Popping onto Campus!!!!

                                    *Image from ebay.com

I can't believe it is the week before the EOGs, and there are only 12 more days of school left this year. Wow! It has gone fast! It feels odd to be wrapping up classroom guidance lessons and small groups and not be starting new ones.  I am still looking forward to our EOG pep rally tomorrow (will definitely be sharing my fun skit in a later post!), my middle school transition lessons after EOGs,  and the fun lunches I have started with my fifth graders in-between testing days, field days, and award days.

I mentioned in a recent career post here how I was excited to do virtual campus tours with  my fifth
graders after discovering the website youvisit.com.  I decided to do a popcorn theme and created a sign-up poster to put in the fifth grade hallway that reads "Popping Onto Campus".  I laminated the sign-up section of the poster so that I can reuse it for future lunches, and explained the concept to all my fifth grade classes a couple days prior to the first scheduled lunch.  After the 22 available lunch spots were taken, my fifth grade teachers removed the dry erase marker I attached with velcro.   I took a picture with my iPad as soon as I saw it was full (retouched to blur out names), just in case there was any smudging of names with hallway traffic, and I gave each student a "event ticket" with  the date and time on it.

 I also sent home a notice to fifth grade parents (see below) to drum up some donated popcorn so we could make the virtual field trips even more festive.  After all, what fifth grader doesn't like popcorn?! I have already had several parents send in four or five bags each so I think we will be covered for the rest of the year! When we did our first event today, I let the students vote on which of the 12 campuses they wanted to tour.  It was a close call between Syracuse University and Yale University, but Yale won out! After a welcome from our peppy tour guide Jessica, who explained she is a senior at Yale, we walked through numerous spots on campus with descriptions, college information, and even 360 degree panoramic views in many locations. It was really interesting!  Also, the pathways were lined with directional arrows that I let students go up and touch on the Smartboard to make it more interactive.

The lunches are optional, but I think I'm going to end up doing five or six before the last day of school based on student feedback.  It's also a really good break from the monotonous EOG prep and gives them something else to think about during a somewhat stressful time. Enjoy and Happy Counseling!  ~Angela