class size

Details, Details

August 25, 2011
By

I think I figured out why I hate Twitter. I like the details. One hundred forty something characters ain’t enough to give the details. I want the details, baby. The details: First Day Scream As I “tweeted” yesterday, I had forgotten to explain to my new homies… (Aside: Our first period is ten minutes longer than the others, and that extra ten minutes is referred to as Home Base. The name is left over from when it used to be a separate class that was thirty minutes long and was supposed to foster that “connection” that is so important in the “middle school model.” Oh yeah, and we were supposed to teach citizenship and coping skills and whatnot. Now it’s when we listen to the bulletin poorly read, collect magazine sales, and-in my class anyway–watch nutty videos. But I never could bring myself to call it Home Base; it sounds so…so…geeky. The old school meaning of geeky, not the tech-savvy version. So I have always referred to it as Homie Base, and my first period crew as my homies.) …why it has been a thing with all my homies over the past few years to scream when we are asked

Read more »

Wish I had at least one this year…

June 9, 2010
By

No, I’m not dead yet. Though they are slowly killing me this year. I haven’t posted much lately because: 1. The kids turned in their research papers last week. I have turn-in timed every year, so that if I read about 12 per day, I finish the day before the last day. This year it’s going a bit more slowly; I think due to the dearth of original topics. It’s been like this…Global Warming, Global Warming, Titanic, Titanic, Global Warming, Holocaust, Titanic, Titanic, Titanic, Global Warming, Ufo’s, Global Warming. Repeat. I was stoked when I got “The Impact of Herbicides in the Vietnam War” and “How Realistic are Shows Like CSI?” 2. My TV died, and I’ve been trying to fix it. I don’t miss the programming so much; it’s summer, which means mostly reruns, and there’s always Hulu. But I am sorely missing my Wii Pinball Hall of Fame (Williams Edition). When I’m in Vegas in two weeks, my boy and I are going to spend a whole day at the Pinball Hall of Fame. 152 machines! Anyway, it’s a big 60 something inch monster that I think I can fix for a few bucks. Wish me luck. 3.

Read more »

Politeness Girl

December 18, 2008
By

One of my classes has only 20 students. That’s right on the verge of being too small for me. I had a class one year that, through attrition and other issues, was down to 12 by February. Not a beautiful thing. One: without enough voices and ideas, discussions are very hard to get going. Instead of eliciting ideas, I have to provide too many. Two: when there are that few, they seem to get the idea that class is like some family dinner, where they can just jabber out and “share” and not bother to raise hands and such. They drive me batty. That same year I had 12, I also had a class of 34. That class was nearly silent, and the Gang of 12 required the Quiet Stick almost daily. The upside is the greatly reduced paper load. This is nothing to sneeze at, but I like 20-25 in a class better. As I have said before, I don’t usually have a favorite class (although, now and then there is a least favorite). Most years, most classes have their own “endearing” qualities. I usually have a nickname for each period, although I never tell them their own nickname,

Read more »

Random Featured Post

You Gotta Have a Shtick (or a stick).

One of the things I like to say about teaching junior high is down at the bottom of this page in the footer. You’re too lazy to scroll, aren’t you? Fine. “Five shows a day, 180 days a year.” And there aren’t many crowds tougher than 7th graders. “This is boring.” The worst of all sins. Most of us who teach junior high have a shtick. A role we play, some isms we like to use again and again. Idiosyncrasies we play up for entertainment/attention value (oh the sharing I get when we talk about that word idiosyncrasy during “Monsters are Due on Maple Street“). The key is to make the shtick such a natural part of the classroom routine, that it doesn’t distract too much. Well, sometimes we need the distraction. There’s the Raffle King. There’s the Timer. There are the clickers. The Cage. Mental Floss. Nutty videos. MYOB. All of these are stalwart features of my classroom shtick. And as of a few years ago, there’s also the Quiet Stick. (four or five years ago – me visiting another teacher’s classroom before school) “Leenie! What the shiggy are you doing? Where’d you get this, and WHY ARE YOU [...]

more -->


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

Archives

May 2012
M T W T F S S
« Apr    
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031  

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