Moodle

Snow?

November 30, 2009
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I’m not dead yet. It’s just been a bit busy ’round these parts lately. And I’ve been sleeping in for five days, so I’m still a little dopey. Even most of the kids were quiet today; they looked sort of tattered. “Where’s all the left-over pie I asked for?” “Everybody in my family went eeewww when I asked about rhubarb pie.” (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?) “I see how it is. I’ll settle for pecan.” On the last day before vacation we finally had time to finish the video of “The Monsters are due on Maple Street.” 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, “No dice.” In every class, the kids yelled at the screen (a la Rocky Horror), “Cheese Slice!” “We went to my grampa’s for Thanksgiving,

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Still Here Blogging… (Wiki Wiki)

January 23, 2009
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It’s been a weird week. We had Monday off for MLK. I was on call for jury duty on Tuesday, so I had a sub (sorry, they’re called guest teachers @ Laguna). To make it easy, I had the guest teacher administer the “District Benchmark Exam Part II,” the results of which I’m not sure what to do with. Mostly our English department has been ignoring them, saying the tests don’t really test what they claim to. Also, everyone covers the various standards at various times throughout the year – I don’t do a research paper until the spring, so we haven’t talked much about citing sources – so the idea of testing standards a-g in the beginning of the year, and standards h-m during the middle part, and so forth, just doesn’t work very well. Plus, why do I need to waste three class periods from my precious allotment giving yet another test? Anyway, I had the guest teacher give them the test, and I’ll figure out what to do with the results later. Then we were in the computer lab on Wednesday, to work on the Tom Sawyer Moodle. This is the main reason I’ve been lagging on

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TomWikiSawyerPedia

January 12, 2009
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TomWikiSawyerPedia

A lot of the kids have been having trouble getting through the early chapters of Tom Sawyer. Mostly it’s the vocabulary, though for some it’s the fact that they don’t bother to read it. Once we go over the reading in class, or I explain as we read aloud, they get it, and they like it. Today in class, we’re reading chapter 6 which begins with Tom trying to get out of school by pretending to be sick. “How many of you have ever faked sick to try to get out of school?” Almost every hand goes up. “Nothing changes in 170 years, does it?” They like Mark Twain’s sarcastic sense of humor, and how the goody-goody Sid is obviously a fool in Mark Twain’s eyes too. And they love the pranks. But it’s still tough, especially for the first six or eight chapters. Every year I struggle with how to get them to read it, and get them to get it. This year I’m trying an experiment. Our county office of schools hosts a Moodle server, and I use it a lot in my class. I have a whole Langston Hughes project we do online that includes quizzes and

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Moodle Time.

October 18, 2008
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I usually spend about 8-10 days each year in the computer lab. First, I like to do at least one on-line type project. Most years lately, it’s usually the Langston Hughes WebTrack (through TrackStar, a beauty service I should probably talk about later). And until last year, I usually also got in wikis or a web page of some sort. (Aside/Tip: Web pages and wikis (a type of reader-editable web page) are great ways to get kids to expand and revise their writing. By making them start with a 600 word word essay, and then requiring 5 links of at least 100 words each, I am getting them to add 500 words to their essays, and they hardly notice that they’re now writing over 1000 words. Many do more than 5 link pages. As long as they can also add pictures and graphics, you won’t hear many complaints. More on this later too.) Secondly, I usually try to STAR test their reading at least three times a year. That takes the slowest ones at least 25 minutes or more, not counting log-in issues: “You forgot your password again? You misspelled your name. Your CapsLock key is on. Not your student

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Random Featured Post

Three-Word Phrases

Seventh graders “communicate” mostly in three-word phrases. If the phrase isn’t really only three words long, they can usually pare it down. “What’d I miss?” It sounds like  “Wuddeyemiss.” And it always comes right as you’re starting class. Raise your hand if you have had this happen in the past week. Past three days? Today? AAAAAARGH.  They want 54 stellar, well-planned and executed minutes of instruction summarized for them in 30 seconds as the class bustles in.  What did you miss? “Absolutely nothing. You might as well take the rest of the year off. CHECK THE WEB PAGE! COME BACK AT BREAK!” “Oh yeah. I forgot.” LOL (These days, they’re getting it down to three-letter phrases.) “What’s my grade?” This one is usually from the kid whose grade is in the bottom 15% , and s/he finally turned something in, and wants immediate gratification. And it always happens right in the middle of something else, something totally unrelated.  Yesterday we were talking about how Charlotte is finally seeing Captain Jaggery for what he really is. (Aside: If you haven’t read The True Adventures of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, I highly recommend it. I picked it up a few years ago [...]

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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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