I'm two weeks into my summer vacation and I've just about completed my first summer project. Last week, I sat in on interviews for a 7th teammate and my principal asked candidates a very important question. "What are some ways you will accommodate for learning and emotional gaps that students may show?" You see, this particular group of rising 2nd graders had their Kindergarten year cut short by the pandemic and then could have possibly spent their entire first grade year in the virtual learning setting. I'm already looking to be either trained in Youth Mental First Aid or Trauma Informed Care but it's going to take much more than that to meet these students where they are.
One idea I want to implement is an Ingenuity Lab (ingenuity is one of our school system's core values). I decided I wanted to start our days off with creativity. So instead of traditional morning work, students will come in and grab their bin for the week and complete that day's challenge. This is very similar to morning tubs or morning missions as I've also seen them called.
I made 24 bins. 2 of each type of material. I didn't have to purchase much, I already had most of the supplies I wanted to use on hand. In each bin I included a ring of 7 task cards. 4 picture cards and 3 three-dimensional shape cards. I could have used more consumable materials like index cards, tape, craft sticks, pipe cleaners, etc. however I wanted something low maintenance considering the students will use these each day.
Here's a list of the materials I used:
If you'd like to implement this in your own classroom, the materials are located here: Ingenuity Lab.
