Connecting the Dots: Bring Real-Life Events into Class

Critical thinking and information literacy are two very important 21st century skills that students should be equipped with to face the new world. What they learn in class should be relevant and applicable directly in real life.

Here we will show you examples of lessons using Deck.Toys that inject actual events to everyday learning while making it fun and engaging for the students!

Lesson 1: The Ship That Got Stuck (Maths & Geography)

Ever Given, one of the biggest container ships in the world measuring 400 m and weighing 200,000 tonnes was stuck at the Suez Canal from March 23. An estimated 12 percent of world trade passes through this strategic canal.The cost of the jam is estimated to be USD9.6 billion per day!

This real-life event is ripe with all types of mathematical questions to solve, ranging from the dimensions of the ship, to the rate of sand removal required from dredging operations, to the angles of where the ship has been awkwardly positioned in the narrow canal! 

A teacher can easily derive questions that are relevant to their students’ grade level. Use the study set in Deck.Toys to key in these problems and make them into mini-games like Lines, Maze, Choices and Memory. Your students would be happily playing these games without even realizing they are learning!

Another fun way to make these real-life events more interesting for your students is by role-playing. In this example, we placed the students as Mathematicians and Geography Experts who need to solve important questions in order to bring the ship back afloat. This ties in the entire experience and makes for a very memorable lesson!

Here’s the deck link for you to try out and modify for your own lesson plans: https://deck.toys/a/Xk__h3fyj

Lesson 2: The Life of Malala Yousafzai (English and Social Studies)

Inspire your students with a real life child heroine – Malala Yousafzai. She is the youngest Nobel Prize laureate and co-author of several books including one being used in many English Language Arts classes – “I am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban”. 

This lesson infuses her life history of a child activist, the dark day when she was shot, to where she is today – an Oxford University Graduate. The beauty of this lesson is that it is designed as an escape room, so students have to get keys to unlock certain activities before they can pass through. This increases the challenge versus simply reading a text on Malala’s life, and would certainly engage the students more! If you let them work in teams to break out of this deck, this will also enhance their collaborative skills – yet another important 21st century skill!

Here’s the deck link which you can use immediately for your ELA classes: https://deck.toys/a/mJnMDv9p5

Lesson 3: Women History Month (Social Studies)

Women’s History Month is celebrated every March annually. This is a lovely yet poignant deck that walks through the lives of 6 important women that have influenced the way we live today, using study set games to make the questions more engaging for students. A true or false game was also made using ‘Sort Me’ – fun and easy to set up!

The deck background video was done with PowerPoint animation, which gives students a sense of entering an old film when they see the deck. It creates the aura of history and wonder even before they embark on the lesson. Click here to learn how to create such wonderful background videos for your lessons to immerse your students with! 

Here’s the Women’s History Month deck link which you can also make a copy and modify for free: https://deck.toys/a/XyD2dzrTc

Be Inspired by Other Teachers

If you need more ideas to jazz up your lessons, we recommend browsing through the Deck Gallery to find thousands of pre-made decks, ranging from simple lessons to more elaborate escape rooms created by our users globally. It is free for all teachers who signed up for Deck.Toys. You can make a copy and edit the deck for your own lesson as well.

You could also join thousands of other teachers in our Facebook community to share lesson creation ideas for your students: https://www.facebook.com/groups/decktoys

Let us know if you have any ideas to make your language teaching amazing as well. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram!

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