Sorry kids, I just made this too difficult. Let’s fix that.

It happens every once in a while — that monster you spring on the classroom is more frightening than you expected it to be. You planned on turning that monster into a cute, cuddly stuffed animal, and instead you accidentally added another set of fangs, a tail made of glass shards, and chainsaws for [...]

Light speed — NOW

I made an error in my planning. While I think the Caste System assignment was good and smart, and that the students produced some fantastic materials (both written and visual), I did it without thinking about the upcoming paper on the elements of literature.
Every year we teachers have the students write to a common [...]

Worn Out Workshop — worries and wonders.

These past two weeks have definitely kept me busy, and I owe that to my favorite (and yet, least favorite) class activity — the workshop. The workshop is meant to keep the kids busy, keep them working, keep them learning new materials, and to get them to turn out a quality product on a [...]

Thesis Statements (the quick and easy way)

As promised, here is the powerpoint I used in teaching my students how to build thesis statements.
Most of the information is lifted directly from a variety of websites, but the example paragraphs are compiled from the opening paragraphs my students wrote when comparing and contrasting the short story “The Ransom of Red Chief,” with its [...]

Lesson; Revision; Reflection

After spending a good deal of my weekend grading a series of papers form the students (compare and contrast papers on “The Ransom of Red Chief,” including the Venn-diagram outline, and the elements of literature worksheet they completed in preparation for this paper), I came to a few conclusions:
1. The kids can write more than [...]

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 [...]

Gary Soto and Marxism

I just knew the opportunity to teach a very, very limited view of marxism would come up in the classroom, but I was just hoping to find a way to frame it so that the kids could understand it. That opportunity happened today when we began reading the story: “Born Worker” by Gary Soto.
I [...]

Creating a thesis statement (verbatim)

I’ve always had some trouble with teaching the five-paragraph essay as the be-all end-all of essays, but it’s what the state requires we teach — it shows up in state tests, it shows up on the district-wide final, and it shows up in the expectations for the following grades. I think I have the [...]

Compare and Contrast — What worked v. What didn’t

Ever had a lesson go wrong wrong wrongwrongwrong? Just awful. Just bad all around? how did you know it went bad? What were the tip-offs? What led you to understand you were teaching it incorrectly?
For me it was the fact that my kids spent the entire hour talking during the [...]

This is Bullshit!

Or, Beating a Text to Death
A conversation with the science teacher led to this: we think our kids would profit from our classes if we could be more up front. And not just in the cussing realm, but in the personal honesty realm. If the two could coexist, we might just be able [...]