Using Google Tools to Enhance Brain Breaks

So one of my biggest pet peeves since being in Grad School is feeling that there are certain aspects of the program that is not pertinent to my classroom. Being a high school teacher comes with a different set of challenges compared to a middle school and definitely an elementary school classroom. I find myself getting jealous of the resources for elementary school teachers compared to myself.

My view of elementary schools

Side note- I have the utmost respect for elementary school teachers. I could not be paid enough to teach in a classroom with the amount of energy, emotions, and irrationality that comes with an elementary school classroom.

One thing that I have heard numerous times is the term "brain break". A "brain break" is a designated time to allow students to actually relax. To take a break from ingesting information and take some time to digest and process. I have constantly thought about how great a brain break would be in my classroom but the things that I have seen are very geared toward elementary classrooms with  items like go noodle that gets students dancing for example. There is also the time constraint of the high school classroom and the content requirements. This week I finally discovered something that I can quickly use in my classroom that could be a brain break. Google Maps Smarty Pin is my new discovery and I can definitely see how I can incorporate it into my classroom.

So what is this Smarty Pin?

• It is a new trivia game built on Google Maps
• Students will have to answer questions by dropping a pin on the location of the answer.
• Players begin with a bank of 1,000 “miles” and try to see how many questions they can answer before they run out of miles.
• Miles are taken away based on how far away the pin is from the actual answer.

You can check out Google Maps Smarty Pins here

The idea that I have for using this is giving the students five minutes and whoever has the most miles left will get an extra credit point or a prize of some sort.

I also like that there are different categories of the trivia

It is always great to find something that can be used in my classroom from the vast resources that are given to elementary school teachers. I also like the fact that it is giving the students a chance to brush up on their geography as well. 

The following video will give you a quick overview of Smarty Pins:

 I hope you enjoy Smarty Pins and good luck beating my high score of 17