Adding a meme creation task increases student engagement and can make something as boring as a rules lecture a little more fun.
1. Rules & Procedures
There is nothing kids look forward to more than sitting through six classes of syllabus lectures and rule speeches on the first day of school.
Starting off the school year with a list of what not to do, or a rules lecture creates a culture of compliance. I want out of the box thinking, risk-taking, boundaries being pushed with innovative ideas. So how do I set the tone for what my classroom is all about?
While I do feel the need to go over some classroom expectations, I try doing it a memorable way. I have created a slide show of memes that illustrates behaviors that I don't like in a very humorous way. This lets kids know that while I do have expectations about how they conduct themselves in my class, learning can be fun...even when learning about rules.
At the end of the slides, I give them the chance to create memes about teacher behaviors that annoy them. It's only fair, right?
Starting off the school year with a list of what not to do, or a rules lecture creates a culture of compliance. I want out of the box thinking, risk-taking, boundaries being pushed with innovative ideas. So how do I set the tone for what my classroom is all about?
While I do feel the need to go over some classroom expectations, I try doing it a memorable way. I have created a slide show of memes that illustrates behaviors that I don't like in a very humorous way. This lets kids know that while I do have expectations about how they conduct themselves in my class, learning can be fun...even when learning about rules.
At the end of the slides, I give them the chance to create memes about teacher behaviors that annoy them. It's only fair, right?
After my presentation, students create their own memes in a shared slide deck about their expectations for me. Since I have students create memes throughout the year, this first day of school lesson serves multiple purposes.
- Communicating my expectations for how students conduct themselves in my classroom.
- Learning what students like/dislike about teacher behaviors.
- Students learn to create slide memes in a task that has a low cognitive load, developing familiarity with the task so that when we use this skill later with academic content, they are not overwhelmed.
2. Daily (or weekly) Current Events Protocol
USE CNN 10 for a daily warm-up activity: https://www.cnn.com/cnn10
Explore: Students go to https://www.cnn.com/cnn10 to watch a ten minute video that highlights several top news events.
Explain: Students spend five minutes creating a meme in a shared slide deck. It takes less than one minute to make a meme, and it can be made on a slide. The first few times will take longer if your students are new to meme making-if you don’t know how this is done see the video tutorial below. The other four minutes are for thinking of the idea for the meme.
Share: The ten-minute news videos explain multiple current events which allow for a fun way to check for understanding. Students can choose the news story that they find intriguing and create their meme for the chosen story. When the meme making task is complete, spend five minutes (or less) going through the slide show in presentation format and allow students to guess which news story each meme reaction is from.
Explore: Students go to https://www.cnn.com/cnn10 to watch a ten minute video that highlights several top news events.
Explain: Students spend five minutes creating a meme in a shared slide deck. It takes less than one minute to make a meme, and it can be made on a slide. The first few times will take longer if your students are new to meme making-if you don’t know how this is done see the video tutorial below. The other four minutes are for thinking of the idea for the meme.
Share: The ten-minute news videos explain multiple current events which allow for a fun way to check for understanding. Students can choose the news story that they find intriguing and create their meme for the chosen story. When the meme making task is complete, spend five minutes (or less) going through the slide show in presentation format and allow students to guess which news story each meme reaction is from.
 |  |
Click on this image to get a starter template.
3. Lit Memes
There are so many ways that memes can add an extra element of engagement to text-based lessons. During a History unit on Ancient Greece, there was a lesson on Aesop's fables in the textbook. I was shocked that my students had made it to middle school and claimed not to know what a fable was, so we took a detour into the land of Aesop. The original fables were quite tricky for my students to read and understand. They struggled to identify a moral when it wasn't clearly stated at the end of the short text. Even when the moral was stated, the language used to communicate the lesson was somewhat unfamiliar. I noticed that students didn't really understand the lesson and were not able to connect it to real life situations, so we created a shared slide deck of favorite fables and added memes to explain the moral.
 |  |
I love the exploding brain meme as a template to move students from identifying a topic from a text to describing a theme, which seems to be something that is a real struggle for middle school readers.
Memes are also an effective way for students to show their understanding of characters, conflicts, or plots from the books that they are reading.
 |  |
4. What Does It Meme?
Memes are a great way for students to show their understanding of word meanings. Since memes by definition are meant to be shared, create a collaborative slide presentation in which all students can add their memes. Once complete, you have a great collection of images for a word that may have multiple or connotative meanings, as shown in the example below.
Bonus: Grammar Memes
My friend, Kevin Feramisco, was creating a Grammar Hyperdoc and looking for ideas...I sent him a MEME:
My friend, Kevin Feramisco, was creating a Grammar Hyperdoc and looking for ideas...I sent him a MEME:
 |  |
5. History Memes: What if I told you...
The what if I told you meme is an excellent way to get students to think about elements of our culture that may have been influenced by ancient civilizations. The example below is taken from a unit on Ancient Greece. We learned about Plato's Allegory of the CaveP, and I showed them a video clip from the film The Matrix, which has been compared to Plato's allegory.
This is an image of a slide from our unit on Ancient Greece. I use the "gray area" as a space to add additional instructions from my Bitmoji.
My students have digital portfolios in the form of Google sites. They add samples of their work on their websites throughout the year, and it makes for a great reflection tool as well as a showcase for open house. Since much of our work is digital and we have one bulletin board for the seventy students that learn in my classroom, student websites are perfect for showcasing their work at Open House because it's like each student has their own individual bulletin board. The meme task described here adds something a little more engaging to a written assignment to be posted on their website.
The Task:
Write a post on the History page of your website that responds to the following prompt: Do you think it’s important that we still teach ancient Greek philosophy? Why or why not? Use your meme as an image to enhance your post.
The Task:
Write a post on the History page of your website that responds to the following prompt: Do you think it’s important that we still teach ancient Greek philosophy? Why or why not? Use your meme as an image to enhance your post.
The what if I told you meme would also be a great template for students to share different perspectives on a historical event.
How do you make a meme using Google Slides?
I made a screencast tutorial for my class. You can watch it HERE.
The video is super "cringy," and my students would spend the rest of the year playing the "Hey guys... it's your guide on the slide" part at random just to shame me for my terrible intro. I compared it with them starting an essay with "I'm gonna tell you about…" so I guess we are even.
Click HERE to get a meme template slide deck. Remember to click on "file" and then click "make a copy" so that it will be yours.
The video is super "cringy," and my students would spend the rest of the year playing the "Hey guys... it's your guide on the slide" part at random just to shame me for my terrible intro. I compared it with them starting an essay with "I'm gonna tell you about…" so I guess we are even.
Click HERE to get a meme template slide deck. Remember to click on "file" and then click "make a copy" so that it will be yours.
RSS Feed
