This is a fun beginning of the year activity to get to know your students and help them to readjust to the school system by doing a relaxing, fun activity. It is suitable for both virtual and face-to face learning. Including music in the activity will spice up your lesson while allowing your students to be creative. It will also allow them to reflect on their lives and share the turning points in their lives with the whole class and with you, which will help to you build positive relationships with them and build a positive classroom community. I posted the Power Point version here, and you can find the links for Google Slides versions in the Teachers Guide. Enjoy:) Please visit my shop at https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/aysinalp58 to see more resources.

HyperDocs are digital lessons with links to a variety of media on a given topic/unit for students to explore and create information. They provide opportunities for exploration of a topic (in an inquiry based way) both individually and collaboratively, and include multiple parts of a lesson plan all packaged in one place. They include one or more opportunities for students to connect beyond the classroom, collaborate, create (and show what they know), share and reflect. The activities are self-paced or delivered in a flexible blended learning environment, often flipped and differentiated with extensions to meet the needs of all students. This allows the teachers to offload their lectures and reimagine various ways to redefine the student learning experience while having more face time with students by moving around and conferring with them. This HyperDocs on Genius Hour will enable your students to explore their passions and design projects to invent, create and make new products or improved ideas to have a positive impact toward others. Your students will learn what creativity is and how to apply it while using their critical thinking and problem solving skills.

This differentiated choice board will give your students the opportunity to learn about digital citizenship as well as practicing the 4 C’s (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication) . My students had great fun while doing this activity. You may do it in a different way but I allowed them to choose the task they want to work on and their partners to promote student voice and choice in the classroom. The activities in the first row (horizontal) are for groups of three, in the middle row for students who want to work individually, and the ones in the final row are for the students who want to work in pairs. You can assign the tasks in the middle row for a pair of low achievers in order to enhance collaboration as they are relatively easier and shorter. Please read the instructions to use this document which also includes the Google Drive link for the PDF document. Using the Drive link will give you the opportunity to share this document with your students digitally and edit it. On the second page, there are discussion, vocabulary, and reflection tasks for the students to complete. I hope you and your students will enjoy it:)

This 22-page interactive pack includes information, different activities, links to several websites about bullying and cyber-bullying, and ways to cope with them. At the end of the pack there is a project that you can do as whole school / grade level or as a class. The activities are differentiated and suitable for all types of learners from grades 3-6

I guarantee you that your students will love doing these activities during the first week of the school year and you will become the most popular teacher at the school. All you have to do is to design a Welcome Back to School cover page for the first activity with two cartoons. The questions on page 1 and 2 are about the cartoons that you are going to choose, so please read them before you choose the cartoons. If you follow this link http://tinyurl.com/z3vk5rb or this one http://tinyurl.com/hagfo3u, you will find several cartoons to choose from. This fun activity will also help your students to understand media messages, learn how to analyze cartoons, and to think critically. Both activities require students to reflect on the meaning of education and learning and how they learn best. The journal entry they are going to write, the cartoon and the video they are going to make will not only enhance their creative skills but will give you lots hints about their expectations from you as their teacher. Have a great school year!

I guarantee you that your students will love doing these activities during the first week of the school year and you will become the most popular teacher at the school. All you have to do is to design a Welcome Back to School cover page for the first activity with two cartoons. The questions on page 1 and 2 are about the cartoons that you are going to choose, so please read them before you choose the cartoons. If you follow this link http://tinyurl.com/z3vk5rb or this one http://tinyurl.com/hagfo3u, you will find several cartoons to choose from. This fun activity will also help your students to understand media messages, learn how to analyze cartoons, and to think critically. Both activities require students to reflect on the meaning of education and learning and how they learn best. The journal entry they are going to write, the cartoon and the video they are going to make will not only enhance their creative skills but will give you lots hints about their expectations from you as their teacher. Have a great school year!

This 33-page cross-curricular pack is ideal for the teachers who want to prepare their students for the requirements and the challenges of the century that we live in. The activities cover all the 21st Century skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, effective communication, and problem-solving skills. After the warm-up activities, students watch an ecological rock opera on extinction and answer questions about it. They then • write a journal entry on how the lyrics relate to the problem in the story and how they give a powerful message, • write the lyrics of a new song for the rock opera, design a comic strip to convey the message of their song, • create a video about an animal facing extinction or an animation on environmental issues, • write a letter to one of the world leaders about environmental issues, • prepare a 10-minute Ted talk style speech on environmental problems and their solutions for them using the information they have learned, • conduct a school-wide project on an environmental issue of their own choice. All the activities are guided and students are given several resources to choose from to make a video or animation, to write the lyrics, to design a comic strip, to give an effective speech, and to prepare an effective presentation. Most of the activities require group work so that the students can improve collaboration skills. The pack includes a brief guide on how to collaborate effectively and why collaboration is an effective skill. There is also a teamwork rubric that evaluates each student’s performance as an effective team member. There is a rubric for each activity, self and peer evaluation forms, a reflection activity, and a learning journal for the students to fill in.

This 19-page lesson is a great opportunity for the 21st century learners to learn about and practice the art of asking questions based on a digital story. Students first answer the questions after watching episode 1. They then learn about asking read on the lines/between the lines/beyond the lines questions, watch episode 2, and ask different types of questions about it. In part III, they learn about higher order thinking questions, analyze the chart on questioning for quality thinking, watch episode 3, and ask lower and higher order thinking questions about it. In the final section, they conduct research on one of the 3 countries used as the setting of the episodes they have watched. They learn about the tools they can use to research, to evaluate and narrow down the information they have found, and to cite sources. They also learn what a big question is and come up with a driving question to conduct their research. Finally, they learn how to share their findings with their peers by preparing a visual presentation and a speech. If you have a class blog or a school website, you can share their presentations with the entire world, which will be much more motivating for your students. The pack also includes a 21st Century style KWHLQ chart adapted from Silvia Tolisano’s KWHLAQ chart http://langwitches.org/blog/2015/06/12/an-update-to-the-upgraded-kwl-for-the-21st-century/, a research guide for the students, detailed information on public speaking and presentation skills, self and peer evaluation sheets, and an oral presentation rubric. The entire unit is suitable for ESL learners as well. If for any reason you are disappointed or not satisfied with this product,please contact me at aysin.alp1@gmail.com so I have a chance to make it right. Your suggestions are always welcome. Thanks for visiting my shop

This is a great reflection activity for the students preparing for exams. I have designed it for my students who are taking the IGCSE English exam but it can easily be adapted to any other exam such as SAT, IELTS, TOEFL your students are preparing for. It gives the students an opportunity to revise the key concepts they have learned throughout the year and to consider the rules, study tips, do’s and dont’s of the exam while they are working in groups to prepare a learning guide for the students who are going to take this exam prep course and the exam next year. My students told me that it helped them a lot to internalize all the rules and the expectations of the exam and get a good grade. This activity also helps to polish up students’ critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, multimedia and oral presentation skills. Since the students have been asked to prepare a digital learning guide, they are required to use tech tools effectively and creatively. The pack includes three rubrics for multimedia presentation, oral presentation, group work; self and peer evaluation forms; a list of different presentation tools with links; tips and links for public speaking, oral presentations, and group presentations. The most exciting part of this project for the students was the presentation as I took them to the classes of the students who are going to take this course and exam next year to present. If you have time and if you can arrange that, please do so as it becomes a real life experience and makes the project much more meaningful for the students. If not, you can publish the presentations on your class blog, the school website or share it in Google docs. Apart from the time allotted for the presentation, the students spent 8 (40-minute) lessons to finalize the project: • 2 lessons for brainstorming and outlining. • 3 lessons for preparing the guide • 2 lessons for bringing the pieces together and finalizing the presentation • 1 lesson on rehearsing for the presentation

This 10-page interactive end-of-the-year reflection activity gives the students an opportunity to revise the key concepts they have learned throughout the year. Students are asked to think critically and creatively while they are preparing a learning and survival guide for the students who are going to be in the same grade the following year. In order to add more fun to the activity, they are asked to complete tasks that will help the students next year understand what to expect of that grade level both academically and socially. The activities include making a visual collage of the year and a mind map of the important concepts they have learned, writing a poem/rap and a letter, designing a list of top tips or golden rules for their grade level, creating a comic strip, a cartoon or a short graphic novel showing the key points they have learnt this year, finding a title for their guide and assess their work. The links provided are differentiated for students at different levels. The pack also includes a rubric for the letter and a self-assessment rubric. I didn’t grade this activity as it was the end of the year. I gave oral and written feedback to my students, instead. I asked them to grade themselves after they completed the self-assessment rubric.

The amount of information available on the Internet is astonishing, and it keeps growing. Therefore, students should learn this critical skill to determine whether the information they have found is relevant and reliable. In this unit based on evaluating websites students: * Read a text on website evaluation * Do a vocabulary activity on prefixes and suffixes * Answer the questions about the text * Visit a website and do the activities there to learn more about website evaluation * Choose a website among the ones given in the list and evaluate it by answering the questions in a graphic organizer * Prepare a 5–8 - minute oral presentation on it by using the information in the organizer and following the oral presentation guidelines * Evaluate their own oral presentation and their peers' by filling in the self and peer assessment forms * Prepare a leaflet on website evaluation for younger students. The lesson also includes two rubrics - one for the oral presentation and the other for the leaflet. This unit can be used with English Language Learners as well.

You can find 45 creative writing tasks with picture prompts in these ppts. Unlike technical, academic, and other forms of writing, creative writing fosters imagination and allows students to have a voice. Therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to enhance creativity in the classroom. I share this ppt with the students at the beginning of the year and they choose one topic each month. It is one of their favorite tasks.

You can find 48 creative writing tasks with picture prompts in these ppts. Unlike technical, academic, and other forms of writing, creative writing fosters imagination and allows students to have a voice. Therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to enhance creativity in the classroom. I share this ppt with the students at the beginning of the year and they choose one topic each month. It is one of their favorite tasks.

You can find 48 creative writing tasks with picture prompts in these ppts. Unlike technical, academic, and other forms of writing, creative writing fosters imagination and allows students to have a voice. Therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to enhance creativity in the classroom. I share this ppt with the students at the beginning of the year and they choose one topic each month. It is one of their favorite tasks.