instead of Boos!

By S. Romero

It's that time of year that we (teachers and students) all have been waiting for since mid May. Summer time!

In the month of June our minds are thinking pool time, BBQs, family time, and of course, sleeping in! The last thing on a teacher's mind is coming up with lesson plan ideas for engaging lessons.

However, summer time is actually the perfect time to take the opportunity to use your "down time" to take note of the cool places and things you come across that you can later use in your classroom. I know at least for me, I get so caught up in my school schedule and daily routines that I don't have the opportunity or time to sit and browse through library websites for new engaging mentor text, children's interactive websites, or perhaps just jot down the cool places I've been to or seen that I might be able to include in one of my lessons sometime in the school year.

Here are some WOOs!:

Zoo Trip
Take pictures of the zoo animals! You can use pictures as a resource for students to refer to for that animal research/classification project (mammals, birds, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, vertebrae, invertebrates, etc.).

Beach Trip
Collect sea shells, scoop up a bottle of sand in a container for students to run their fingers through. You will be surprised how many never have been to the beach. Take pictures of the beach, the horizon, sun-setting and rising.

Library Trip
Check out some children books you've never read before and take a sticky note and jot down some comprehension/grammar skills that the text lends itself to such as patterns in the story, predicting, cause and effect, inference, verbs, adjectives, similes, etc. Start keeping a log of mentor text to use throughout the year. This will save you lots of time on planning!

Shopping
Take advantage of those summer sales! Perhaps, the mini planters you normally buy in the spring for students to decorate for a mother's day gift might be way less than they are normally priced in the spring.

Pinterest Crafts
Tackle those Pinterest "I'm so trying that" craft classroom ideas and generate an put aside as in your "example box" you have generated during the summer. Not only will you have the "know how" you'll also have an example to pull out so your students can refer to.

Your summer woos don't have to be planned. We have enough of that already. Make your summer woos effortless, just as summer should be!

What summer ideas can you think of that might make for a summer woo?