Yesterday we had another 2 hour long class that I thought went pretty well. Normally I would not be giving notes for as long as I did in that class, but I did not really see students looking around or losing interest because a lot of it was actually broken up. I know its true that the more excited I am the better they will listen so my interest in this might have helped that a little. The OPEC game went okay, I'm not sure it would easily be able to translate to a larger classroom, but if we study this in World History I might be able to find out. Since we had 10-15 mins at the end of that class I quickly went over the basic tenants of the Israel Palestine conflict so they would ready for the debate the next day. I'm actually really glad it worked out this way, because I did not have to spend any time with note taking or instruction today and we could focus on group dynamics.
Mike's main criticism the day before was the I do not have consistent bell ringers and I need to get better about that. Today I had a bell ringer up when they came in, and this did actually seem to work very well. I may toy with the idea of simply giving the students these questions instead of making them write them out along with the answers because it actually take up a lot more time than I thought it would.
The debates actually went really well. I had to constantly remind the students that everyone needed to have input and that they needed to speak. They did accomplish this task, but my biggest mistake was not telling them how I was going to grade it. I will probably give everyone 25 points for participation, because everyone did do the things that I had asked them to do. Putting on the board the schedule of how the debate will be run would have been better, but I did not think they would need that. Having the timer helped them which tells me that the constant reminders are good for them. Therefore, putting the instructions and the schedule of discussing/speaking would be great for them.
Next time I do this I will put Madison and Danielle in separate groups, because they are the most vocal people in the classroom. While Dylan is a little bit more intellectual at times, he does not like working with others as much as he likes working alone.
Mike asking the kids "how did it feel to do honors AP type things" seemed to really boost their confidence for the activity. I like pushing the kids to work on higher level, I just have to make sure every minute of the day is planned out in order for that to work. In the future I will also add a space where they can take notes on the other side's arguments because this was the most difficult part for them: refuting the arguments of the other side.
TODs were really awesome today. Turns out 2 or 3 of the kids got really fired up about this issue, and almost all of the answers to "Tell me a solution to this problem" were some semblance of the two state solution, which I will probably address at the beginning of class on Monday because I think its a really good thing that they are coming to this conclusion after being presented with both sides of the story and having to defend their arguments. I'm really proud of my students today and I will do this again with better instructions and possibly more difficult topics.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Middle East Day 1-3 Dec 7th
The first day of the Middle East lesson I was feeling a little under the weather, but this was actually not a huge problem since the students always spend the first day of a lesson filling out a map of the countries that we are going to be studying. I showed them a video from bizarre foods where the star was eating camel sausage and a few other things from the area. The connection I made was that they eat different things because they have different resources than we do. (farm-cows-burgers vs. desert-camels- camel sausage.) I played them some Arabic hip hop while they filled out their maps and gave them naan to eat while doing it. They loved the food and were semi interested in the music. Overall the day went well and the kids actually all finished their maps and most of them got full credit which is not something that has happened before. I will always give at least 40 mins to complete the maps because when they do them as homework they simply look like garbage.
Day 2 was fine as well, I began with a dice game that the kids asked for. I was actually really excited about this because it was the first time a student actually asked me to make something from a previous unit that they really liked and found helpful. Awesome moment for the day. The map quiz went overwhelmingly well, so for their actual test I will probably make the map portion fill in the blank. We had a short class today of only 55 mins so we only had time to finish the note guide after the map quiz and review were done. The class did drag a little bit, but I got some good practice lecturing and making connections to things that they already knew about like Neyland Stadium, etc.
Day 3- whew! this class was 2 hours long and we were in a conference room that did not have technology. However, I did the two activities from the day before (Crossing the Sahara, and the postcards) which both went very very well. I need to get better about making connections to the standards and objectives while doing activities/giving directions but other than that these went well.
-I gave the kids a stretch then we switched over to religions. I asked the kids to tell me a little bit about what they knew and gave them passages from each Holy Book. They only had to read one of the sheets and analyze them, and I really wish I had longer to do this because it helped identify words that they did not know, concepts that they did not understand, etc but since it was a type of jigsaw the kids were completely uninterested when I was not talking about their part. Note- this class cannot handle that on a bigger scale than the 15 min activity we did today..
- I gave them the creative artifact activity and assigned 3/4 people to each one that way all of them would not choose the ten commandments. I think that 5 of these will turn out really well and 3 of them will probably be worthless. I have trouble connecting to Coty and Jeromy since they typically take a long time to respond to things and I want to keep the class moving. However, this is rally not fair to them. I need to question them more and get them speaking out loud in class more often. When I have lower level questions I will try to remember to do this more in order to build their confidence.
*I did not get to do the puzzle activity, but this will have to wait for some other class, I know I'll be able to use it somewhere.
*Interesting note- When Zach drew someone that he "accidentally" made look like Hitler today he mentioned it and laughed a little then Dylan responded with "Oh it is because you're doing the Jewish one" I said "Dylan thats very inappropriate" and then about 5 minutes later talked to him about the work that he was doing so that we would still be on the same page. I still don't know if this was the exact right response, and since these kids VERY rarely give me anything to get upset at I do not have much practice handling these situations.
Tomorrow are notes on religion and OPEC. Pumped!
Day 2 was fine as well, I began with a dice game that the kids asked for. I was actually really excited about this because it was the first time a student actually asked me to make something from a previous unit that they really liked and found helpful. Awesome moment for the day. The map quiz went overwhelmingly well, so for their actual test I will probably make the map portion fill in the blank. We had a short class today of only 55 mins so we only had time to finish the note guide after the map quiz and review were done. The class did drag a little bit, but I got some good practice lecturing and making connections to things that they already knew about like Neyland Stadium, etc.
Day 3- whew! this class was 2 hours long and we were in a conference room that did not have technology. However, I did the two activities from the day before (Crossing the Sahara, and the postcards) which both went very very well. I need to get better about making connections to the standards and objectives while doing activities/giving directions but other than that these went well.
-I gave the kids a stretch then we switched over to religions. I asked the kids to tell me a little bit about what they knew and gave them passages from each Holy Book. They only had to read one of the sheets and analyze them, and I really wish I had longer to do this because it helped identify words that they did not know, concepts that they did not understand, etc but since it was a type of jigsaw the kids were completely uninterested when I was not talking about their part. Note- this class cannot handle that on a bigger scale than the 15 min activity we did today..
- I gave them the creative artifact activity and assigned 3/4 people to each one that way all of them would not choose the ten commandments. I think that 5 of these will turn out really well and 3 of them will probably be worthless. I have trouble connecting to Coty and Jeromy since they typically take a long time to respond to things and I want to keep the class moving. However, this is rally not fair to them. I need to question them more and get them speaking out loud in class more often. When I have lower level questions I will try to remember to do this more in order to build their confidence.
*I did not get to do the puzzle activity, but this will have to wait for some other class, I know I'll be able to use it somewhere.
*Interesting note- When Zach drew someone that he "accidentally" made look like Hitler today he mentioned it and laughed a little then Dylan responded with "Oh it is because you're doing the Jewish one" I said "Dylan thats very inappropriate" and then about 5 minutes later talked to him about the work that he was doing so that we would still be on the same page. I still don't know if this was the exact right response, and since these kids VERY rarely give me anything to get upset at I do not have much practice handling these situations.
Tomorrow are notes on religion and OPEC. Pumped!
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