10 Reasons You Should Be Teaching With Kid President Videos

Do you teach with Kid President videos? If not, you should! As a primary teacher, here’s what I’ve discovered: Opportunities for teaching language, writing, and literacy standards abound! Plus, the possibilities for using them to build community, foster friendships, and promoting kindness are endless!

If you’re not already teaching with these inspiring, and often times hilarious, kid centered videos, these 10 reasons will surely convince you that you should, because these little gems are teaching gold!

Reason 1: Kid President Plays With Language. A Lot.

Teaching figurative language can be tricky for primary students. These videos are filled with examples of idioms, and literal/nonliteral language. One way to capitalize on those teachable moments, is to make this fun guide to figuring out figurative language for students to identify statements with non literal language, then draw and explain the literal vs. non literal meanings. You can use these with any KP video.

Reason 2: Teaching Theme, Purpose and Central Message- It’s Right There

We teach our students to identify the theme, purpose, and central message of a text, but it’s also important for our 21st century learners to be able to determine the theme, purpose, and central message of digital information and media such as videos.  Students need to be able to respond to text and write about what they are reading. They also need to be able to respond to what they are seeing and watching. With Kid President videos, the message, theme, and purpose is right there. Easily identifiable by elementary students,  these messages are also discernible by even by our youngest learners.

I have my class respond to the videos through discussion and in writing.  We use these differentiated video response sheets.  During our discussion, I ask my class, “What is the big idea or lesson that Kid President wants us to learn from this video?” and “What message is he trying to convey?”  “What is the purpose of this video?” “Is Kid President trying to inform, entertain or persuade us?”

Link to Resource

Some of the common themes of Kid President videos include:

• Kindness
• Courage
• Overcoming Obstacles
• Fostering Friendship
• Collaboration
• Hope
• Global Citizenship
• Empowerment

Reason 3: Kid President is Highly Quotable

Almost everything Kid President says make a great quote and an even better poster. This makes for some great lessons on writing dialogue and using quotation marks correctly.

We used this anchor chart to practice using quotation marks correctly and to identify a quote as “the words a person says”. And as one of my friends said, “Kid President says a lot of words.”

After watching Kid President Gives the World A Pep Talk, have your students do the same by using quotation marks and writing what they would say to give the world a pep talk.

We made this Kid President craft and added our written pep talks before displaying them in our hallway.

During our literacy centers we practiced further with this quotation marks game.

We used small pieces of pipe cleaner as commas and quotation marks.

 

Reason 4: Kids Like to Learn From Other Kids

There’s nothing more fun to kids than seeing other kids get to do cool stuff.  You know, like dressing up like the president and making your own videos. That’s pretty high on the cool scale. Kids relate to other kids. They listen to other kids, even when we wish they wouldn’t. One of the things I ask my students as we discuss the video we just watched is, “What would you say or do if you were Kid President?”

Reason 5: Kid President Empowers Kids

One of my favorite Kid President quotes is, “If at first you don’t succeed, you’re normal!”. It’s a welcome one as we teach our students about perseverance and growth mindset. The message in Kid President’s Guide to Being Awesome, and Kid President’s History of Awesome Girls is that kids have a voice and they can change the world. His videos inspire and remind kids that this is their world so get out there and DO something! And of course, to “Be Awesome!”.

I use this Kid President sound button I found at Hallmark as a class motivator. Students get to push the button and be told how awesome they are after meeting goals they’ve set for themselves. It has several different Kid President quotes and my class loves it!

Reason 6: Kid President Encourages Collaboration

In many of the videos Kid Presidents talks about working together and problem solving through collaboration.  This is an important skill for our students to learn. Like any skill, hearing it, applying it, and seeing it in action helps our students to integrate and remember it.

Reason 7: Kids Learn About Social Skills

Kid President videos model important social skills too, like manners, respect, gratitude and thoughtfulness. I like to use the video 20 Things We Should Say More Often to support the teaching of social skills and encourage my kids to “Be awesome!”.

A fun idea to do with the 20 Things… video is to make class charts of Things We Should Say More Often At School and Things We Would Like To Hear More Often At School.

Acknowledge awesome in your students and school staff by passing out these kindness notes.

Reason 8: He’s A Positive Role Model and a Kid of Character

Kid President videos lend themselves so well to teaching students to infer character traits based on what the character, Kid President, says and does.

Start with a discussion about a character trait being a word or phrase that describes a person on the inside rather than on the outside or how they look.

Give students sticky notes to write words or phrases that describe the character of Kid President. On another sticky have them write what he says or does that supports their description.

Follow up the discussion and anchor chart activity with this student page where students identify character traits then give an example to support it.

Reason 9: Kid President Videos Promote Kindness & Foster Friendships

Friends are a huge part of every child’s life no matter what their grade. One of the things we teach and reinforce in our students is how to be a good friend.  Teaching students how to be kind, inclusive, and how to settle differences is part of every teacher’s day. Teaching children how to make friends is important, too.

Kid President’s Guide to Making A New Friend is a good video to use for teaching kids some things they can do to make new friends. This funny corn dog craft makes my kids laugh and is fun to give to new friends, classmates, reading buddies or school staff.

Reason 10: Because They’re Just Plain Fun!

Last but not least, teaching with Kid President videos is just plain fun! My kids get a huge kick out of all the silly antics, sound effects, and the sometimes randomness, in all of the videos. Why not make a day of it?

Have a Kid President Day or if you don’t have a day, throw a party!  Here’s some easy ideas to get you started:

• Have everybody dress like Kid President or make these red ties.
• Serve cupcakes and corn dogs!
• Watch Kid President videos and have FUN doing the video companion activities!
• Read books about Presidents and use the Kid President book marks
• Make the corn dog craft
• Have a dance party like Kid President
• Acknowledge awesome and write notes telling staff how amazing they are!

Download these FREE Kid President book marks to pass out at your party because you just can’t be sad when you’re holding a cupcake!

I think you’ll agree there are a lot of great reasons to teach with Kid President videos! You can find the all of these activities in my Kid President Video Companion that can be used with ANY Kid President video. It includes 7 standards-based lessons with lesson plans plus everything you need to make the class anchor charts, printables, crafts, and bulletin board displays.

 

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Happy teaching!

~Linda