Classroom Activities
Social Emotional Learning Activities (SEL)
Students will start the school year with SEL activities that will help them trust their teacher and the classroom community. We will begin the class with the following SEL activities:
Interest and Info survey: This survey is done on a Google Form and includes questions like, “What is your preferred name? What pronouns do you go by? Do you have any food allergies or medical conditions I should know about? Who are your favorite musical artists or musical genres? What are your favorite movies or genre to watch? Favorite TV shows? What video games do you like to play? What are your favorite podcasts? What are your favorite sports or hobbies?” As a teacher, I use these surveys to build classroom playlists and to try to create lessons according to some of their favorite things.
Identity and Vision Board: We do identity and vision boards at the beginning of class on Google Slides to represent different aspects of ourselves. We present them and display them (printouts) around the class. We revisit the vision boards mid-year and at the end of the year to reflect and make changes for our goals after high school.
Journaling: At the beginning of the year, students begin journaling to prepare them for the COVID Memoirs they will be writing later in the year. Journaling also prepares them for other writing projects and helps them release and vent about anything happening in their lives.
One-on-one mini-conferences: throughout the school year, we will do one-on-one check-ins to check in with each student and to give them individual attention. The conferences can be for writing, but can also be just to check-in on how they’re doing at that particular time period. Students can also request a mini-conference at any time.
Science Articles
We will be using Close Reading and Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) for the COVID-19 and Influenza articles they will be reading. Students will read and annotate to identify the answers to their text-dependent questions. Students will scan the questions first and use them as their lenses for annotating. Example questions include: “What is COVID-19? How does it spread? How do we prevent the spread?”
For each question, students will answer the question in their own words as the Claim, find a quote from the text that supports their answer for their Evidence, and explain how that quote supports their answer with their Reasoning. This is a strategy and activity they will be doing with all their readings, videos, and podcasts.
Movie/Video/Podcasts Assignments
Like their reading assignments, students will treat their movies, videos, and podcasts as text. As they listen or watch, they will write down their annotations of the media. They will then use CER to answer text-dependent questions from the media. Students will not be expected to use direct quotes unless provided a transcript for the Evidence; instead, students will paraphrase what they watched or listened to. For example, “We can see the virus was spread from monkey to human in the scene where the monkey bites the human…”
Reading Short Stories
Students will be reading short stories from the following texts:
Unheard Voices of the Pandemic edited by Dao X. Tran62
Narratives of Resistance in Everyday Lives and the Covid Crisis by Molly Andrews63
Pandemic and Narration: Covid-19 Narratives in Latin America by Andrea Espinoza Carvajal, Luis A. Medina Cordova64
Short stories from these books will be used as anchor texts. Students will be using the Close Reading and Claim, Evidence, Reasoning strategies they have been using with their science readings and media. These stories of people’s pandemic experiences are meant to get them ready to write their own COVID-19/pandemic stories. Students will discuss the impact of these stories in their small groups with accountable talk stems and answer text-dependent questions using CER.
Storytelling podcasts
Students will be listening to storytelling podcasts for more examples of how people tell their stories to others. They will be listening to episodes from the following podcasts:
The human library project65
StoryCorps66
The Moth67
Students will make annotations from each episode and discuss the impact of the stories in their small groups with accountable talk stems. They will use CER to answer text-dependent questions.
Memoir writing
The final activity of this unit will be writing their COVID-19 memoirs. Each student will write 4 or more true short stories about their life during the COVID-19 pandemic. The stories can focus on their actual COVID-19 illness and their experience with it. The stories can also focus on friends and family who contracted the disease, virtual learning, mental health, virtual meetings with friends and family, and any positive or negative experiences that happened during that time period. Students will have been journaling since the beginning of the school year to prepare for this assignment.
After writing their memoirs, students will become a Human Library Book. Students will go through 2-3 rounds of sharing their stories with peers. While students are listening to their peers tell their stories, they will write bullet points of anything that stood out to them or anything they could relate to. Students will then share their thoughts (positive only) with each other after sharing their stories. Students will not be required to tell their stories in front of the whole class, but may be offered additional credit if they do.
Graphic novel/comic assignment
The last part of the memoir assignment will be to choose at least 1 story to turn into a mini-graphic novel or comic. Students will be given a comic template to turn 1 of their stories into a graphic novel or comic. They may use digital tools to create their graphic novel as well. They will share completed graphic novels with their peers and discuss them using accountable talk stems. Their graphic novels will become part of the classroom library with the students’ permission.
Enduring Understandings for this curriculum unit:
- Students will gain a better understanding of how viruses originate, spread, and mutate
- Students will gain a better understanding of the impact of infectious diseases on society and how we can all make a difference
Essential Questions for this curriculum unit:
- What is a virus made up of?
- How do viruses reproduce and mutate?
- How are viruses transmitted?
- How long can viruses infect others through the air or surfaces?
- How can we prevent the spread of viruses?
- How do viruses affect our society?
- Who is responsible for the spread of the viruses in society?
- Who should make the rules and laws about viruses and healthcare?
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