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Friday, August 17, 2012

GR8 PL8


It’s about time, teachers, for some creativity!  Here’s a fun project that is sure to get your students’ creative juices flowing.

Challenge your students’ creativity with vanity license plates.  Vanity plates are car license plates that convey a personalized message using just 8 letters and/or numbers.  Many vanity plates have cryptic messages that symbolize something important to the owner.  The message may tell something about the person’s:

appearance --   

personality --

accomplishment --
occupation -- 
or philosophy --

Present several examples, asking your students to deduce the meaning.  This will get your class into the right frame of mind for creating vanity plates. Then challenge them to design 2 vanity plates. 

The first license plate should describe someone or something well known.  For example:

  • A famous person like Abe Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, or Christopher Columbus
  • An occupation such as cook, artist, or computer programmer
  • A fictional character like Cinderella, Superman, or the 7 dwarves
  • A fictional place such as Never-Never Land or the Land of Oz
  • A well-known site such as Mount Rushmore or the Eiffel Tower
  • An historic event like the 1st moon landing or the Civil War

The second license plate should describe something unique to the student.  It may be a personality trait, a favorite activity, a goal, an accomplishment, or a message s/he wishes to express. 

Encourage your students to think of several ideas before selecting the license plates that suit them best.  Fluency of ideas often leads to increased creativity.  Distribute 2 templates to your students and encourage them to use upper case letters.  Numbers can be used for words (1 for ONE or WON, 8 for EIGHT or ATE).  Alternate or incomplete spellings are absolutely acceptable (CS for SEES or SEAS, or EZ DUZ IT).  

Display the vanity plates on a bulletin board in the hall.  Then prepare for traffic jams as spectators gather to decipher the messages.  






You can download all the materials for this project for FREE at my TpT Store or TN Shop
 Enjoy!





2 comments:

  1. I have an iPhone app that is about to be released that helps solve vanity plates. Just thought some of you would be interested. More info @ bustedcart.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's totally my pleasure. Gotta love those linkies!

    ReplyDelete