Posts Tagged ‘ Tips for teachers ’

Cartoon Fun II.

December 26, 2008
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Cartoon Fun II.

A “typical” period in Mr. Coward’s class in “pictures” Part II. After they have completed the warm up, we go over it. I use my wireless slate to circle the correct answers on the screen and write hints. I can also flip the pen over, and use the built-in laser pointer to emphasize (or annoy). Next we will often be working on grammar/mechanics, going over pink homework sheets or proofreading something (usually student work) live on the overhead or grooving on some Schoolhouse Rock (-ism #10). Their faves are “Unpack Your Adjectives” and “Mr. Morton.” (I had one class one year where several members would cry during that one; they felt sooo sad for Mr. Morton, even after it all ends well.) If it’s Wednesday, there will be vocabulary work. That means going over the homework, giving examples and usages, answering questions, and sometimes acting out the words. (OMG, they can’t cope when I undulate.) Then there’s the vocabulary pretest. A perfect score gets them out of that part of the test on Friday. It’s called being exempt (-ism #13), and in my class, it’s what they all crave. I use the Raffle King to decide whether they can use

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Mailbag I: The Paper Load

December 21, 2008
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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

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“I like how you’re all mean.”

December 15, 2008
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Today we were working in pairs (Que milagro – pairs in Mr. C’s class!) on one sentence summaries for the first seven chapters of The Midwife’s Apprentice. Sometimes I have to remind them that this is English, and we do have to put down our clickers and write now and then. They actually liked this one, and it was a great way to review a book we’re reading entirely in class, and don’t always get to every day. It forced them to go back and reread and review the book together, and to even use the table of contents (gasp – good practice for research in the spring). I did keep having to say, “Look in the book.” Anyway, at one point a pair of girls raised their hands and said, “We need help.” “Maybe you should make an appointment with your counselor.” The two girls were the ones who laughed the hardest. I know –and to make sure, my wife reminds me all the time– that some (many?) of the things I say to my students might be interpreted as being “mean.” She has said, “You’re one of those teachers I would have been scared to death of when

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Random Featured Post

“Do you love me?” (Also: Weird “Week”)

Wotta “week.” Considering how tired I am, I can’t believe it was only a three-day week – for some reason we had a 4-day weekend for Veterans’ day. And I done clean forgot that I was supposed to give the “District Benchmark Test #1″ (that’s a whole ‘nother post) by Friday. So we spent Wednesday darkening ovals to generate data for the district, AND there was a “multi-media” assembly that, amid the rock and rap, touted the beauty of trust and honesty (also: don’t do those things which I obviously can’t mention, because ads for them started appearing here). AND, yesterday was “parent visitation day.” Whole lotta scare quotes today too. Usually I get a pretty good turnout for these parent visitation days (it sounds like a Catholic holiday). Our previous principal (our present principal is an FNG, both to the job of principal AND to our school) instituted these as a sort of PR for parents. Many parents of ms’ers are more than a little leery of sending their little angels to the big bad junior high. (You should have seen the reaction a few years ago when the district proposed making our school 6-8. OMG. You’d have thought [...]

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

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