Supplementary Materials

Soundz!

March 12, 2010
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In the previous post, I touted the beauty of The Timer and havoc one might wreak with it upon the psyches of sensitive seventh graders. This is just a quick update to that. The link at the end of this post will take you to a directory with my stash of timer sounds. You can go find your own on the net — look for .wav files — but here are some to get you started. Tips: Change the sounds at random intervals. (Read the Read Me file for how to. It’s easy.) Surreptitiously crank up the volume after the start sound, so that the alarm sound has maximum impact (sometimes literally). Try to be talking just before the time runs out, so that they are distracted when it does. Then casually finish your sentence after they scream. Say, “I never get tired of that,” after they fall out of their desks. (at the start) Say, “The clock’s running; your mouth shouldn’t be.” Say, “Excuse me, must be that breakfast burrito,” after the raspberry sound. After time expires, but before you reset, if you click go you get the start and alarm sounds back-to-back. Kinda fun if you choose your

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The Timer Redux

March 10, 2010
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The Timer Redux

This one isn’t exactly a rerun per se…let’s call it more of a rewrite… This year’s crew has been a bit more, shall we say, trying, than any in recent memory. They’re nice enough for seventh graders and all, but they are really frying my bacon this year. So I have to get my kicks where I can…to sort of…take the edge off. I devoted a short post to THE TIMER (AKA: THE CLOCK) way back when this whole blog thang started in ’08, but lately The Timer has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance, so I thought I’d share the wealth again. Several years ago I started noticing that the incoming seventh graders were very used to getting as much time as they needed to finish warm ups and quizzes and such. The idea of a timed test or quiz was completely alien to them. I couldn’t cope. At the time, I was using a Gateway Destination setup with a 32″ inch monitor and some fine speakers, so I went searching for a little countdown clock I could put in the corner of the screen to start training these kids to work with/against the clock. “How much time

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Scrape that Mucus Off Your Brain. (Also: Now I’m the Straight Man.)

February 27, 2010
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Scrape that Mucus Off Your Brain. (Also: Now I’m the Straight Man.)

Science “lesson” today. It’s Friday, so that means the weekly test, the suspense over whether they will score the 28/40 necessary to avoid the dreaded SSI (when the results were displayed today, one girl who made the cut did about as much dancing as one could do while still remaining seated), and best of all, mental floss. Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain — Ween Every Friday before the test, we scrape the mucous off our brains by mental flossing with some trick questions, math tricks, logic puzzles, Wacky Wordies, and etc. They’re all extra credit, and guessing is encouraged. Some are tricks, and some ain’t, but if it looks like a trick, it probably is. Today ‘s set saw the return of  another here’s-an-example-of-why-it’s-so-hard-to-learn-to-spell-in-English: What’s so unusual about this sentence? (Be specific.) A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed. (Hint: Read it out loud.) Since I know how most (of my) seventh graders seems to have math issues, I also used one of my old looks-like-math-but-really-isn’t questions. I don’t tell them it isn’t a math question until

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More New Shtuff

August 25, 2008
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Tomorrow’s a “teacher work day.” The kids start Tuesday. I have actually been trying to get into the groove a little earlier this year… I revamped my class expectations sheet(.pdf) this year. I had sort of gotten into a rut each year of basically changing the year (or maybe a cosmetic change or two) and that’s about it.  I decided there was too much fluff.  I added a more complete list of novels, I rewrote the intro section and highlighted some of the technology we use, I included the late work policy (finally! duh!), and I added the KBAR FAQ. Speaking of FAQ’s. I added some to my web page this year. I finally got tired of answering the same questions over and over (hmmm you’d think I would learn faster than my seventh graders), especially the ones about late work and extra credit. (The pickle recipe is the best ever!) Anyway, I will emphasize these pages at Back to School Night, and with any luck, answer fewer questions this year.

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New Stuff Since Last Year

August 24, 2008
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I have a few new things to lay on the kids this year when we read The Outsiders. I found a groovy audio file that demonstrates the use of the word dig as a slang term. It comes from an old vinyl record called How to Speak Hip, and although it came out in 1959 (about 8 years before The Outsiders is set), it is still a very groovy way to show the kids how versatile and expressive the word dig is to Pony and the rest. The Meaning of the Word “Dig” So now I’m going to combine this with the poem “Motto” by Langston Hughes (that I already use as one of the intro pieces for The Outsiders), and then I’ll be busting a new let’s-see-how-they-write-at-the-beginning-of-the-year assignment on them. Go here for that. I also added a few new outside links to the Outsiders page. One is to the primetime TV lineup for 1967, another goes to the top music of the time, and another gives some good pop culture and technology references.

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Random Featured Post

Quizzes for Dummies?

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. [...]

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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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