Seminar

This year our school has introduced a 20 minute period of the day called seminar. The purpose of seminar is to allow time for announcements, the pledge of allegiance, and then a short lesson or activity to help them in their school endeavors.

With the second week of school complete, I've found that the lessons that we are suppose to teach can be kind of dull when you explain to them. Also, many of the lessons are short and don't require much time to implement. In fact, today, my seminar students asked if we would be doing anything fun during this time rather than me lecturing to them. I asked for their ideas, but didn't really get to many answers. Therefore, after class I went onto Google and looked for some ideas. Here are a few of the sites and ideas that I found.

• Even though I teach in a public high school, this Christian Bible Study Page has some great icebreakers. I obviously wouldn't use the ones that involve religion, but I do like some of the ideas presented on this page. There is also a game, which I'm familiar with in other contexts outside of school, that would be fun as long as it was kept school appropriate. The game "I've Never" can be found here.
• I think it would be good to have on the overhead each day a fun question to which it might start a conversation with the class. One site I found for this is a form of Would You Rather?.
• If students could remember to bring in a $1 bill then I think it would be fun to do some origami with them. One that I've done and that usually doesn't take very long is the $1 Bill Ring.
• In order for the students to feel a connection with their seminar group, which will be the same throughout their four years at the high school, I think it would be fun to adopt a Seminar Mascot. And what better way to show our Seminar pride then to have a flag which displays our mascot. Obviously, for students to take part in this, it would be necessary for the students to suggest ideas and then vote on designs and ideas that they like the most.
• One thing that I would like to incorporate from my Capturing Kids Hearts training is to add words of encouragement at the end of each session. Since I struggle to be the most affectionate guy, I'm going to have to find encouraging words and stories in books and on websites.

So, on Monday I'm going to prompt my students to choose a mascot and to design a flag in which we can then vote on. Hopefully, after getting things off to a more energetic start, I will be able to find additional things to do that are entertaining for the students.