So, how does this school really work?

After yesterday’s discussion about the Caste system in school, I whipped up a little handout to help the kids get their ideas flowing and in order about how the actual Caste systems that work in our schools.
Click the image below to download the handout, or click here to see the big picture.
See, the [...]

The Caste System in School

As much as I complain about my students, they really surprise me, and today we took that Marxism discussion even further as we compared the characters in three textx by talking about how their class levels influence their actions.
The first story is Born Worker, by Gary Soto, where we meet young Jose and his cousin [...]

the Fives

While most students really grasped the concept behind the Keys Assignment yesterday, there was a pretty large group that found it difficult to connect with a metaphorical key, or to choose for themselves a representative key. I tried to just throw out the “Key to life” or the “Key to your heart” aspect, but [...]

They keys to life

First assignment of the year? A short essay.
(click the image to the right for a downloadable version of this assignment)
I wanted to get a handle on the kids’ writing styles and their ability to handle a lengthy discussion on one topic, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. The [...]

Their words, their voices

A good number of my students turned in their short stories this week. I didn’t spend much time going over how to write a piece of short fiction, and we didn’t do too much creative writing work (something I regret, and something I plan to do in the future), but the kids’ work really [...]

And now…the rest of the story.

Most of this is a repeat of yesterday’s psot, but I finally finished the story I wrote for the students. Again, some liked it, some didn’t. Hope you do.
Some people don’t know what they really want until it’s right in front of them. And how do you know what you want until [...]

Why (sometimes) you’ve gotta love the way kids think

After showing off my exmple of creating a story from a list of characters, names, traits, storylines, and settings, one student came to me with just three things.
Character: A warrior
Name: Eshlyn
Trait: Conceited
And then we had the following conversation.
“I’m stuck after that.”
Why?
“I don’t know what to write.”
Ok, so…you’ve got this warrior, Eshlyn. What’s he fighting [...]

I took a challenge from a student

Early in the semester I told the students that they should challenge me to do the same work they do, and last week one student remembered this little tidbit, saying: “Hey, Mr. SInce we have to write these stories for you, and you make it sound so easy, why don’t you show us how [...]

How to Create Your Own Story in the Oral Tradition

As we’ve been reading through this series of stories from the oral tradition, we’ve also been able to categorize the stories into distinct types. There’s the Hyperbole story, the Origin or Creation Myths, the Moral Stories, and the Urban Legends. Some of the stories only fit into one or two categories, and many [...]