Before the winter break I got a new student. I do a lot of getting-to-know-you glyphs at the beginning of the year, but in the spirit of getting a new student I thought it would be nice to try a winter glyph that would help him get to know the rest of the class and vice versa! All the glyphs I have seen have been paper crafts, so I thought it would be interesting to design a glyph activity for the Interactive Whiteboard.
Additionally, in grammar, we started learning about proper nouns, specifically names. I thought it would be fun to have the students make acrostic poems about their classmates using their names to go along with their glyph.
Creating the Glyph
I decide we would make snowman glyphs. I created the glyph activity in ActivInspire, using a background that I had previously created for my Gingerbread Jamboree Mini-Unit. I was able to create the snowman and clothing accessories using the shape tool. (To group shapes my favorite shortcut is CTRL-G!) I duplicated the slide 30 times, so each student would have their own slide.
How old are you?
Give snowman the same number of buttons as your age. If you are 6 years old, you will give your snowman 6 buttons.
Are you a boy or a girl?
Boy: top hat
Girl: Green Hat
Which do you like better?
Ice Skating: Blue Mittens
Sled Riding: Red Mittens
Which Season do you like better?
Winter: Purple Scarf
Summer: Yellow Scarf
Then Real Life Happened…
I meant for this project to span over the week, but a snow day and a 2 hour delay day later, my week had taken a hit in available instructional hours. In order to make time for this activity, I decided to absorb the glyphs and poems in to my morning calendar routine. Each day we get to know another student. I also discovered it was difficult for the students to write the acrostic poems independently, so working as a group makes this process much easier! As always in the classroom, things don’t go according to plan, but staying flexible is key!