Monthly Archives: July 2009

Big Hat

July 28, 2009
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Big Hat

(more shameless self-promotion) During the summer, one has more time for hobbies and such. I’m not much of a traveler (except for Vegas); in the summer I usually do a lot of what they used to call, puttering around. I like to carve tiki heads out of palm fronds (sweet revenge for the puncture incident), build outdoor versions of games like Pachinko and Shoot the Moon, record songs, and make videos. Mostly I’ve been making sk8 videos these days, but this one is a music video for one of my songs. Those couple of regulars out there might remember that I also have a penchant for doodling. Hope you like it.

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Mailbag: The Holy Trinity

July 24, 2009
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Sr. Enda (my seventh grade teacher) would be appalled that I used the title phrase outside the context of the  Catholic Church. But in my seventh grade language arts classroom, my Holy Trinity consists of Father Vocabulary, Son KBAR (reading/writing), and the Holy Spirit of grammar/mechanics. (My ninth grade English teacher referred to the last as the Great Grammarian in the Sky.) Okay that’s a bit of a metaphor stretch, as I squeeze 5 things into 3, but I think you get the idea. A language arts curriculum can seem like it has a million things in it, and the task of trying to integrate them all so they somehow fit together seems daunting. And it’s not like we English teachers have a rigid sequence of skills/concepts that have to be taught in a certain order. I mean we do, sort of, but there’s a lot of overlap and repetition, and it’s not like  in math, where (the math teachers insist) you have to learn x before you can learn y and so on. In fact, most English teachers bridle under any outside attempt to sequence their curriculum. But this freedom can be a bit intimidating: What goes first? What

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CKD

July 22, 2009
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Yesterday morning I woke up to the following message written on the bathroom mirror: “Crush, kill, destroy – in his sleep.” Now let’s all date ourselves, and try to remember where we have heard the phrase “crush, kill, destroy” before. No cheating by Googling (or Binging – but that sounds loud). I’ll give you a minute. My wife says she wrote that on the mirror to make sure she remembered what I said when I was talking in my sleep. I have known since I was a kid, that though I don’t dream very often, when I do I usually talk about it in my sleep. Three younger brothers will let you know right quick. Anyway, all I remember dreaming about was a reenactment of my CTEL testing experience, with the lady asking me what was in my clear container (green tea). “Beer. I thought I might need a cold one while I was testing.” I remember the guy next to me laughing, and the lady making a funny look and setting my bottle on the back counter, but I don’t remember saying, “Crush, kill, destroy.” I hope this isn’t a sign; the results of the test are released Sunday

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Something New.

July 20, 2009
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(Pssst. It’s still summer. I still have 5 weeks until school starts again. So it’s not really considered lagging when I go so long between posts; you know, because of summer and whatnot. You really should check out Refugio Beach.) My regular readers (I think there are a few of you) know that I’m a big fan of wikis. If you’re not a regular reader, or if you need a refresher, check out the Tom Sawyer wiki we had going this year. It allowed the kids to collaborate on chapter summaries, and add related information or extra explanations. Wiki entries grew from a sentence or two from one contributor to hundreds of words written and edited by a dozen kids each. It worked out beautifully, without a lot of management from me. Here’s how it ended up. However, the downside (especially in a computer lab type setting where 20-30 kids are all doing trying to do the same thing at the same time) is that with a wiki, only one person can be editing the wiki at a time; everyone else is locked out. I wanted to try some real-time peer editing and writing collaboration, but the wiki format wouldn’t

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“Well at first, I was like…”

July 5, 2009
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“Well at first, I was like…”

I think I’m going to have a new -ism this fall. Usually, when the kids make outrageous suggestions (“You should give us all A’s on that test, it was so hard”), or come up with hare-brained ideas (“Let’s try letting us sit wherever we want”), I respond with something like, “Then you woke up.” The first time I use it on one of them, it usually takes a couple of minutes (and a couple of quicker ones helping) for him/her to get it. It’s also my private reference to their favored literary device (on the very rare occasion I let them write fiction): the dream. Their favorite “twist” ending is, “Then he woke up.” But now, I have a more visual way of indicating my opinion of their suggestions. I found this today, and I can’t stop chuckling. We have a poster-sized printer at school, and I think I’m going to make a couple of new posters for my classroom. My wife and boy, who like to tease me about being a bit crabby, say we should retake the pic, with my grumpy face. “How do I feel about that suggestion?” I can hear them already. “They’re the same picture.”

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Random Featured Post

“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? [Audio clip: view full post to listen] 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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Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

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