Hurry up and wait — that pretty much sums up the feeling of the last few weeks of the school year. There are so many things that need to be accomplished, but there is also a lot of downtime as students are finishing up final projects and studying for exams. It’s both relaxing and stressful, and I inevitably end up needing some end of the school year activities for students to do while I am finalizing grades. Luckily, I found a fun way for students to stay engaged in our photography material, and have some fun — a photo scavenger hunt!
I created a scavenger hunt that includes photos that test my students’ DSLR knowledge, as well as compositional skill. I also threw in a bunch of fun and unusual types of subject matter so that students would find it challenging to complete all of the photos.
Photography students can test their knowledge in a fun end-of-the-year activity by completing this photography scavenger hunt.
The best way I’ve found to assign the challenge is to have interested students team up. The members of each team of students can all add photos to one list. Once the team feels like they completed the most of the items, I can check their photos with them and then mark down the number that they completed. The team with the most items completed gets a prize (usually candy).
My students have always seemed to enjoy this activity and it still reinforces many of the skills and concepts we learned throughout the year. You could take this idea and adapt it to fit with other art classes or other subjects as well.
This scavenger hunt tests students’ knowledge of their cameras, photo lighting, and compositional techniques, as well as offering them a fun end-of-the-year activity.
The great thing about assignments like this is that students have to work together to figure out what some of these terms mean and how to capture them in a photo. It also makes the students have to apply what they learned during the year, helping to solidify the concepts in their minds.
If you teach a photography class, feel free to download a printable .pdf of my scavenger hunt list below. Enjoy, and here’s to the end of another school year!
Well, another school year is in the books and I’m sitting here on the first day of summer in my jogging gear ready to start my summer exercise regime. Being the typical inattentive A.D.D.er though, I have strayed to writing on my blog instead of a jog. Oh well, I’m still dressed for a jog so I’ll get out there eventually. Ha!
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This Teacher is Ready for Summer
I’ve got to admit, I’m pretty spent from this school year. We had a lot of challenges as a school this year, and I had some personal struggles as well. I had some trying moments in the discipline area with some students (discipline has always been my weakest skill as a teacher). We also lost a student this year to suicide and we had a community shooting that left our school on lockdown for a day and resulted in the loss of a popular police officer in town. In short, it was a very emotional year.
Emotions will continue tonight for me as I attend our high school graduation ceremony and watch some of my favorite artsy kids accept their diplomas and venture out on their new life paths. Luckily these emotions are much happier. I’m excited for them but will miss seeing their faces next year.
Graduation Cards for High School Students
From a practical standpoint though, graduation time always poses a problem for me because I want to give my students a card or memento, but I have so many students graduating that the cost can quickly sky-rocket. I’ve purchased little journals from the dollar store as gifts before but I don’t like the dollar store cards. They seem incredibly generic and lack any charm. Luckily, I’m an art teacher so I can make my own.
I painted a colorful wash on all of the cards using watercolor paint.
I like to leave my graduating students with some words of wisdom and, thankfully, there are many wiser people than I who have left quotes behind to help. I found this great one by Abraham Lincoln that fits the graduation theme so well. I also like how it encourages the students to take agency in their lives and be creators rather than mindless doers. I created a design of the quote with fun fonts and hand-drawn elements. I then laid it out so that two cards could be printed per page.
Customizing Graduation Cards
These cards can be printed on good old white cardstock and will work just fine, but there are many ways that you can customize them as well.
Print this card on a variety of different cardstock options to customize it.
To start with, you can use a variety of colored cardstock to add some pop to each card. You could also use Kraft cardstock if you wanted to create a more rustic look. If you want to make them even more unique, try what I did: Create a wash using watercolor paint.
I cut watercolor paper to match the size of a standard piece of printer paper (8.5 x 11) but you can also order printable watercolor paper that will work even better. I then used watercolor paint to create a variety of simple washes on the paper. You can do this just by wetting the paper and then lightly laying in color with your brush. Be careful of mixing too many colors in this process because you might end up with a muddy mix. Let the pages dry completely and then press them using a heated press or an iron on low heat (put the painted paper between two plain pieces of paper so that the watercolor doesn’t stick to your iron).
This is how your card will look when it is printed out. Cut it in half and then fold to create two cards.
Once the watercolor paper has been dried and prepped, you can then feed it through your printer. After it’s printed, cut the paper in half and fold to create your cards. The inside is blank so you have plenty of space to write a meaningful message to the graduate. The finished results are one-of-a-kind cards that can be created relatively quickly (We all know teachers have no extra time).
I hope you enjoy these graduation cards. I also hope all of you teachers out there have had a good school year and will have a wonderful and well-deserved summer. Enjoy!
You can download the .pdf for the card at the link below.
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