Last year I stalked researched Mrs. Renz website and borrowed a ton of her ideas! She is a SUPER teacher who has won many and major awards for her dedication for teaching.
One of her great creations is the “Mastery Club”. This is a club that kids can “join” as long as they finish one task. There are 86 different tasks, and on her website there are web addresses for hints to help students find the answers. I did not include them on mine, but check out her site!
My club is called the “Brainiac Club.” With the help of Vistaprint, I created a banner:
This is also the pic I used for the front of my postcards. I will use the postcards to keep track of how many challenges the student completes… You can see the back side below:
Here are my rules that I will have posted along with the 86 tasks:
I also had certificates printed up using Vistaprint. I said that they were flyers… either way they came out looking like certificates 🙂
I am really excited about seeing how much my kids can do. Mrs. Renz had a student who completed 62 challenges!!! I hope my kids can compete with that!
You can see more of her Mastery Club info here.
THANKS MRS. RENZ FOR THE INSPIRATION!!!
Wow! What a fantastic idea! I LOVE it! Will you keep all this in one area that the students can access it as they finish their work?
I am going to keep it all in one area. I actually set it up today.
I put my banner on the door (it was actually a lawn sign, but the same image) then put my rules and all the challenges in their own separate sheet protector and taped them to the door vertically.
I put it on a closet door out of the way, so when they finish with a quiz or whatever that can go to the door.
As far as keeping up with the index card, I will do that and keep it in a little recipe box. That way at the end of the year, I can give out certificates. But as soon as someone reaches 15 I am going to put their name under a sign that says hall of fame 🙂
I've come across this idea before and am glad to see it again! I might try it this year. Do you have PCs in your classroom for students to work on it in class? Or are you going to have all research done outside of class?
Mrs. Howard-
I only have one computer in my room. I will let the kids use it when I can, but it's a laptop signed out to me.
I plan on letting them research out of any resources available in the classroom, but they can also do it at home. 🙂
I love her website too! I have been working on something similar for my fifth grade this year. I've not decided on a name for sure, something to do with Investigators. I only have one computer in my room and I also do not want then to just be able to google the answers to everything. So many of my investigations will be open ended problem solving. I have a few kids coming up that are so far ahead of the rest of my class, I want to be sure I have something exciting and challenging for them! Thanks for the inspiring Vistaprint ideas!
Thanks for your sweet comment Julianne. 🙂 Maybe a name could me Interest Investigators…. they are investigating whatever interests them. Good luck!!!
Silly me I should have looked here first!!! I {as you would say) – puffy heart this!! I absolutely love this idea!! Can is steal it? I mean all of it?! Ohhh I like interest investigators too!!! I need to get busy and start working on this! Thank you for the awesome idea!
-Audrey
The Sweet Life of Third Grade
Of course you can steal it Audrey!! 🙂 If you want to do Brainiacs, I will try to set it up on Google docs. I need to figure out how to to make "Files to Share" like Ladybug Teacher Files does… I'll see if I can set that up today.:)
Thanks for your nice comments!!!
You are too awesome for words!! I found them! Thank you….wonderful idea! I can't wait for my students to do them!!
-Audrey
What font did you use for the titles? It's wonderful!
These are wonderful! I am wondering if you have a corrected copy of your Language Arts Brainiac? (I didn't see an email address to contact you off-blog)
Kathleen
fixed it… cant believe I misspelled it!!! aaaaaahhhhh!!! thanks for letting me know!!! 🙂
Oh and the font is called "Girls are Weird." I have no idea where I got it though. 🙂
i am going to start a cranium club with my grade 2/3s…canadian style 🙂
thank you for sharing your ideas-awesome…i have linked you and mrs renz in my post
I love this, could I get it through google docs? Thank you
Hey KSulli!!
It is in Google Docs… Look at the green tabs to the left, one is titled Files to Share. You will find all my Brainiac stuff in there. You can use as much or as little as you would like 🙂
I can't seem to print the Brainiac stuff from Google Docs. Would you be willing to email me the files? Thanks!!!!
you're amazing. i cannot thank you enough for your generosity in sharing your very creative ideas!
Linda you are too sweet!!! I'm glad you can use them!
I've never used vista print before but I'd really like to replicate your Brainiac club poster. What size poster did you use and did you pick a design or upload one? If so can you post that too?
I LOVE this! I'm starting my first year as a third grade teacher in less than a month (yikes!) I definitely want to incorporate this. Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful creativity 🙂
I'm wondering if you had an answer key to all of these already made up or did you have to look up the answers to each of these challenges as the students completed them?
THIS IS AN AWESOME IDEA!!!
I love it. I always have students coming up to me (especially during math) saying "I'm done!" "I'm finished!" "Now what do we do?"
This is exactly something to do! I love it. Genius.
What a great idea! I am definitely going to try this. I am just curious how you check their answers if they don't hand a paper in? Do you have answer keys out while they present?
This is wonderful! I post a math trivia question every week that students can work on. But now I am doing 6thss and 7th math… So something like this would work perfectly! Thanks for the idea and making your hard work avaliable.
Awesome! Found this on Pinterest – thanks so much for sharing with all of us! I teach elmentary gifted resource – this will be PERFECT for them! I saw a couple of people ask about answer keys…any word on those? Thanks again! (Love the idea of Interest Investigators, too – sounds very differentiated!)