Monthly Archives: February 2010

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

February 27, 2010
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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

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SBD…

February 23, 2010
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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

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Workshop?

February 19, 2010
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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,

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Everybody’s Special Now. (EInstruction Rules!)

February 18, 2010
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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

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Detention. Also: Alternative Careers III.

February 17, 2010
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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

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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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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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