Whether online or in-person, one way for us to gain insights into students’ lives and get to know their personalities is to provide opportunities to share life experiences and creative thinking. Teachers are also doing their best and allocate time to check in with students at the beginning of the lesson, although questions might be sometimes not thoughtfully planned. I had done this in the past. For example, after the long weekend or holiday, I had casually asked students what they did over the break. My way of asking was just like Mr Ben Stein’s method in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This was dramatic, but I have observed this from time to time, especially during remote learning. Students’ cameras are turned off. The teacher asked a question, and no one responded. The teacher got frustrated and angry that students did not demonstrate good learning behaviors by answering the teacher.
Then, later in my career, I have learned that not every student looks forward to holidays because it means more time at home filled with trauma and inequities. This is especially evident resulting from the pandemic. Many of us have experienced feeling trapped from this pandemic and not visiting their family, including myself. It appears many of us not are looking forward to holidays to some extent. We are near or at the point of burnout. We need a break to recover our physical and mental strength. Approaching the end of the holidays, we feel anxious and stressed going to back school. We are dealing with more uncertainties and ambiguity with the increasing Omicron cases.
With planning, I think we can engage students better and ensure equity in the classroom. I have talked about the power of use protocols in my posts previously.
Our second semester starts tomorrow after the three-week holidays. I knew the majority of them stayed in Thailand and had limited outings. If I asked them, “What did you do over the break?” Many of them might say, ‘nothing’. Life is not particularly exciting for many of them right now, and it is easy to get sad and emotional. It is not easy to hike or walk around Bangkok city. Many of them probably stayed home and maybe went to the mall once or twice. I have been thinking about some fun way to welcome them back and tell them that I have missed them.
In Taiwan, lottery scratch cards are very popular. When I visit my family, I always buy them for fun and, of course, dream that I might hit the jackpot and can retire early. This got me thinking, what if I can create digital scratch cards and engage students in social-emotional conversations? I researched online and I discovered a fantastic blog post, “Jamboard templates, tips, and tricks”, written by Meredith Akers. She showed how to create digital scratch cards via Jamboard. I am curious and followed her tips to create the social-emotional prompts scratch card that I will be using use my students!
Scratch cards are fun and exciting for students. There are many ways that teachers can use this with their students. For example, to review lessons, create random acts of kindness ideas, ask inquiry questions, trivia Quizzes, give out prizes, and many more. But making them are time-consuming. I did two Jamboard templates and almost got hand cramps. If you would like to try this idea with your students, feel free to use the two templates provided below. One is called Scratch & Share, and the other is called Scratch Fun. Students might not be sharing all the time, but they can always have fun.
In a Jamboard, the pen is always on top of everything else. After you make the copy the template, click the text box to overwrite the text box. You can drag the text box to somewhere else to see your typing. After finishing, hide the text box back to the ‘scratch’ area. Students can use the eraser to scratch off the cards. If students use an iPad, it can be really fun and feel ‘real’!
I hope this two templates can save you time if you want to try this idea with your students. If you are still unsure how this will work, check out the blog post, “Jamboard templates, tips, and tricks”, written by Meredith Akers. She gave detailed explanations.
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