Memes aren’t just for sharing on Facebook! Students love memes too! I knew that I wanted to incorporate memes into my classroom this year but I just had to figure out the best time to do it. I knew memes would be a hit with my students so I decided to use them right at the beginning of the year.
I had students make memes to go with one of our classroom rules. They made a great display for our meet the teacher night.
I wanted students to analyze memes but on the most popular meme generator websites there are so many inappropriate memes so I needed a different option. I found this website with a Google Drawings template. It’s a great alternative to just setting kids free on the net to find memes.
So we reviewed many memes that I prescreened to ensure they were student friendly and then created an anchor chart about what makes a good meme. This was incorporating some of our media literacy standards as well.
Our chart included:
- Memes are funny
- Memes are short
- Memes usually have text at the top and bottom
- The font is usually all in uppercase block letters
- Lettering is usually white
- They usually make fun of human or animal behavior
Since I didn’t want students creating memes on any of the meme generator websites, I had them use google slides to create their own. I shared a document with them that included many of the typical meme images and they were able to copy the image the wanted and paste it into their own document. Then they just added a text box over top. I also allowed them to search for specific images.
Here are some sample memes that my students came up with:
There are so many other ways that you could incorporate memes into the classroom. Here are just a few ideas:
- Create a meme as a response to a read aloud or book the student is reading.
- Memes to represent how they are feeling about a subject or concept
- Make memes to convey a message about a science or math concept they are learning about
- Create memes about lunch room rules
- To represent safety rules on the gym
- Use memes to teach media literacy
Do you have any more ways to incorporate memes into your teaching? Share in the comments!
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Totally doing this next week. Love it!
I love this post! Thanks for sharing:)