Guess The Grad

Generation Texas Week is coming up as soon as we return from Thanksgiving break, so I've been working on an interactive college-and-career-readiness activity for our future graduates. I asked our faculty and staff for their college information so I could make and post these signs that'll supply the necessary information for our Guess The Grad game. Here's the one I made for my office door. Since our goal is to prepare our students so that we can safely send them off to college or out into the work force, I used these adorable stamp templates from Really Good Stuff!

Then I created this bulletin board. It's got guiding questions like: How many of our teachers attended Texas A & M? What is the mascot for Western Illinois U? The Fighting Okra is the mascot for which University? How many of our teachers went to college in Ohio? Illinois? Where would I find McNeese State University? How many teachers are Baylor Bears? Which teachers got their degrees in Journalism? Which teachers earned their degree in Music? How many teachers have a degree from UT-Austin? Which school's mascot is Bucky Badger? Who is the teacher who got her degree in Maritime Studies? We will encourage teachers to take their classes on a field trip around the school to find the answers to these questions and then come up with some other inquiries on their own.

I cut out the mascot (or logo) from each teacher's college/university and glued it onto a push pin so I could display it on this map. It's got a cool 3-D look.

You can see that the majority of our staff stayed in state for school.

This first-grade class graphed the in-state schools to get some data.

I hope that this college-awareness activity will be as much fun for our future college kids to figure out as it was for me to create. Additionally, we've asked teachers to talk with their students about where they went to college and how they selected their degree plan. Here students tallied where the colleges that we've earned degrees from are located!

We also suggested having students research schools, possibly visiting with college siblings via SKYPE, watching a college marching band perform, making pennants, decorating their classroom doors, or interviewing their parents or neighbors. On Friday of that week, we'll all wear our college colors.