Depending on when you started the
academic year the 100th day of
school should be coming up any day now. To mark this milestone, we present
100 ideas, some for individual subject areas and others for a whole class or
school to do together.
General
Ideas
1. List 100 things you’ve learned this year, whether
academic or personal.
2. Create a timeline of your life that lists 100 events,
beginning with your earliest memories.
3. Make and illustrate a list of 100
things you would like to accomplish in your
lifetime.
4. What 100 places would you
like to visit before you die?
5. Make predictions about what life will be like 100
years from now. Be specific!
6. Make yourself a 100-day to-do list. And stick to it!
9. Come up with a 100-day challenge
for yourself, doing the activity of your choice for 100 consecutive days. You
might read for an hour each day, pursue a religious or spiritual practice, exercise,
write in a journal, etc. Noah Scalin’s 365
project might inspire you: This blog features artists who have
committed to doing everything from drawing a bird image to photographing a gnome to writing a haiku to decorating fingernails every day for 365 days.
10. Or, take a 100-hour challenge in
which you don’t do something, whether it means going without Facebook, caffeine, television or gossip.
11. The You’re the Boss blog post “How to Make 100 Enemies Lists” tells about the
100 enemies someone made while opening a new restaurant. Write a personal “100
people” list (though, of course, we don’t recommend “enemies”). Maybe … 100
people who have inspired or taught you, 100 people you’d like to
meet or 100 people you remember from your past?
12. Celebrate a historical figure,
artist, writer or athlete you admire who was born at least 100 years ago. Come
up with a project to honor him or her.
13. List 100 ways to spend or donate $100.
History,
Civics and Social Studies
14. Make a list of 100 key events in history that you have learned about
or would like to learn about.
15. Bury a time capsule filled with relevant items from
today, along with a letter addressed to people in 2111 telling what life was
like in 2011.
16. Make a list of who you think are the most 100 influential people.
17. Consider what life was like in a
historical era, like during the first 100 days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term.
How is life different now? Sketch a mock slide show of 100 images that could be
featured on NYTimes.com or in a museum to capture contemporary life, politics,
technology and culture.
18. Watch this video about the 100th anniversary of the
Ford Model T. Then sketch a car or other vehicle that might exist 100 years
from now and that would share the Model T’s popularity, practicality and
relative affordability.
19. Research the history of a local
building, park, neighborhood or other place that is 100 years old or more, like
New York’s Penn Station.
20. Can you correctly label 100
countries, states, cities, seas, rivers, mountain ranges or other features on a
map of the world or of your own continent, region or country?
21. Use a map to find locations that are exactly 100
miles north, east, south and west of where you live. Learn about each place and
write a blurb about it that could be featured in a guidebook.
22.How much do you buy? Make a list
of everything you spend money on until you get to 100 items. How can you go on
a “shopping diet”.
English
Language Arts and Foreign Language
23. Check out the list of 100 Notable Books from 2010 to see how many you
have read. Choose titles that interest you and perhaps consult other “top 100”
book lists like this or this or this to construct a 100-book reading list for
yourself.
24. Create a list of 100 books you have already read, perhaps in order of
preference. Or take a poll of your class’s or school’s students to create a
list of “100 Great Books” to choose from to form book clubs.
25. List and track 100 new vocabulary words you’ve learned or would like to
learn. Not my idea, but loved it!
26. Take a poll of 100 people on a
grammar, punctuation or spelling challenge or question they have, then take the
most common and create a student handbook or game that features common errors and questions and
gives answers.
27. Find 100 lively, interesting or
vivid descriptions and collect them in a writer’s notebook.
28. Write a short story set 100 days, weeks, months or years
in the future.
29. Write a short story or poem of exactly 100 words.
30. Write a 100-word review of something you watched — whether a
football or hockey game, a television show, a concert or a movie.
31. List 100 words you know in a foreign language, along with the English
translations.
32. Count to 100 in a foreign language.
33. List 100 idioms someone new to the English language might
be confused by.
34. Host a 100-page “read-aloud” of a book you choose as a group.
Invite different readers from all over the school community, and have each read
a page. English classes can be invited to come listen and participate.
35. Write a list of the 100 most beautiful (or the 100 ugliest) words you can
think of. Illustrate them or challenge -yourself to write a story or poem using
as many as you can.
Journalism
36. As a class or school activity,
plan and create 100 mini-articles, news briefs, photos, interviews and/or short
videos about goings-on at your school or in your community this school year.
Consider presenting them as a blog.
37. Interview people whose combined experience with,
say, teaching or playing soccer or writing poetry equals 100 years. Focus your
questions on the shared experience, so you can call your written piece “100
Years of … ”
38. Look at the most recent 100
posts on TimesWire
at different points in the day or over the course of a week, comparing the
number and subjects of posts that appear at different times. Are there any
patterns? If so, what do they suggest about the nature of news and about The
Times?
39. Play a matching game with 100
Times headlines and articles, using these instructions and multiple copies of this sheet.
Math (All from the NY Times)
40. Search The Times to find
interesting percentage-based statistics. (Percent means “per
hundred,” after all.) Create an infographic with your most interesting
findings.
41. Convert the percentages in United States Census data to present facts about Americans by
showing how many people out of 100 have specific levels of education, income
and so on.
42. Pick a company that has been
mentioned in The Times’s business coverage several times in the past 100 days and get
its stock prices over that time period. Make a graph that shows the changes in
price over the 100 days. Research the price changes, then add short explanatory
notes to the graph.
43.. Solve the Puzzle of 100 Hats.
44. Plan a weekend for visitors to
your hometown in which they see important attractions. The catch? They can spend only $100, including food and
accommodations.
45. Do a Times
search on the number 100 or multiples of 100 (like 100,000 or
100,000,000, etc.). What does the variety tell you? How would you help younger
students make sense of the differences in magnitude in these numbers, using
examples from the newspaper?
46. from then until the present,
marking the years in increments of 100.
47. Learn about the Nasdaq 100 Index.
48. Look at President Obama’s 2011
proposed budget in this chart. If the total budget represents a sum
of 49, how many parts of that 100 go to each area listed by name (national
defense, health, education, etc.)? Consider how you would assign those 100
parts if you were in charge of the federal budget. Draw a new chart that
clearly shows how the 100 parts add up.
50. Compare the cost of basic
grocery items in 1911 with today’s prices.
51. Calculate the cost of 100 items, like 100 cans of soda,
pedigreed puppies, economy cars, sports cars, European vacations, boxes of
crayons, brooms, movie tickets or pillows, and create an infographic that shows
the differences.
Science,
Health and Technology (all from the New York Times)
52. Make a list of 100 endangered species and choose one to research.
Find 99 students to join you and create a school gallery of images and
information together.
53. Create a list of 100 inventions that changed the world. Which do
you think should be No. 1? Why?
54. With your classmates, create a
list of 100 ways to “go green” at home, at school and in your
community. Each class member might then commit to one or more of the ideas and
chronicle his or her efforts.
55. Brainstorm 100 questions you and
your classmates have about science topics, whether about the natural world, our
bodies and minds, or the cosmos. Adopt a question to research, or pose one to a
scientist in the field.
56. Read 100 installments of the Q. and A. or Really? columns in Science Times, or posts on the
Well blog.
Give a talk on what you learned about science or health.
57. Check out the Secrets of the Centenarians, then ask older
people you know about what they think helps people live to an old age.
58. Try the locavore diet, eating only food that was produced
within 100 miles of your home, for at least 100 days.
59. Make a list of 100 foods
or recipes you’d like to try.
60. Learn about the 100 fastest supercomputers in the world.
61. Prepare an afternoon snack that has only 100 calories. If everyone in
your class does this, you can then have a tasting event in class, with cards
that detail each snack’s recipe and nutritional value.
62. Set a class challenge for
students to bring in 100 items from the natural world for observation.
63. If you’ve never experimented with Twitter, try it. Though a
tweet’s limit is 140 characters, many recommend writing shorter Twitter
messages so that there’s room for “retweeting” (the practice of rebroadcasting
someone else’s message). Experiment with 100-character posts that pass on
something interesting or useful to others, or that tell what you’ve learned or ask a question.
Arts
64. Make a collage of 100 faces or
other images
65. Create wearable art with 100 of
a single item, like paper clips, old socks, dried pasta, beads, candy, Legos or rubber duckies.
66. Look at the photo of the 100 chairs in the 100 days project. Come up with a “100 in 100
Days” project of your own.
67. What are the 100 best movies of the past decade?
68. If you could design a 100-acre
park, what features would it have? Sketch it on a big sheet of butcher paper.
69. Collaborate with others on a top
100 list of best paintings.
70. According to music critics, what
are the 100 greatest albums and bands in history? Listen
to five unfamiliar acts or albums on these lists. Are you a new fan?
71. Find your top 100 favorite
fashion photographs
Physical
Education and Sports
73. Revisit Usain Bolt’s world record in the 100-meter sprint
in the 2008 Olympics. Then go to the track and run 100 meters.
74. Learn about the Bighorn Trail 100, a 100-mile race in the
mountains of northeastern Wyoming. Then organize a 100-something run/walk in
your area — 100 blocks, a run that passes 100 park benches, etc.
75. List the top 100 athletes in the
game of your choice since the time you started following sports.
Or go for the top 100 of the past 100 years. I recommend Hockey!
76. Read about baseball players who
have played 100 games (or more) in a season in their position. What
athletic records in a sport you’re interested in can be measured in 100s?
Community
Service and Schoolwide Projects
77. Collect 100 school-supply items
like pencils or glue sticks for communal use at your school.
78. Collect $1 each from 100
students, then vote on a creative way to use that money to help an individual
or group.
79. Hold a collection drive that has
a “100” theme, in which people donate 100 (or multiples thereof) canned goods,
coats, pairs of shoes, children’s books and so on. Find a food bank or other charity to give the goods to.
80. Host a learn-a-thon in which
people spend a combined total of 100 hours teaching others to do something such
as cooking, drawing, singing, knitting, playing a
sport, and so on. As a Saturday event, each teacher could have a “station” that
learners circulate through.
81. Host an event in which 100
people tell important stories from their lives, in a
manageable configuration, like 10 groups of 10 people who each tell a story
while the others listen. Here are some ideas to get the stories flowing.
82. Organize a “100 Percent Off Sale” in which people donate
items to be taken or traded by others in order to re-use things rather than buy
them new.
83. Start a schoolwide campaign to
get students to commit to reading 100 pages, doing 100 practice problems or
learning the names and capitals of 100 countries over the course of a week.
84. Hold a puzzle tournament using
The Times’s crosswords (or our Student Crosswords) or games like Sudoku or SET. The time limit? 100 minutes, of course.
85. Contribute 100 total hours of community service to a worthy local project. When
you reach 100 hours, write a journal entry or letter to the organization with
whom you volunteer, expressing what the experience has taught you.
86. Have each member of your class
write down a list of community service-related jobs they’ve done in
the last year with an estimate of the hours they’ve spent. How quickly can
everyone’s work together add up to 100?
87. Have a 100-lap or -meter race or
relay to raise money for a charity.
88. Organize a cleanup day in a park or other community area in
which volunteers are challenged to fill 100 garbage bags with trash.
What ideas do you have for a 100th
Day celebration?
Ideas are a mix from the New York Times and few of our own that we had and wanted to add to each category. Hope you enjoy!
Comments