Christmas is a wonderful time to celebrate and be with family, but in a classroom it possess some difficulties. Especially with the last week right before the holiday break begins.
School strive to give their students the best education possible and they do a wonderful job; but part of this is that students should be learning to the best of their ability all the way up to the holiday break. Teachers would not mind doing this as it would allow us to get through a lot more of our curriculum. Students on the other hand have a different thought.
A majority of the students are too excited for the Christmas celebrations, too excited to have time off school to continually focus throughout class.
My solution, activities that still teach the students, but are fun for all of the students. I'm a Maths teacher, so this can sometimes be tricky. My biggest success lesson for this week will be with my Year 8. We are doing probability next term so to introduce them to the concept we are going to test out some unfair and fair games and then create our own! This way the students are using their own ideas and creative sides while incorporating what they have learned through investigation about probability!
Another one I love are worksheets with additional activities. Activities may include word searches, riddles or coloring images. These may seem like "not Maths related" but the students are required to solve the Maths questions before they can complete the activity.
Anything more than textbook questions or worksheet answers allow students to use more than just their Maths brains during the last week of the holiday season!
