How not planning works to your benefit.

Last week I scheduled three day sin the computer lab so that my students could complete their research papers for the Never Forget project. I gave them the ultimatum that the paper was worth 25 points, due Friday (4.6.07). If the students finished on Friday, they got full points. If they finished [...]

Pairing Voices with Faces

A powerpoint version of today’s lesson is available for download at the end.
Yesterday we began reading the play The Diary of Anne Frank. To start us off I went through a little background information and then let the students listen to an audio verison of the play performed by several actors. I only [...]

Friday Haiku

Just an amazing day

Yesterday I thanked a student for speakign up and offering a connection she made between our introduction to the Holocaust and a movie she’d seen about some kids and some paper clips.
It really helped us make a connection to what was lost as the kids received their own paper clips to carry around and wear [...]

There’s a Jesus in that flashlight

One of the things I like to do when reading a text with students is to connect that text to other “texts,” where that second one (the one in quotes) can be nearly anything: other books, poems, song lyrics, video games, tv shows, movies, etc. So, Let’s make some intertextual connections, shall we?
The students [...]

Kids and Socrates

This was a great day.
So, two days after my free classroom set of Ayn Rand’s Anthem showed up in the mail, I’ve ventured into the text, and tried to bridge the major themes of the novel to the ideas of community and individuality from the poems we recently analyzed. When the kids came into [...]

A hundred bucks goes a long way

I advise an extracurricular group at the school dedicated to giving back to our community. So far this year we’ve given our time at concessions stands at the school’s basketball and football games, we’ve helped out at a local christmas-tree-decorating fundraiser, and just today we sold candy canes to the school body in an [...]

This wasn’t planned at all

A high-five to my students for their brilliance today.
Today I had my classes read three poems by Nikki Giovanni — “the drum,” “legacies,” and “choices.” And they all flowed together very nicely (which is likely why they’re paired together in the McDougal Littell anthology). And not only are they paried together in that [...]

40,000!

Wow! In just one quick month, this blog recieved another 10,000 visitors.
I’d just like to say thanks to all who read and tell you that I truly appreciate your visits, your comments, and your help. I hope you find these posts informative or insightful or fun.
And keep in mind the Current Challenge: [...]

Getting creative; remembering 9/11

So, I’ve been reading through and rethinking Tim Fredrick’s outline of The Messy Writing Process. I just love it. I love the fact that he says, in the middle of his discussion:
“ALL of these steps occur in all different order - depending on the writer, the task, and the context of the [...]