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