The Last Chance Train Has Already Left The Station

This post over at Have a Gneiss Day speaks to that 11th hour rush that some parents and students think will be able to pull that glaring F up into the passing zone at the last minute. 
 Our quarter ended Friday and, unfortunately, I had to be out of town for the better part of last [...]

Protected: Here’s A 483-Page Packet. Enjoy Your Holiday.

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Stand back, or I shall smack you with my spatula!

Today in class I did a read aloud about some of the ways that the Spanish explorers were able to conquer many of the native peoples they encountered. As I read, the students practiced taking notes. The story was pretty exciting and had lots of action, so the kids were really into it. When it [...]

Prompting

I often give my students writing prompts about their books as the daily warm-up. Sometimes their answers are pretty funny. Here are some recent pieces that I found amusing, all spelling/grammar is left uncorrected…
“I would recommend this book to my friend because its a good book and it makes you wanna eat chocolate.”
“The story called [...]

Tidbits

The most recent major assignment the students had was a writing project using the Bill of Rights as applied to many of today’s issues. As I was grading them this weekend, there were two statements that I found amusing.
The first is from Goofball who was writing about the death penalty. He wrote: [...]

At Long Last!

We are finally wrapping up a big unit on the “Road to the American Revolution” and instead of giving a test, I had the kids create a project that was ongoing throughout the unit. I should mention that I did not simply create all of this off the top of my head. I have a [...]

Is that your title?

We are working on coming up with good titles for our essays, and one of my students is standing very firm on her decision to title her paper ‘Crack is Whak’. Mind you, her paper is about the dangers of using tobacco as a teenager, so my biggest objection is that it doesn’t really have [...]

Essay Madness!

It’s essay time again. I know, I should be teaching short story or something, but essay goes better with the unit we’re doing in Social Studies, so essay it is. Last year I wrote this. On some level, it’s been a similar experience this year. Students still lose their drafts in the abyss, I still [...]

Notebook Toolbox

Last week I posted a description and pictures of the notebook style I have been using with my students this year. As per some requests, this post is all about the stuff you can do on the ‘left side’ of the notebook. All of these ideas originated in the TCI History Alive book, and they [...]

Notebooks

Here are some examples of student notebook work.
In this first picture, there are geographic terms on the right side, and pictures of the features on the left. This student did a picture for every term, so she had to carry it over onto other pages, but most students just drew pictures for the words they [...]