A Day without Internet…

I strongly disagree with the statement “you should never rely on the internet”. If your school has wifi, then I don’t see ANY problem with planning to USE that internet and USE it frequently. These are the various things I use it for every second of every day (I’ll blog about each of these individually EVENTUALLY #69blogdrafts right now… no lie):

• Pandora (A Spanish station is ALWAYS on in the background USE YOUR MUTE button for maximum efficiency and as an sneaky classroom management tool)
• YouTube (it is ALWAYS open because I never know when I am going to need to look up a video since Non-Targeted CI can be all over the place)
• Google Slides (this is where I organize my lessons. Each class has a MASTER presentation, and each day, I add in the slides I need for class, that way I have a place that organizes and reminds me what structures come up and what each class discussed each day, and every now and then I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It is also good to be able to send the slides to students who missed school so they can read the input and see any videos they missed)
• Google Classroom (I LOVE Google Classroom, since my students are one to one, I have them do their exit quizzes, self-assessments, and bellwork there)
• Kiddle.co (a safe search for photos, because again, you never know when you’re going to need to establish meaning of new “out of bounds” vocabulary with a photo and you never know what inappropriate photos might pop up in Google)

I know that for many of you, you have internet restrictions and silly annoyances that you can’t do anything about because you don’t have power to change things in your district. However, I think this blog will be helpful to you too!

One day, this November, the stupid tower that shoots the internet into our computers (I don’t know how it works) was struck by lightning or something. Our wifi was “down”. For me, this is a crisis. I ABSOLUTELY rely on my precious wifi. Now, normally, I would just plug my phone into the speakers and play Mafia or Loup Garou (different from the one I invented and MY NEW OBSESSION THANKS TO CAT and I CANNOT WAIT to blog about it). However, my phone was dead and I don’t like playing those games without Twilight Zone or Creepy Doll Music playing in the background, it adds SO much to the ambiance and intensity!

So….

Then I thought of the GREATEST IDEA EVER IN THE HISTORY OF EVERDOM….. I looked at that cute little dinosaur and thought, OH OH OHHHHHH MY GOODNESS!

I started a story…. I said “Class, there was once a tiny little grey dinosaur….What was his name?” and the looks on their faces were classic. They were equally as excited as me! They knew just where I was going… as you probably do too… We created a whole story around this dino…. (TALK ABOUT NOVELTY!!!!)

• What’s his name
• Where he lived
• What he lived in (house/apartment/mansion)
• Who he lived with
• What he eats (his favorite and least favorite foods)
• What he loves
• What he is scared of

AND THEN…… we made that thing (whatever he is scared of) CHASE him….. I had a student come up to the front of the classroom and play the game (if you don’t know how you literally just push the spacebar when you see this screen pop up and it starts the game play, from there you literally just push the spacebar again every time you want your little dino to jump!) As the student played, I narrated his running talking about how the thing that scared him most (in this class’s case it was a giant orange butterfly) and eventually the student hits a cactus and gets a GAME OVER message. Then you can talk about the high score and high numbers in the TL in a super compelling context! Next, we start the story over from scratch!!! This time, I asked the same details but I had the dinosaur going to the store to get his favorite food. Since EVERYONE wants to play, I had students pick a card from my deck of cards and keep it under their chairs but face down so I can’t see it (if you don’t do that they’ll accuse you of picking favorites). Then, when it is time to pick a student to play, I say:

• Everyone stand up
• Students with a heart card sit down
• Students with a spade card sit down
• Students with a club card sit down
• Students with a number higher than 9 sit down
• Students with a number lower than 5 sit down

Basically you just keep calling rules in the TL out until one student remains standing and that person plays the game.

NOW, as tempting as it is to just shut off your wifi so you can play this, I GUARANTEE you’ll lose internet one day at work and you’ll regret having used this trick…. so SAVE it for when you really need it…. It will be totally worth it…. 🙂

Until next time,

HAPPY TEACHING!

Love y’all,

La Maestra Loca