Raising Awareness - One Bucket At A Time!!

Yesterday, I was nominated to do the ice bucket challenge to raise awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Today, I accepted and completed that challenge!!

I had hoped to film at school, but I just couldn't find time during the day with such short notice!  Instead, I am going to be using this social media phenomenon to address the disease and all the good the Ice Bucket challenge has done for the ALSA!!

Tomorrow, I plan on having HALF of my 6th and 7th grade students do a close read of the ALS Disease, and the other HALF of them will be doing a close read of the Ice Bucket Challenge impact on the ALSA!  I have high hopes for great academic discussion and would love to be able to have my students complete the challenge as well (even if I can only share it with my staff and not on social media).

I also showed an amazing video that completely brought this cause and disease to reality with me and my students.  You can read all you want about it, but until you hear someone's story who is actually living with ALS and dealing with it, it doesn't really 'click.'  Here is the video that I found on YouTube.

If you haven't completed the challenge, and are reading this, I CHALLENGE YOU to not only complete the Ice Bucket Challenge, but also to donate at least $10 to the ALSA using this link!!  If you accept my challenge, please post it to facebook/instagram using #MiddleSchoolMadnessALS so that I can see all your videos!!!

What ways are you connecting Social Media and Pop Culture into your classroom?