It's almost over...

 Holidays are nearly here. Hip hip horray!

I have actually really enjoyed today. I have been excited about the holidays. I have been wandering around all day with a big grin on my face and happy butterflies o’ joy fluttering in my stomach. I looove holidays!

Today has worked out to be the most ideal time on my timetable for the mega-happy – no obnoxious year 10s or whinging year 11s. Just my lovely year 9s twice and my fun year 12s. Now all my teaching is over, I just have to stick around for 3.20 form time and clean up.

I almost wish I had another class as I have been enjoying the awesomeness of the connect four game. Connect four has become something of a ‘mad, buzzy craze with teachers’ as the students put it, at my school recently. Our Professional Development session on Wednesday morning was on improving Maori achievement through more engaging and cooperative learning strategies. One of the strategies suggested was the connect four game. It works like the board game only with questions or challenges. There are two teams in the class and the teacher draws the grid (6x5) on the whiteboard. In each grid will be a term or question and a student must give an appropriate definition or answer the question correctly to fill in that space for their team. Normal rules apply where you have to go to the bottom-most space of the grid for each column first and blocking strategy is important.

Apparently many teachers have been using it with all year levels and in different subjects. The students are getting very good at their connect four strategy.

I did it with NZ geography for my year 9’s in Social Studies, then we did another general knowledge English one.

My year 12s were very accomplished (they have had a lot of practice – one student claimed to have played it in 4 different classes since yesterday) so I tried several different variants. One was a scattergories/connect four hybrid with the column had categories (alliteration, simile, pre 20^th century author, Shakespeare play etc) and the rows had different letters. For each space you then had to come up with an answer for the category which began with the row letter.

We then did a performance connect four round. The categories were charades movie or book, impersonation of a famous person, hum a song, tongue twister, spelling bee and pictionary. (Many of these I stole from Cranium) It was hilarious and great fun. Every student did at least one, the shy students choosing spelling or pictionary and the louder ones did some excellent charades and impersonations.

Much fun was had.

Some of my year 12 students wanted me to write them notes so they could miss their class and stay in my room playing the game or come back at lunch. I had to say no as I had lunch duty and another class but it was nice to know they enjoyed it.