Use quotes at the start of the school year to inspire your students to success.
Quotes can be excellent discussion starters; they can serve as a unique tool for talking about the importance of working hard, the meaning of success, and many other popular start-of-the-school-year "teacher talking-points." A bulletin board full of quotes can serve as a jumping-off point for a nice writing activity too. Or students might do some research to learn more about the people who originated the quotes.
DIRECTIONS
Collect a series of quotes you think might resonate with students and that cover themes you emphasize at the start of the school year. An excellent starting point is this list of 180 quotes -- a quote a day for each day of the school year. Use a large font to type a selection of the quotes for posting on the bulletin board.
You might…
have students choose a quote that resonates with them, then write a paragraph explaining why they chose that particular quote and what it means to them.
have students explain why they think you selected those quotes to share at the start of the school year. Ask: How do the quotes relate to back-to-school themes and habits of successful students?
use Google's Image Search, or another image search engine, to track down photos of the people who originated the quotes. Post the quotes on the bulletin board and post the images around the frame. Assign a quotation to pairs of students, and have each pair learn more about the person who's the source of their quote. As they learn more about that person, students should be able to identify the photo that goes with their quote. One pair at a time, have students staple the correct border image alongside their quote and share some facts with their classmates about the originator of the quote. (If you use the bulletin board in that way, you might use a rhyming headline for the bulletin board, "Who Wrote These Quotes of Note?")
