My resource find today!

Anyone that knows me, knows I love to find a bargain that everyone can afford that can be used in the classroom in a range of different ways.  Household items are my passion, items that students are able to purchase at any supermarket and they are not going to cost the earth for their families. 

Education should be affordable for everyone!!

So how excited was I when I came across these little beauties at the supermarket this morning.



These are just two from a small range of different tissue boxes that kids can learn from.  Yes, tissue boxes!  My eyes lit up again when I saw the price.  $2 each!  So I grabbed a couple.  These two pictured above are my favourite.

Now with my mind racing and ideas coming out my ears, I walked in home to declare my find (and excitement) with my husband.  But I had so much running through my head that I wasn't making any sense.

So here I am, trying to put down all my ideas and activities about my resource find today!

I have found there has been lots of talk online around engaging students, managing behavioural issues, activities or lesson for a CRTs bag of tricks and managing early finishers.  These cleverly designed tissue boxes tick all of these areas fairly well. 

Worksearch tissue box

Engaging Students

As a collaborative activity where students work in small groups, having them looking for all the words on the wordsearch box.  All the words are listed on the side of the box.  If you had a couple of tissue boxes, you could get the whole class involved.

Side of Wordsearch box, sorry a little blurry.

Variations.

Cover the side of the box where the words are listed and see how many words the groups can find.  Can they find a word that another group can't find?  How many longer words can they find?  Draw a table on the board for the students to write their words under the individual headings (3 letter words, 4 letter words).  Write a conclusion around the results.

You can use this activity as an Icebreaker activity, in a literacy rotation and as a team building or EQ (Emotional Intelligence) lesson.

For the Foundation students, have them find a specific letter and circle it.  Similar to an activity I do using the newspaper.  Identifying letter in different fonts is great for their immersion of letter and the understanding that letter sometimes look a little different depending on the font and where the letters are used.

A writing activity.  If a students finds a word, that's great.  Get them to keep it to themselves.  Have them write the word they found on the tissue box into a sentence with a picture.  Then return to the box and look for another word, repeating the cycle.

Managing Behavioural Issues.

I am a big believer in setting up engaging activities and lesson, linked to students lives, interests and where they experience enjoyment.  This activity may not connect to all students but which student doesn't like a wordsearch?  By engaging students in the activity, you won't have to manage the behaviours.

CRT bag of tricks.

How many times have you walked into a classroom and you can't find a tissue?  Problem solved and you make an activity out of the box. 

Even if you flatten the empty box and slip it into your bag, making it nice and easy to get out and use.

Early Finishers

I would have this tissue box on the floor at the front of the room for the early finishers.  As students finish their work and join the group around the tissue box, it is not going to matter that students are joining at different times.  The strategies the students need to come up with will include, how will they incorporate a new students, how are they going to take turns, should they use different colours for different students and well as you can see, the list goes on and on.  Co-operation is the key to this activity. 

The colouring in tissue box

I understand this box will respond to the girls more that the boys, especially in the older classes but still a great little resource that can be used in different ways.

Engaging activity/Managing Behavioural Issues.

As a collaborative activity, students need to work together to colour a section of the box.  This isn't an easy task as the tissue box is so small and only a certain amount of room for hands to work. 

Bringing the students together at the end of the session to talk through the different issues with the activities, feeling individuals felt and displayed and different strategies they used that helped.  A nice little Emotional Intelligence (EQ) activity.

Variation.

Have two tissue boxes (same pattern) but one is 3D still and the other flat and empty.  Compare and contrast how working on the different boxes was, were the strategies the same for both boxes and which one was the easiest to work on?  Venn diagrams are useful in activities like these and are easy to draw on the whiteboard or even have the students draw one in their workbooks or on a piece of paper and then fill in.

CRT bag of tricks.

The same as above.  You can flatten the empty tissue box and slip it into your bag.   

Early Finishers.

Again, like above. 

Variation

You could add different drawing materials for the students to work with.  Then ask the students to review which item was the best to use and why, and the worst item to use and why.  Have the students think about the colours, brightness, tip of the drawing item and how small the drawings are.  Did they have control over how and where they coloured?  Did any of the drawing materials give the colouring any texture?  Did mixing drawing items give a better effect to the colouring.  Lots of different art questions for the students to think about.

As you can see, lots of different ways these two tissue boxes can be used in the classroom.  If you can think of some more, I would love to hear them.  Please post them in the comments section.

Mel