Ice Cream in the Classroom!

With the Common Core (not so) slowly taking over, I've found it very helpful to implement strategies, such as exit slips, in my room as formative assessments. It's really easy to tell if a student has mastered a particular standard when I only have to focus on one a day.

In my English I class, we're reading The Odyssey and yesterday we finished the Cyclops Adventure. The standard for the day was:

I can cite thorough textual evidence to back up my analysis and inferences about the text.

I was trying to think of an interesting way to introduce an exit slip to test that theory - and beyond reading a ton of really boring summaries, I was lost.

Then, very luckily, for both myself and my students, a colleague sent me this Buzzfeed List. It totally saved the day! "6 Ice Cream Flavors Inspired by your Favorite Books!"  How perfect is that?!

I had the students create an ice cream flavor based on the Cyclops story. They had to name it, explain what the flavor was, AND explain the significance of their choices. Below are some of the more clever names:

The best parts of this activity, at least in my opinion, are these:

• I could VERY quickly discover whether or not the students understood the material.
• The activity took exactly 4 minutes at the end of class.
• The kids got to be creative and seemed to really enjoy it.