Tips

Mailbag: The Holy Trinity

July 24, 2009
By

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

Read more »

Make the Kids do the Work. (Tips III)

May 11, 2009
By

We’re in the library now, just starting the actual looking-for-sources-this-library-doesn’t-have-anything-on-my-topic-now-the-librarian-has-an-agenda-too-with-a-bunch-of-lessons-and-what?-homework-and-no-you-can’t-search-Google-here-you-can-do-that-at-home-I don’t-know-what-notes-to-take-I-left-all-my-sources-at-home-did-the-librarian-just-have-to-give-one-of-my-”children”-a-timeout?-OMG-I’d-rather-be-teaching-than-this-whole-”coaching” process. Well. I think you get the idea; it’s a little draining. So I’m going with another installment of the (not so) regular feature, Tips for New Middle School Teachers. (Here’s round 1, and here’s round 2; wow, it’s been since November since I ran this “feature”?) 1. Vocabulary is EVERYTHING. I tell the kids all the time, “If you don’t know the words, you can’t think the thoughts.” We do a vocabulary list every week, that comes from whatever we are reading at the time, but we also have a lot of vocabulary in disguise. Academic words, spelling and roots, slang and dialect. Grammar. It’s all about the vocabulary. They can’t write if they don’t know the words. They can’t understand what they’re reading if they don’t know the words. They can’t do the job (any job) if they don’t know the words.  The comma fanatics and don’t-begin-a-sentence-with-a-coordinating-conjunction people can take a hike, so to speak. It’s all about the vocabulary. 2. Make the kids do the work. I swear, next to the phrase, “as lazy as the day is long,” my second most used comment at Open

Read more »

Mailbag I: The Paper Load

December 21, 2008
By

My seventh grade web site has been up since 1997, and I have received quite a few e-mails over the years. Many people have questions. I try to answer all the questions (and I really appreciate the kind words), but I’m sometime sort of lame about returning e-mails (I don’t answer the phone much either – and I will never own a cell phone).  Since many of the questions are about the same things, I sort of kept writing the same e-mail over and over. Now I have this blog thing. I can answer the most common questions for everyone, all at once. 1. “How do you keep up with everything?  It seems like you have a lot of activities and writing that has to be graded (outside of the CPS stuff) that would start to be overwhelming” Ummm. That depends on what you mean by “keep up.” I am often laggy about returning work. However, I can buy time as it were, as I lag on grading, by pulling examples from each class, making overheads, and grading them live in front of the kids. We use the rubric for that assignment (always use a rubric, and always give it

Read more »

Sage in the Chair (CPS still rules.)

November 20, 2008
By
Sage in the Chair (CPS still rules.)

A while back, someone (a non-teacher) asked me what my teaching style was. Hmmm. Instructive sarcasm? Peer pressure and public humiliation? Random reinforcement and punishment? Entertainment and containment? Sink or swim? I say jump, you say how high? Teachers know what sage on the stage and guide on the side mean, but those aren’t really me either. All I could come up with on the spot was, “I ask a lot of questions.” I guess these days, it’s something like a high-tech, testing oriented, version of the Socratic method. I pretest by asking a bunch of questions. Then we go over the answers, right and wrong, and discuss why the wrong ones are wrong, and why some of them might have been chosen. Then I explain the correct answers and we practice. Then I ask them more questions to see if they’re getting it. We explain the corrects and incorrects again, and so on. I mean, obviously you gotta spice it up with discussions and videos and quickwrites and mental floss and other activities (remember, almost any variation from the norm is manna to seventh graders), and there are an awful lot of asides and much explaining, but that’s my

Read more »

Mix It Up (but not too much).

November 10, 2008
By

No school today. Or tomorrow. A 4-day weekend for Veterans’ Day? Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Weekends mean sleeping in; 9 am instead of 5, and I’ll take two extra days of that any time. It’s a good time for another (irregular) installment of tips for middle school teachers. (Here’s a link to the first round.) 1. “Say/Do That Again…and again, and again, and…again.” Most everybody has to be told something several times before it becomes “rooted.” (Especially teachers. No offense, but as the tech support guy, and the BTSA guy, and having given many an “in-service,” I have learned that teachers, as a rule, listen about as well as middle-schoolers. I have the e-mails to prove it.) I’ve heard the number seven bandied about; as in you have to see/hear/etc. something seven times before it takes. Anyway, ms’ers need a lot of repetition, but…it works a lot better if they see it, hear it, do it, do it again, in several different ways: Start with some warm up questions to see how much they know, then a “lesson” (I’ll have a post sometime on my dislike for that word), then practice, then homework, then more practice, then a

Read more »

Random Featured Post

Twits

I just read a webnews headline that read: “Twitter is the New CNN.” Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket? If Mr. Coward were to “tweet” his way through a typical day period (which is about as likely as, oh let’s see, Hell freezing over is too cliche, how about…Bill Gates going broke.) 8:21- the homies r screaming since vp said hand over your heart 4 the pledge – oh the pain! I left the door open: some poor late kid in the hall looks alarmed 8:22- I gotta put a switch on the speaker: more drivel from some underprepared kid talking 2 close 2 the mic…sounds like the bus station back in the day 8:26- blue slip. since it doesn’t say NOW, I set it next 2 the Popple…probly forget it later 8:30- finally!! “share” time is over and we can start – don’t remind me that I told Vero she could share first tomorrow about something she will have forgotten by then if we’re lucky 8:32- checking vocab hw, 1/4 not holding…”why is my grade so low?” it ain’t rocket science people 8:38- correcting warm up…let one of them try to write on the shmartboard …you [...]

more -->


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

Archives

May 2012
M T W T F S S
« Apr    
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031  

Recent Comments

Links

Privacy Policy

Tags

cartoons Charlotte Doyle Class Activities clickers CPS CTEL Flashback grammar high school idiosyncrasies irony Mailbag Me mechanics middle school teaching Monsters on Maple Street Moodle online learning oral reading Outsiders CHapter 5 Outsiders Chapter 7 RaffleKing Ray Bradbury Reading Richard Cory Seventh Grade Behavior Stories of Seventh Grade substituting Teaching Teaching Tips teaching with technology teaching with technology teaching writing Technology techology testing The Earth Men The Giver The Midwife's Apprentice The Outsiders Tips Tips for teachers Tom Sawyer Wiki Writing