2nd Grade - Title Interpretations

Very much inspired by the previous post, this project focused on interpretation and originality stemming from a common starting point.  I have seven tables of usually 3 second graders at Central, and I gave each table an unfinished sentence - something like "Be careful with those _____, they're haunted," or "_____ have taken over our school!"  It's then the second graders job to take the sentence and come up with something original, or at least different from their tablemates.

This was another project that we squeezed in before winter break, and so some of them went unfinished, but their core is there, and often hilarious.

6th Grade - Exploding Dog

I first did this lesson back when I was doing my clinical observations at Ohio State.  In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the very first project I ever taught to students, and it's taken a few years to makes its way back into the plans. 

We had 3 weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break this year, which was just enough time to squeeze this quick unit in while we also took a week to finish any other project that needed it.  The idea is very simple, and stolen completely from Sam Brown's awesome and hilarious website, explodingdog.com.  Basically, sixth graders all started with a piece of paper and had to come up with a title for a drawing.  We had a lot of song lyrics, common sayings, or just completely random thoughts as titles.  Then, students traded their titles with classmates and drew a picture for it.  It's always interesting to see how different students approach their interpretations.  Here are just a few of the many awesome drawings done by the sixth graders.