Sidewalk Chalk

Friday morning as I got ready, I heard the thunder and rain outside. I began preparing myself to be stuck inside my classroom all day adapting our awesome idea of sidewalk into something somewhat exciting for my students. When I got to school, we decided we would still try it because the three of us did not think we could stand another day inside doing review. We went outside to assess the rain damage and decided it wasn't going to work. As a last resort and last glimmer of hope, we checked to see if the media center was available for the day. We were so excited to find out it was! So, we spent the next hour planning and preparing for bringing our activity inside. We went to the workroom and tore off 80 sheets of black paper (our new sidewalk), numbered the tables in the library, drew up an example on the board, and greeted our students with a smile as the bell rang for 2nd period to start.

Chalk writes on black paper so we thought it would be no big deal. Well, they had poster size paper, which meant they had to stand up to write on the paper. Standing up makes them think they can roam about wherever they would like and talk to whomever they would like. It was hard to tell who was supposed to be where and who was working and who wasn't. By this point, it had stopped raining outside so we decided they could get over the wet ground and humidity and took the next groups outside.

Third period went to the black top where each group had a whole bus parking spot to make their study guides. It was not hot. It was humid. My co-teach said at one point, "I think I am going to melt." Surprisingly, they did not complain too much about the humidity or heat. But, black top is not the best surface to do sidewalk chalk. It was very uneven and hard to write on. It also took a lot of chalk to write a little bit. I used over half a piece just writing the numbers 13-20 when I numbered the spots.

(integer hopscotch)

So, fourth period we adapted a little more and went to the sidewalk along the side of the school. This worked much better! You could read what they wrote much better. They were in a more consolidated area so it was easy to tell who was off task and wandering around. And, the sidewalk did not eat up the chalk like the black top did.

We stuck with this plan of action for fifth period. The sun had come out by the end of the day so there was a lot of complaining about the heat, but I wanted to whine about it too so it wasn't too annoying. Next year, we'll have to add another aspect to the assignment because every class did finish earlier than we had hoped. But, overall it was very successful. Since we wrote in the area everyone has to walk through to get to the buses, we got lots of compliments from other teachers when the day was over. Too bad it has rained all weekend and it will all be washed away Monday morning...