Monthly Archives: September 2008

“How cute. Like hobos…” (Also: Hank Williams.)

September 17, 2008
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“How cute. Like hobos…” (Also: Hank Williams.)

Wednesday. Vocabulary Pretest. Talk of facades and irony. Both figure large in The Outsiders. More on that later. Today I have more insight from my friendly class. We’re reading chapter 4 (the death of Bob, Dally helping with the getaway, jumping the train out of town), and we get to where Dally is telling Pony and Johnny to “hop the 3:15 freight to Windrixville.” We pause and talk about how it’s only been less than 36 hours (book time) since the beginning. They find it hard to believe until we start to do the timeline. Figure that Pony gets out of the movie in the late afternoon, and gets jumped and saved. Pony and Johnny and Dally go to the Nightly Double the next night, and it’s now 3:15am that same night. Then I make sure they know that a freight is a train. And one girl says, “How cute. Like hobos…” Hobos maybe. Cute? Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do? When the boys run to find Dally at Buck Merrill’s house, Pony offers a brief description of Buck that ends with, “…he was out of it. He dug

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The Hook is Set.

September 16, 2008
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Since yesterday was late start day, classes were 11 minutes shorter, and what with copying the homework into planners and warmup and Academic Words Pretest #1, we ran out of time for Outsiders. Boy Howdy, they were ready today. The three biggest parts of chapter three: 1) Ponyboy blowing up about Darry and dissing Johnny (“…and we all know you ain’t wanted at home…” OUCH. But Two-Bit gives Pony one upside the head for us.) 2) The confrontation with Randy and Bob (Two-Bit’s joke, “Pity the back seat…” goes right by most of them; I usually pause and wait, and then explain) and Cherry telling Pony she’s going to pretend not to know him, which leads to our second important sunset line, “Just remember, some of us watch sunsets too.” 3) The blowup with Darry. There really is silence in the classroom when Darry slaps Pony. The kids are as shocked as Pony. They also laugh when Darry yells, “Pony, I didn’t mean to,” which Darry just got through yelling at Pony for saying. I managed to stop one class at the end of chapter three. “I was wrong.” Oh the begging. HAHAHAHAHA. One of the afternoon classes got into

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CPS RULES!

September 15, 2008
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CPS RULES!

A few years ago I was the lead teacher for an EETT (Enhancing Education Through Technology) grant our site received. Over the course of two years, our site received a truckload of money (like a couple hundred grand) to spend on technology training (from me) and a whole lotta shtuff. Among other things, we bought lcd projectors and computers and wireless slates and some SmartBoards and several sets of CPS “clickers.” The Classroom Performance System consists of software (a tad clunky, but eventually very useful, and getting better), a USB receiver that looks like a flying saucer, and 32 “clickers” that look like remote controls. You make up series of questions (grouped into what they call lessons) with multiple choice answers. Then you project the warm up, quiz, whatever, on your lcd projector, and the kids click the appropriate button on their clickers. You can set a time limit for each question, and it displays (live) who has answered (but not what they answered), and when the time is up, it displays how many kids chose each answer, and optionally, the correct answer. (Beauty for teaching opportunities: “Now, it looks like a lot of you chose B, and that was

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Quizzes for Dummies?

September 12, 2008
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A few years ago, while we were reading Outsiders aloud, I was about to give them my usual “reading check” type quiz to make sure they were following along, thinking about what we’d talked about, connecting the literary terms to the examples in the book, etc. I can’t quite remember what my inspiration was (probably just to throw them for a loop like I like to do), but I decided to let them “cheat.” My quizzes on the books and stories we read are always open book, but this time I told them they could take the quiz, not only open book, but “open mouth.” I told them they could talk about the questions and answers as much as they want in any way they want, and decide however they want to, which of the answers to choose. “You can share what you know…or not. You can decide whether to heed the wisdom of the group…or not. You just can’t lie. You can’t knowingly tell everyone the wrong answer on purpose.” One class that day came up with the name Quiz for Dummies. The rest of the periods thought that was a little “mean,” so we’ve stuck with Open Mouth.

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Which one is the real you?

September 11, 2008
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Well. I guess daily posts might be a little ambitious for me… They’ve been begging to read Outsiders. (All according to plan.) Almost as much as they’re begging to see “Unpack Your Adjectives” again. One kid even said, “That’s why you don’t let us take it home. We’d just read it all in one night. You like to torture us with the suspense.” Very perceptive, that boy. We finished chapter two, and charged into chapter three today. We talked about foreshadowing with Johnny and the knife he now carries (after the flashback to his mugging), and foreshadowing again with, “I know better now,” at the end of chapter two. (See how easy it is to teach those kinds of terms with this book?) Then we get to how Cherry can actually open up to Pony, unlike around her “friends” and how she always has to keep up an image. I stopped there and asked them, “How many of you are a different person around your parents from the one you are around your friends?” Most of them raised their hands. “How many of you are yet a different person around Gramma?” Most hands again. “How many of you are a

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Random Featured Post

Oh Raffle King, Oh Raffle King…

(Sung — way off key, and sort of warbley — to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree.”) I guess we need to talk about the King. On Wednesdays, after we go over the vocabulary homework, and discuss the words, I give them a vocabulary pretest. If they ace it (100%), they are exempt from the vocabulary portion of the Friday test. I used to have one of them flip a coin to decide whether or not I let them use their “cheat sheet” — the homework page we just went over and corrected — on the pretest. What they don’t believe when I tell them — even though it’s true — is that, on average, their scores on the pretest are lower when they use the cheat sheets, and fewer of them get an exemption. But they like to think it’s a security blanket, so I play along. Then I discovered the King. I would give you the URL of his creator’s web site, but he has some other, shall we say, inappropriate shtuff. (You can do a Google search if you really want to check it out.) So I took the liberty of “cloning” the King. If you click [...]

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Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

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Recent Comments

  • mrC commented on It’s Go Time!@Sarah-Most excellent! Keep up the good work, and don't let any of them talk you out of it. Glad to hear your kids recognize the value too. Fight the good fight!
  • Mrs. M~ commented on Illin’Feel better soon! There is nothing worse than being at school and trying to be "on" when you feel like death.
  • Sarah commented on It’s Go Time!I just came across your blog...I am a second year teacher and I am currently reading The Outsiders aloud to my seventh graders. I read it to them last year, too. I catch a lot of criticism for reading it to them...but they LOVE to have me read to them. I actually had a group
  • joan commented on Illin’I'm on day two of out-with-the-crud. I needed the rest. Hope you're in tip top shape by Monday!
  • mrC commented on “The Sub Used One of Your Sticks!”That one oughta be strung up like they used to do to horse thieves.
  • Heather commented on “The Sub Used One of Your Sticks!”The last sub I had left no note at all and broke the arm of my spinny chair by leaning back in it so far that he fell in the floor. The kids all said he was the best sub ever. I politely asked the school secretary to never have him sub in
  • mrC commented on The Future of Space Travel@Heather: Gawd I hate that. I think I even posted about it awhile back. @Kelli: This reminds me of high school. I went to a Jesuit high school (all boys) and for our Friday football rallies, we would import cheerleaders from other schools to be a part of the rally. And the girls would always begin
  • Heather commented on The Future of Space TravelMy eighth graders just have the habit of prefacing every question with, "I have a question." And announcing "I'm done" when they complete an assignment.
  • Kelli commented on The Future of Space TravelIs it bad that I sometimes start my stories with "Okay, so...."...? I guess the kids have rubbed off on me. Sigh.
  • Kelli commented on Blogging the Scoring Session (Part I)Ugh! Been there. I have been to those "Scoring and Rubric" type meetings in two different states now... Not fun, and not entirely informative, either.
  • Meg commented on No Groove Yet (Also: The Giver and No Homework Returns)There was a district I student taught in that hand the no fail policy. I child could not be held back a grade, even if they did absolutely nothing the whole year, until they were in high school. It took most of the middle schoolers about 3 seconds to realize they didn't have
  • Kelli commented on No Groove Yet (Also: The Giver and No Homework Returns)You know, that whole "no-zero" policy goes hand-in-hand with the "no-failure" or "no-retention" policy, and my school district is a definite contributor to this madness. I can understand the desire to stop giving zeros and MAKE the kids do the work (giving countless opportunities until successful), but I have been in a situation where
  • commented on Obligatory Santa VideoWe have an unofficial "no zero" policy. It takes a little extra effort on the teacher's part to get all of the students to complete their assignments but we have made it work. The thing that was most helpful was instituting a "homework detention" that is separate from discipline detention. If a

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