Shoebox Activity

                    If you had to leave your home and didn’t have time to pack and didn’t know where you were going or coming back and the only things that you could take had to fit in a shoebox, what would you put in that shoebox? Would you take sentimental things that mean a lot to you or would you take things that would define your survival? I decided to include items that would be more useful in terms of surviving. The items that included in my shoebox were: my glasses in case I ran out of solution or lost my contacts, solution for my contacts, toilet paper, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, deodorant and some family pictures. After we got the chance to share our box contents with our classmates we had to answer a couple of questions like what items did you include in your box, what did you learn about yourself, what did you learn about your classmates, and what did this experience make you think about? After completing this whole activity, I learned that an activity can have a big effect on constructing and maintaining a classroom community. Students get the chance to learn more about their classmates at level that they probably wouldn’t have learned just by talking to each other at school. The things that they include in their shoebox are going to be totally different from another student and they are going to have a different meaning to that student. Allowing the students to share the contents with the rest of the class, helps reinforce and build the community that is desperately needed in a classroom. Even you as a teacher will learn a lot from your students. I also learned that having the students answer questions like the ones I had to, allows the students to reflect on what they learned about themselves and their classmates. I can’t wait to recreate this activity in my own classroom someday.