Writing

Something New.

July 20, 2009
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(Pssst. It’s still summer. I still have 5 weeks until school starts again. So it’s not really considered lagging when I go so long between posts; you know, because of summer and whatnot. You really should check out Refugio Beach.) My regular readers (I think there are a few of you) know that I’m a big fan of wikis. If you’re not a regular reader, or if you need a refresher, check out the Tom Sawyer wiki we had going this year. It allowed the kids to collaborate on chapter summaries, and add related information or extra explanations. Wiki entries grew from a sentence or two from one contributor to hundreds of words written and edited by a dozen kids each. It worked out beautifully, without a lot of management from me. Here’s how it ended up. However, the downside (especially in a computer lab type setting where 20-30 kids are all doing trying to do the same thing at the same time) is that with a wiki, only one person can be editing the wiki at a time; everyone else is locked out. I wanted to try some real-time peer editing and writing collaboration, but the wiki format wouldn’t

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“Well at first, I was like…”

July 5, 2009
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“Well at first, I was like…”

I think I’m going to have a new -ism this fall. Usually, when the kids make outrageous suggestions (“You should give us all A’s on that test, it was so hard”), or come up with hare-brained ideas (“Let’s try letting us sit wherever we want”), I respond with something like, “Then you woke up.” The first time I use it on one of them, it usually takes a couple of minutes (and a couple of quicker ones helping) for him/her to get it. It’s also my private reference to their favored literary device (on the very rare occasion I let them write fiction): the dream. Their favorite “twist” ending is, “Then he woke up.” But now, I have a more visual way of indicating my opinion of their suggestions. I found this today, and I can’t stop chuckling. We have a poster-sized printer at school, and I think I’m going to make a couple of new posters for my classroom. My wife and boy, who like to tease me about being a bit crabby, say we should retake the pic, with my grumpy face. “How do I feel about that suggestion?” I can hear them already. “They’re the same picture.”

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Random Featured Post

You Gotta Have a Shtick (or a stick).

One of the things I like to say about teaching junior high is down at the bottom of this page in the footer. You’re too lazy to scroll, aren’t you? Fine. “Five shows a day, 180 days a year.” And there aren’t many crowds tougher than 7th graders. “This is boring.” The worst of all sins. Most of us who teach junior high have a shtick. A role we play, some isms we like to use again and again. Idiosyncrasies we play up for entertainment/attention value (oh the sharing I get when we talk about that word idiosyncrasy during “Monsters are Due on Maple Street“). The key is to make the shtick such a natural part of the classroom routine, that it doesn’t distract too much. Well, sometimes we need the distraction. There’s the Raffle King. There’s the Timer. There are the clickers. The Cage. Mental Floss. Nutty videos. MYOB. All of these are stalwart features of my classroom shtick. And as of a few years ago, there’s also the Quiet Stick. (four or five years ago – me visiting another teacher’s classroom before school) “Leenie! What the shiggy are you doing? Where’d you get this, and WHY ARE YOU [...]

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

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