Monthly Archives: February 2010

Scrape that Mucus Off Your Brain. (Also: Now I’m the Straight Man.)

February 27, 2010
By
Scrape that Mucus Off Your Brain. (Also: Now I’m the Straight Man.)

Science “lesson” today. It’s Friday, so that means the weekly test, the suspense over whether they will score the 28/40 necessary to avoid the dreaded SSI (when the results were displayed today, one girl who made the cut did about as much dancing as one could do while still remaining seated), and best of all, mental floss. Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain — Ween Every Friday before the test, we scrape the mucous off our brains by mental flossing with some trick questions, math tricks, logic puzzles, Wacky Wordies, and etc. They’re all extra credit, and guessing is encouraged. Some are tricks, and some ain’t, but if it looks like a trick, it probably is. Today ‘s set saw the return of  another here’s-an-example-of-why-it’s-so-hard-to-learn-to-spell-in-English: What’s so unusual about this sentence? (Be specific.) A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed. (Hint: Read it out loud.) Since I know how most (of my) seventh graders seems to have math issues, I also used one of my old looks-like-math-but-really-isn’t questions. I don’t tell them it isn’t a math question until

Read more »

SBD…

February 23, 2010
By

Just a shortdog, because it’s getting late. Best line heard today: The class that’s right before lunch has sort of gotten used to being let out about 30 seconds early, so I can get a jump on the lunchline. Not that I stand in line with the kids, but if the line starts getting long, I don’t want to get in the lunch ladies’ way. The ladies are used to me dropping in, spinning the keypad the kids use to enter their account number, entering my number (of course I have an account – I’ve been eating in the cafeteria for almost 17 years), and getting out of the way. This class gets a bonus, just because they’re next to lunch… (Although that can work against them if they get a little too frisky. It also means there’s no next class to make them late to. There have been times when I’ve made them sit there while I go get my lunch and come back  - lucky for them my room is one of the closest to the cafeteria – before I let them go. Sometimes I even start in on eating before I “release the hounds…”) Anyway, today that class

Read more »

Workshop?

February 19, 2010
By

Sometimes when you’re milking a joke for more laughs, it’s easy to, well, go a bit further than you intended… I think this one might haunt me for awhile. The CPS clickers have a feature where if a question has, for example, only two choices (as in a T/F question), and the kid clicks a choice beyond A or B, the screen shows a red X for that kid, indicating that (s)he has clicked something that is not one of the choices. Now remember, seventh graders are the epitome of the expression, “monkey see, monkey do.” Once one of them starts “red x’ing,”  more than half the class is at it. (Attention EInstruction: make it a feature that every time, after the first couple, a kid gets the red X, it makes the answer incorrect. Maybe even have some sort of thing where it takes a point away for every red X?) For some of them it’s their “thing,” so once they’re done, the screen is a sea of flashing red X’s. (There are also kids, who when they’re finished early, have races to see who can click from one to the end more quickly.) Over the course of time,

Read more »

Everybody’s Special Now. (EInstruction Rules!)

February 18, 2010
By

I’ve had my clickers for three years, and I use them almost every day, and they’re starting to show their age. This year’s crowd also seems to be dropping them a whole lot more (“Ten cents!“), and I still haven’t replaced any of the batteries, so I guess it’s sort of a miracle they’re working at all. With the constant dropping, the batteries have been shaking loose more often, and that means I have to hear the plaintive, “My cliiiiiiicker doesn’t wooooooooork.” “Sounds like operator error to me. Bring it here…” And I have to use my little jeweler’s screwdriver to take off the battery cover, and adjust the batteries back into place. Over the past few months, the threads have been stripping on some of the battery covers, making the battery problem worse, and thus there have been more clicker “issues” and more whining. So I called EInstruction and asked if they could just send me some battery covers and screws. I could have my servants service all the injured clickers, and we’d be back in business for minimal cost. The service rep put me on hold for a few minutes. When she returned, she tells me that those

Read more »

Detention. Also: Alternative Careers III.

February 17, 2010
By

Joe B, one of my recent 120 Seconds presentation examples, has been feeling a bit sporty these days. I have him on what we call, “Perma-Detention.” “You keep coming in at break until I tell you to stop. And that won’t be any time soon, at the rate you’re going…looks like until AT LEAST the end of the year.” “So, I have 88 more days of detention?” (That was the number of school days left at that point.) “Well, I might be out a day or two, and I don’t like to stick the subs with yahoos like you. They have enough to deal with in class, let alone riding herd onyou at break… So you might… Of course, I guess I could just roll those days over to next year, and you could start eighth grade having detention with your old pal Mr. Coward.” (It’s happened before. They think I’ll forget. I just have my student servant type up the list of names that are left on the board with time to serve, and send it as an e-mail to myself, or just tape it to my computer monitor. During the first week of school, I talk to their

Read more »

Random Featured Post

Three-Word Phrases

Seventh graders “communicate” mostly in three-word phrases. If the phrase isn’t really only three words long, they can usually pare it down. “What’d I miss?” It sounds like  “Wuddeyemiss.” And it always comes right as you’re starting class. Raise your hand if you have had this happen in the past week. Past three days? Today? AAAAAARGH.  They want 54 stellar, well-planned and executed minutes of instruction summarized for them in 30 seconds as the class bustles in.  What did you miss? “Absolutely nothing. You might as well take the rest of the year off. CHECK THE WEB PAGE! COME BACK AT BREAK!” “Oh yeah. I forgot.” LOL (These days, they’re getting it down to three-letter phrases.) “What’s my grade?” This one is usually from the kid whose grade is in the bottom 15% , and s/he finally turned something in, and wants immediate gratification. And it always happens right in the middle of something else, something totally unrelated.  Yesterday we were talking about how Charlotte is finally seeing Captain Jaggery for what he really is. (Aside: If you haven’t read The True Adventures of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, I highly recommend it. I picked it up a few years ago [...]

more -->


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

Archives

February 2010
M T W T F S S
« Jan   Mar »
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728

Recent Comments

Links

Privacy Policy

Tags

cartoons Charlotte Doyle Class Activities clickers CPS CTEL Flashback grammar high school idiosyncrasies irony Mailbag Me mechanics middle school teaching Monsters on Maple Street Moodle online learning oral reading Outsiders CHapter 5 Outsiders Chapter 7 RaffleKing Ray Bradbury Reading Richard Cory Seventh Grade Behavior Stories of Seventh Grade substituting Teaching Teaching Tips teaching with technology teaching with technology teaching writing Technology techology testing The Earth Men The Giver The Midwife's Apprentice The Outsiders Tips Tips for teachers Tom Sawyer Wiki Writing