Five Ways to Use Memes to Connect With Students

Students love funny memes. Here are five ways you can bring that humor into your classroom (and school) to connect with students:

1. Class Rules, Expectations, and/or Procedures: Instead of your traditional class rules poster, use memes to deliver your message with humor. Better yet, have students create what they think proper rules and regulations should be. In memes, of course. You or your students can use a website like http://memegenerator.net/. You can also download full-quality already-made prints HERE.

2. Ice-breaker or "Get-to-Know-You" Activity: Memes are perfect for getting to know your students better. Break the ice with a "What I Do" meme or funny eCard. For a full lesson with printables and digital templates you can share, click here.

3. Promote (and Reinforce) Your Curriculum: Generate excitement with memes or use them to spark discussions. Posted around your room, they are sure to catch your students' attention. You can find hundreds of images on Pinterest.com with a search in your subject area. Or create them yourself.

4. Creative Activity: Students will practice both creative and critical-thinking skills while creating a meme related to the unit you are studying. It seems very simple, but coming up with appropriate wording to convey the right tone is definitely a higher-order skill. Then students have to make sure they use the right meme correctly. Without even realizing it, they will be making connections with the material while having fun. To read a more detailed post about making memes a class assignment, read more here.

5. Freshmen Orientation (or Open House): One of my colleagues came up with the brilliant idea to have our current students create memes for next year's incoming freshmen for orientation. The meme content varied, covering advice, warnings, and plain old high school humor. The eighth graders and their parents perused the memes during their orientation in March. The images always seem to generate questions they may not have asked otherwise. You could also use this for an open house discussion-starter. Graduating seniors can also leave legacy memes with words of wisdom for future seniors.

However you use memes in your classroom or school, one thing is certain: your students will love it!

You can find high-quality teacher meme prints for your classroom (or to place in presentations) here: Classroom Memes Posters for Classroom or Presentations

Try my End of the Year Advice Memes - Students create "advice memes" for your future students.

Enjoy!

The following images are from our most recent freshmen orientation, created by students:

Classroom Disorganization: Utilize Unused & Hidden Spaces for Storage

Just wanted to post my latest attempt at organizing my classroom. We kicked off our poetry unit this week (one of my favorites!). As I was digging through my very cluttered drawers looking for baggies for a new activity I shared with my students today, I realized I needed a better system for storing them than just shoving them in a drawer when we are finished. Some of the words slipped out and I am pretty sure there are many still stuck in the corners of the drawer.

As I was trying to find all the little word pieces, I came across some Command hooks our custodian scored from 3M this summer (they donate tons of supplies to all our local schools). I didn't want to hang them up on the wall because I figured it would actually make my room look even more cluttered. Then it hit me. Literally...I hit my head on the cupboard door I had left open. (I have a bad habit of leaving them open...just ask my husband.)

Voila—such a simple solution, but I can't believe how much drawer space it frees up. The best part: I won't have to dig through them anymore to pick up all the little word pieces that fell out of the baggies.

If you are curious about the activity I shared with my students today, I will be uploading it later this week—or tomorrow if we have a snow day—on my teacherspayteachers site. :) I wanted to try it out with my students first and I thought it went over really well. And since I was evaluated by my principal during the activity, I'll keep you posted on what he thought of it, too.

UPDATE - Evaluation was excellent and my activity, which has students evaluate an author's word choices by analyzing the syntax, is posted (click on image):

Please post ways that you use Command hooks (or any other methods you have for organization). I love to hear new ideas. (And I need the help!)

One last tip (though I'm not sure this helps with my organization, but I hate wasting paper!): I reuse the daily calendar pages as passes or notes for students. I have a little desk tote that Scholastic Book Clubs sent that I keep the ripped-off pages in. Then when I need to write a pass or a note, I use one of those instead.

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by my blog!

Read more about my journey here: http://www.traceeorman.com/2014/01/classroom-dis-organization-organizing.html

and here: http://www.traceeorman.com/2014/03/classroom-organization-update-make-up.html