My eighth graders and I started Avi’s Nothing But the Truth today. (Aside: I’m really going to be getting into this for a while, so you might as well go read the book, if you haven’t already. It’ll only take you an hour or two.) And this morning, I thought of a last minute mutation for my “Facebooking” it real time experiment. The notebooks were going to be awkward for sharing, which is sort of the whole idea, so I was trying to think of an alternative that didn’t involve our IST department. Then I thought of an old web article I read about teaching kids about webpages and hypertext without using a computer. It involved putting an essay on the bulletin board (written rather larger than life), and then underlining the words that would be “links” and then running a string or whatever from each of those underlined words to another short piece of writing that explicated/expanded on the link word. And then those could be connected (literally) to other such pieces of writing or pictures or other materials. It was a very groovy way to illustrate the power of hypertext. (That’s what the ht in http stands for.) Since my
Read more »
How did it get to be the 23rd? Jeeze Louise, I have been out to lunch lately… Well they say that the longer you teach a particular grade level, they more you become like the students. I already had a head start on that before I started teaching 7th graders. Have I already said that 7th graders are some of the most conservative people on the planet? Well, I’m going to say it again. Seventh graders are some of the most conservative people on the planet. By conservative, I mean resistant to change. I know I have said that middle schoolers crave routine, even as they claim they don’t. Well, this quality has been on full display for the past couple of days, because I borrowed a set of another, more high-tech version of CPS clickers, and we’ve been test-driving them. Watching the kids’ reactions has been just as much fun as playing with the new clickers. They (the new clickers) look quite different from the ones we’ve been using. The first kid through the door stops at the clicker bag and does a classic cartoon double-take. “I like the old ones better. These are too big.” (me) “No, they’re
Read more »
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.
Read more »
Random Featured Post
First off: Ok, Ok. I’m starting to find my happy place with research. Thank you for the comments and suggestions; I think next year will be better. You guys gave me some good ideas. We’re working on outlines this week, prepping for research. Among other activities, I give them partially completed outlines and word banks to fill them in with. I strategically place a few clues in the outline, and they have to determine the hierarchy of the various entries I provide, and fill in the blanks. Like this (the stats are kinda dated, but it’s a topic near to my heart): Topic: The automobile has become the American Nightmare kills 265,000 and injures millions annually, road rage and reckless driving have increased, better city design to decrease auto dependence, leading source of air pollution, alternatives to the automobile, main means of transportation, too many people dependent on the car, large SUV’s: rollovers and danger to smaller cars, more cars and more roads mean more traffic congestion, average car: 5 tons of carbon dioxide each year, contributes to acid rain and smog, leading cause of death and injury, new dangers with 2 recent developments, public transportation I. Main means of [...]
more -->
