Memes are fun. And entertaining. And creative!
Really!
Memes are a great form of digital media that you and your students can use to relay a message, state an opinion, motivate and encourage, or make someone laugh.
They can be a great way to process information and relay your understanding (or questioning) about a topic.
In fact, one of the assignments in the SEAL Teacher Training course is to create a meme in order to relay your current situation and to process some of the SEAL strategies to use.
Here’s a meme one SEAL Teacher created:
Speaks the truth, doesn’t it?
Here’s a funny meme one SEAL Teacher created as she reflected on her young students’ abilities to make responsible decisions:
Ugh. (and gross) I feel her pain!
And here are a couple of memes created as SEAL Teachers started to realize the power SEAL has in their teaching and student learning:
You should try it yourself!
Or even more fun, allow your students to give it a try. Here are some quick ideas and tips to get you started and thinking:
- Do it digitally using a meme generator. Be sure to check the site out yourself first. 😉 Here’s a meme generator you can use: https://memegenerator.net/create (You can also do a quick Google search to find other meme generators.)
- Choose a handful of meme images, download them into a Google Doc or slideshow and have your students choose from those.
- Do it on paper! Simply print out some meme images and have students add a caption underneath or write on top of the image.
- Cut out images from a magazine and have students choose one that they could use to express an idea or give motivation to others.
- Focus on a few images of people’s facial expressions to really work on self and social-awareness. Taking people’s expressions highly into consideration will focus students in on their emotions.
- Have a number of students create different memes from the same image. Discuss the similarities and differences in the final products.
- Choose a topic or focus for students before they start to create. For example, have them put the character in the meme image in a certain situation.
Go ahead! Try one now. Here’s a collage of a few good meme images. What caption would you put on each?
Fun isn’t it?
Creating memes is a great way to extend the idea of positive self-talk that we looked at a couple of weeks ago or motivational posters from just last week. Memes put another fun spin on the idea of sending a good message out to others!
~EMP
