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Classroom Mailbag

April 26, 2010
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Rather than replying to comments over there, I figure I can pad my post stats (this one is #201 btw) by answering questions over here. Yes, I am very lucky to have such a large room. It is a beautiful thing. Well, maybe not beautiful. About ten years ago our campus was remodeled and expanded, and for a whole school year most of us were in portable classrooms in the parking lot. (Aside) That was the year I had three students who each weighed 300+ pounds. In the same class. The portables were up on jacks, and the floors weren’t exactly rock-solid. Each of those boys created a wave that rippled across the room as he walked. I had to put them in separate corners so I wouldn’t crater the floor, and one kid had to sit sideways in his desk until I got him a little table. I guess it only looked little. One of them was actually Mrs. G’s (of nut-smelling fame) boy. When construction was almost over, our principal at the time went around to everybody with a map of the campus, asking which room they would prefer. This was during the “teaming” fad, so teams were

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Mailbag: Vocabulary and Grammar

August 5, 2009
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Mailbag: Vocabulary and Grammar

(Continuing a previous post, answering questions from a new teacher. The first question was about the KBAR independent reading program. Click here if you’re interested in that one.) Question: Pedagogically speaking, when do you teach grammar? Or is it something that simply presents itself at an opportune time? I was thinking of something like Grammar Wednesdays or something at the very beginning of the year, but I’m not sure what that would actually entail quite yet. “Something that simply presents itself at an opportune time?” As Nelson Muntz of Simpsons fame would say, “Haw Haw.” You do get a lot of what they call, “teachable moments” in middle school, but not many of them involve grammar. Do your best to connect to whatever else you’re doing (“Ponyboy is narrating in first person, so his PRONOUNS…”), but you also have to make it part of the routine. One of the few things I actually use that came with our anthology is the book of grammar worksheets. I write my own warm ups and pretests and quizzes and such for grammar, but the worksheets (we call them pink sheets because my student assistant a few years ago decided that “all grammar sheets

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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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Mailbag: Hovercraft? What hovercraft? (Also, Dr. Seuss)

January 27, 2009
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Yesterday I received an e-mail that took me awhile to cipher. Dear Mr. Coward, Recently I have been thinking about making a hovercraft and wanted to be able to propel it in directions unlike the ones I’ve seen on the Internet. Those ones can’t propel in certain directions, but yours I saw was able to. However, the instructions were not as self-explanatory as you may have thought it was. I wanted to build what was on the site and modify it to make my own hovercraft. Please reply to me with this email address and help me understand certain parts of your instructions. Thank you. After more than 11 years on the net, my various websites contain well over 30,000 pages. I’ve had many, many e-mails over the years, asking all sorts of questions. But this one was a first. Hovercraft? Directions? When did I teach hovercraft building? Or is this some new sort of Spam e-mail looking for gullible hovercraft fans? What page was she looking at? Was this meant for another Mr. Coward? An hour or so of mulling (as well as some furious clicking) brought me to the answer. Through the wondrous power of Google, this budding hovercraft

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A Typical Day – Part One (Mailbag IIa)

December 23, 2008
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A Typical Day – Part One (Mailbag IIa)

Another question I get a lot is: “What does a typical period in your class look like?” As all we teachers know, there is no such thing as a typical day. However, as I have said many times, middle-schoolers crave routine, so there IS a certain groove to my class. Mondays are for going over the homework for the week, and taking/going over the spelling or academic word pretest for the week (I alternate those each week). Wednesdays are always vocabulary days, and Fridays are for Mental Floss and the weekly test. And then within each class period there is also usually a routine. Rather than writing about that routine, since we’re on vacation now, and I’m feeling sporty, I’m going to show not tell, in cartoon style.  Well, doodle style anyway. That might take a little longer, but for you it’s worth it. Here’s the first panel. I’ll be finished with the rest soon. I drew it with one of my wireless slates, like I use in the classroom.

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Random Featured Post

“There’s already something on the back of mine.” (Also: Racial Harmony.)

It was our first day back in the classroom after 8 days in the library. We were all glad to be back. “Oh, my clicker…how I’ve missed you.” One of them actually said that. OMG. What a day. Full of action, and laugh after laugh. First there was the video. YouTube is blocked in our district. Our head of IST keeps bleating about CIPA and how YouTube doesn’t filter, and…anyway, we can’t use YouTube. But finally, they created a workaround for us. We have to do things from home rather than from school, but it works OK. We find the YouTube video we want to use, and copy the URL. Then we go to the district’s “safe video portal” and paste it in. Then we can approve our own video, and use the safe portal to show it at school. It’s a bit clunky, but it works fine. Yesterday I added a video. I hadn’t even showed it yet, when I got an e-mail from my principal. I have only added a couple of videos before, but both of them were of the nutty variety, rather than the “educational” sort.  One of them is near the top of the most [...]

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

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