Learn to Talk Yearbook

The very first day of yearbook class, after attendance and a group building activity, students learn how to "talk yearbook." Yearbook involves A WHOLE LOT more than putting together a bunch of pictures of your friends and sending them off to be printed; in fact, yearbook involves a whole new way of thinking and talking.

I distribute a condensed list of yearbook terms. Using sample yearbooks, I talk the students through the terms, showing them examples as I go. I ask them to learn all of the terms for the next class. (If you would like a list of the terms I use, e-mail me.)

The following day, I divide students into groups, giving each group its own sample yearbook, a set of post-it notes, and a list of five yearbook terms. In their groups, they compete with the other groups to find examples of each yearbook term. The groups mark each example with a post-it note. The first group to find examples of all of the terms wins the first round. The group then shows its examples to the others, and we talk about the examples as a class.

We usually play three rounds of this game. Each group that wins gets Jolly Ranchers. At the end of the game, everybody gets some Jolly Ranchers.

After students throw away their candy trash, they take the yearbook terms quiz. Students are asked to match 20 terms and examples. The short answer questions are all related to classroom routines that I am also teaching at the time. Think about your own routines for coming into class, getting settled, getting started, cleaning up, and dismissing students. Quiz them on these routines. When I cover these classroom routines well at the beginning, the classes tend to run themselves by the end of September.

— Kara Petersen
kpetersen@hanover.k12.va.us