Students in second and third grade are moving away from their younger self-centered view of the world, but most still love to talk about themselves. At the beginning of the year, they also have lots of new things to share: new school supplies, new friends from the summer, and maybe even new school clothes or shoes. Use this interest in sharing to get to know your students as human beings through All About Me introductory activities.
By doing these All About Me activities in Wixie, students have the opportunity to both talk about themselves and practice 21st-century communication skills. You also end up creating a great collection of "getting-to-know-you" student information accessible from your Wixie teacher dashboard.
Here are some specific All About Me projects to kick off your year with Wixie.
Make an "all about me" table tent
The Wixie Tutorial Collection is made of documents you can view or even copy to customize. In the Create a Table Tent tutorial, students paint and label a picture of themselves and add a page of images to show their interests. The culmination of the tutorial is to print and fold a table tent to place on their desk.
I love that students can follow the step-by-step directions on their own and I can move around the room to talk, answer questions, and meet my learners. The Level One tutorial is written for new technology users at a 2nd-grade reading level, so it should be accessible to most of your second- and third-grade learners.
If you have a more flexible setting than individually assigned desks, have students pick up their table tents at the door and put them wherever they are working each day. You can also share them on a bulletin board or use them to identify authors and designers in a classroom or school display case.
Write, illustrate, and publish an "all about me" book or eBook
If you are feeling ambitious, kick off the year with Wixie by having students create something beautiful they can share with their families. To balance content they already know with potentially new technology skills, I use the All About Me template that includes pages for:
- a picture of the student,
- a picture of their family,
- things they do at home,
- things they like,
- things they do not like,
- things they are good at, and
- things they hope for.
Students can open this template on their own when they log in to Wixie by opening the Templates folder in the list on the left. They will see an All About Me folder filled with activities.
If you think this is too many steps to start the year with Wixie, log in to your teacher account, navigate to the All About Me file, and assign the template to your students.
Remember, all Wixie templates can be customized to fit your needs. For example, add a page or two to this template for things like: a favorite Book, their favorite subject, and/or favorite holidays.
Because this template is mostly just space for ideas, learners differentiate the content and process of building on their own. Struggling writers and early-stage ELLs can share information with pictures and still be successful. Push them to add labels and record their voice to support the images. Advanced users and students with high linguistic ability tend to write a lot more, rather than use images.
As they work through the template, walk around the room and ask questions about their interests. If they are searching the library, you can also get a sense of their ability to both spell and complete Web searches.
If you have access to a color printer, print and bind the pages together to publish books you can share first in the classroom to get to know each other and then to take home as a keepsake.
If your students have devices at home, encourage them to log in at home to share with their families. You can also share a URL with parents from the Students view of your teacher account.
Use the Wixie 101 and Lesson Ideas links at your Wixie home page to find even more back-to-school and first project resources and ideas, like this Back-to-School Guide for Elementary.
No matter what you choose to do, the important thing is getting the students back into the swing of school and getting to know them personally for a successful year.
