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	<title>Teaching The Outsiders (and more) &#187; Monsters on Maple Street</title>
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	<description>Middle school teaching: Five shows a day, 180 days a year.</description>
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		<title>Pssssst. Act!</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/pssssst-act/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/pssssst-act/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Nov 2010 04:35:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Monsters on Maple Street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reading Aloud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seventh Grade Behavior]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=2269</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We  almost finished The Monsters are Due on Maple Street today. Obviously, since it&#8217;s in teleplay form, we have had people reading parts. I get to read the longer stage directions and be Rod Serling, all deep and gravelly. (You wouldn&#8217;t believe how many people have told me my voice sounds like David Frost. I figure that&#8217;s close enough.) And I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t have to tell you guys how the whole reading parts thing goes.  But I will anyway. 1. As soon as I say, &#8220;It&#8217;s a pla&#8211;&#8221; the hands go up volunteering for parts they can&#8217;t handle. 2. There&#8217;s always a bunch of boys who want to volunteer for the women&#8217;s parts. Then they they can&#8217;t cope if they have to call another character &#8220;Honey,&#8221; or they try to talk in a high voice, and end up giggling and stumbling so much I have to relieve them of their duties. 3. Girls do fine with men&#8217;s parts. 4. There are never enough good readers to go around. And most of them are girls. 5. When I say, &#8220;I need a good reader for this one, because he has a lot of lines, and is important to the story,&#8221; [...]]]></description>
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		<title>&#8220;We&#8217;re all weird!&#8221; (Again.)</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/were-all-weird-again/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/were-all-weird-again/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Nov 2010 05:01:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[8th grade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Flowers for Algernon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Monsters on Maple Street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rerun]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=2261</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Eighth Grade: Finished with Nothing But the Truth. Pretty much all of them liked it. I do only have one class of eighth graders, but for my first time through this book with students, I&#8217;m pretty stoked with the response. I&#8217;ve talked to some former students whom I thought would have liked the book, and they gave it the thumbs down.  I think it validates my &#8220;it&#8217;s all in the delivery&#8221; theory.  Just like reading The Outsiders aloud. Final projects came in today, so we&#8217;ll see whether that translates into a good final product. We&#8217;re reading &#8220;Flowers for Algernon&#8221; now. Man, I love that story. I still remember reading it in a sci-fi anthology back in the day, and going, &#8220;Whoa.&#8221; We&#8217;re about a third of the way through. Charlie just saw through his &#8220;friends&#8221; at the factory after they got him drunk for the second time. The kids are all suitably outraged (&#8220;I want to punch those guys in the face!&#8221;) and saddened (&#8220;How mean!&#8221;). But &#8220;______&#8217;s a card when he&#8217;s potted!&#8221; might become a thing in this class. (Go read the story again.) We took Rorschach tests and made up stories for a couple of plates from the [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Snow?</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/snow/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/snow/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:49:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Monsters on Maple Street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Moodle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Snow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Giver]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=1582</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m not dead yet. It&#8217;s just been a bit busy &#8217;round these parts lately. And I&#8217;ve been sleeping in for five days, so I&#8217;m still a little dopey. Even most of the kids were quiet today; they looked sort of tattered. &#8220;Where&#8217;s all the left-over pie I asked for?&#8221; &#8220;Everybody in my family went eeewww when I asked about rhubarb pie.&#8221; (Almost none of the kids knew what I was talking about last week when I asked for rhubarb pie. Did you know that rhubarb leaves are poisonous?) &#8220;I see how it is. I&#8217;ll settle for pecan.&#8221; On the last day before vacation we finally had time to finish the video of &#8220;The Monsters are due on Maple Street.&#8221; They really like the groovy old cars (Steve has a brand new 1960 Ford station wagon) and the old-school ice-cream man. They also crack up that somebody besides me says, no dice. When Les Goodman first tries to start his car, and Woman 1 asks him if he had any luck getting it started, and he yells, &#8220;No dice.&#8221; In every class, the kids yelled at the screen (a la Rocky Horror), &#8220;Cheese Slice!&#8221; &#8220;We went to my grampa&#8217;s for Thanksgiving, [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Only 35% New Shtuff (But it&#8217;s Gold.)</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/only-35-new-shtuff-but-its-gold/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/only-35-new-shtuff-but-its-gold/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:58:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Beowulf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guest artist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Monsters on Maple Street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Other activities]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=1514</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8230;I&#8217;ve been a little laggy about posting (again) because I&#8217;ve been revamping my school&#8217;s website. Check it out: http://lams.slcusd.org. &#8230;While I was checking out the sites for other schools in the district, I happened across a feature that Charlie Perryess, one of the English teachers at our sister middle school (about 1/2 of our 730-something students), has on his site. I think I may have to steal it. He only updates his site every three weeks (!?) so he gives a rundown of the activities and such for that time. At the end he has a section he calls, &#8220;Questions parents might ask their wonderful,yet not terribly forthcoming kids.&#8221; That&#8217;s the 8th grade version. The 7th grade version is, &#8220;Questions parents might ask to get a little more of an answer than &#8216;everything&#8217;s fine.&#8217;&#8221; (This guy also has to teach home economics and drama! The curse of diminishing enrollment.) The questions are beauty. Designed to check to see if the homework is done, in a non-confrontational, encouraging way.  My wife is sooo good at talking to our son this way. I have a little more trouble with the proper&#8230;tone.  Example: 1. Which character from Beowulf have you chosen to make [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Ewww. (Moral Relativism in 7th grade.)</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/ewww-moral-relativism-in-7th-grade/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/ewww-moral-relativism-in-7th-grade/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:47:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Emily Dickinson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Monsters on Maple Street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Romeo and Juliet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ray Bradbury]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Earth Men]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=1067</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Poem #435 by that strange duck (really) Emily Dickinson is a pretty good intro for Bradbury&#8217;s &#8220;The Earth Men.&#8221;  And the idea that the majority decides who&#8217;s normal and who&#8217;s not (and everything else) really gets some of the kids angry. Seventh graders are strange ducks as well. They like to think of themselves as unique (If I ask, &#8220;How many of you are weird?&#8221; every hand will go up), but their biggest fear is not fitting in. And they all like think of themselves as  rugged individualists. &#8220;The majority doesn&#8217;t decide EVERYTHING!&#8221; &#8220;Like what do they not decide?&#8221; Lots of hemming and hawing. &#8220;Coolness? Weirdness? Lameness? What?&#8221; More hemming and hawing. &#8220;How about things like murder and child abuse and racism?&#8221; &#8220;Racism is an easy one. Even in the time Tom Sawyer is set, you would hear sermons in churches about how slavery was God&#8217;s will. But, hmmm. You might be right about the murder one; some things are probably built into us. I don&#8217;t know. Maybe it&#8217;s just that the majority of us think that now. Hmmm. But&#8230;well, let&#8217;s talk about Romeo and Juliet again (we talked about it before when we had soliloquy as a vocabulary word [...]]]></description>
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