As the countdown to the end of the school year begins, we know it can sometimes be a challenge to keep students engaged and excited about learning.

Have no fear, GelWriter gel pens are here! Arts-based lessons and activities help students stay focused and enjoy learning, and are a great way to integrate art across the curriculum.

Here are some easy and fun ways to use GelWriters in your elementary, middle, or high school classroom this spring—think of this as our way of saying thank you for all the hard work you do!

1. Word Detectives (Elementary)

This fun activity adapted from Exciting Writing is guaranteed to get your students excited about learning the parts of speech!

• Make copies of any fun or silly piece of writing (comics work great!)
• Place students in groups of three, and give each student a different color of GelWriter gel pens.
• One student in each group should be the “Noun Noticer.” She’ll be in charge of underlining nouns in the copy using her gel pen.
• A second student in each group will be the “Adjective Detective.” He’ll underline all of the adjectives he can find using his gel pen.
• The third student in each group gets to be the “Verb Vole.” She’ll underline all of the verbs she finds with her gel pen.

This activity builds communication and teamwork skills, and at the end each student group will have a colorful representation of basic sentence structure. You can continue with pronouns, adverbs, etc. to adapt to your lesson plan. Neon, Glitter, and Metallic GelWriters will keep your students engaged and excited while they’re learning!

2. Zentangle (Middle School)

Zentangle is a method of creating beautiful structured patterns through simple line drawings. It’s a popular stress-relief practice for adults, but it also makes a great classroom activity!

Use Zentangle in your classroom to help students increase focus and concentration, improve memory and patterning skills, build fine motor skills, and promote creativity and relaxation. This simple art form can be used on its own or integrated easily into a math lesson—geometry, anyone? Check out this article on why teachers are incorporating Zentangle into their lesson plans, and find new ideas and inspiration on Imagination Soup.

With 70 unique colors designed to write on colored paper, GelWriter gel pens are the perfect way for kids and teens to let their creativity shine in your classroom!

3. Art and Math (High School)

Tie an arts lesson into your high-school STEM curriculum with a great activity from Tech for Teachers. Students will create colorful parabolic curves using nothing but GelWriters, a piece of paper, and algebra—the perfect union of math and art! For a lesson your students will be sure to enjoy (and remember!), try this activity using Neon GelWriters on dark paper.

We hope this gives you a little bit of inspiration to end the school year on a colorful note! And we know there are many more creative ideas from all of the wonderful teachers out there—how do you use art to engage students  in your classroom? Let us know on the  ECR4Kids GelWriter Facebook page, we’d love to hear from you!