Thursday, April 17, 2014

VIP Day

The one day every year when I'm like..."WHYYYY".  VIP Day is 45 minutes of every year that I stress out about, because what do you do with 20 students and 40ish VIPs in one small classroom??

Even after 8 years, I'm still rushing around to find something to do for this special 30 minutes.  (what, it's only 30 minutes??)  How can 30 minutes be so stressful.

Last year my teaching partners and I decided to mix it up a bit and try something new.  Instead of our usual brain teasers worksheet to work on and "stand and share" about your VIP, we decided to make things a little more...creative.  We made hats.  Hats!

First, I have students grouped so that I can leave supplies and directions for each small group.  It really helps that the VIPs are there to help follow directions- and they each make one so that I can take adorable VIP Day pictures later.  I pull out every random art supply I can find and stuff them in paper lunch bags to put at each table.  That way they kids can just cram it all back in there and I'll shove it in the closet for next year.  I'm not about to go through that art supply disaster!


I loved it!  I was able to go around and take pictures of them with their hats and it gave everyone a chance to be silly together.  It's so fun to have the students see their grandparents wear a silly hat.

Since I don't have pictures of my students to share with you... I went ahead and rocked the (plain) paper hat look.  Let me take a #selfie....


The hat activity eats up most of the time, so I had them write one sentence about why their VIP was so important to them.  I took all of them, plus a picture of each student from earlier in the year, and put them together on a scrolling PowerPoint presentation that played in the background.

Not every student knows who is showing up for them ahead of time, so I make a blank page with his/her picture and leave it for last minute adjustments the morning of the event.  The final presentation looks something like this...but with pictures of students (and not Lego-Batman) and their names...but I did include my favorite VIP quote from this year's class.



What do you do on this hectic day??


            

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