Twas the week before vacation...

The 9th graders started a new story this week, "The Lady, or the Tiger." This is a difficult read, much like "A Christmas Memory," but the students are tackling the huge words, which is good. I gave them some time to work in their groups. They really like this sales promotion project. There is one group that worries me, but if they don't like their grade, they only have themselves to blame. We also did the Big Cola Debate. I had given each side some information I found on both Coke and Pepsi. The Coke side ended up winning because they were able to present most of their facts effectively. That was the Pepsi side's downfall. Some of the students could not present their evidence well.

The 8th graders started a new story too, "The Circuit," which is a story about a young boy's life and his migrant family's struggles. Everyone read, and I was surprised at the new students who volunteered to read. I also gave them a new spelling sheet and I didn't look at it closely enough because when one of the students asked me to explain the "schwa" sound...I had to make up something quick. After some research, I found that it's an unstressed vowel that sounds like "uh" most of the time, like in "cup, medium, about." UG! Linguistics...not my strongest subject.

I'm working with another sub this week and I've worked with him before and he's great. The other one last week was strange. The sub this week told me that she raised her voice to him last week, which doesn't surprise me. He also told me that she has an engineering degree, which explains everything. My experience with engineers is that they rely solely on their analysis of a problem. Students, especially children, are not subject to this scrutiny. Another thing that bugged me was whenever she was working with one student at the board, she turned her back on the rest of the class, and I know she wondered why they wouldn't settle down or listen to her. When I left last Friday, I didn't even tell her it was nice working with her because it wasn't.

An interesting challenge...

It has been a somewhat rough week because Susan is on medical leave. The week ending 12/3, I had the 9th graders read "The Gift of the Magi." This short Christmas story proved to be very favorable with the 9th graders. Most of them did very well on the test I gave them on 12/7. I also worked with them on modifiers, single words and phrases. I used the names of students in the class as examples on the board. What I like about doing this is that when I begin to write each new sentence, the room is incredibly silent because they want to see whose name I am going to use. The sentences are funny, which I think makes the lesson more appealing. On Friday, 12/3, I seperated the class into two groups: Pepsi drinkers and Coca Cola drinkers. We were going to have a debate today, 12/10, but they were working on their next big writing assignment.

Instead of the traditional persuasive essay, I've assigned them a project to create an ad campaign for candy. They are working in groups of five as an advertising agency. I've given them a list of titles and duties, so each student will be responsible for certain aspects of the campaign. This project follows the same kind of principles as the t.v. show, The Apprentice. As a group, they must do the following:
Create a name for the team
Create a logo
Write a mission statement
Create a jingle
Design a print ad
Write, direct, and produce a commercial
Marketing

Each student will have to write a three paragraph sales pitch after completion of the project. Their goal is to persuade me to hire and use their campaign. The one group I feared was going to have problems has come up with a unique name and have already created a clever jingle for their product, Skittles. Since the group comprises of Hispanic students, they are also writing a Spanish version of everything they do. I was very impressed at their attempt to target two different audiences.

I was also impressed with their last writing assignment, comparing different news media. Most of the students had interesting perspectives on how the news media manipulates the viewers/readers. I think they did well on this assignment because we did it together in the classroom and I was able to answer any questions they might have.

With the 8th graders, I assigned the Ray Bradbury science fiction story, "There Will Come Soft Rains." It was an interesting story, but the students were not as thrilled with it. I also used a few days to get all the students caught up on missed work due to absences and suspensions. I'm taking them deeper into the analysis of stories. We read the Grimms Brothers' "Little Brier-Rose" today, which is a short story with a happy ending. There is not much conflict which moves the plot, but overall, it has all the basic elements. I then showed them the first part of Disney's Sleeping Beauty. I had them compare and contrast the two stories. The high-light was when two of the three new students joined in on the discussion. One very politely raised his hand each time he wanted to say something.

I wrote my first referral this week. A student who had ditched PE was assigned detention on Tuesday, 12/7. She told the office that she couldn't do it because of a dental appointment, so we moved it to Wednesday. On that day, her mother appeared with her PE clothes but waited for her after she was done with her regular class. Apparently, she left campus with her mom, and didn't show up for detention. I spoke to one of the VPs and he said she didn't show up for PE either. He told me to write up the referral and send her to the office. I think the girl thought we wouldn't figure out what she did because Susan wasn't here to oversee everything like she normally does. I also had two students suspended for having marijuana in their possesion. The school did a drug sweep with the police and canine.

It has been an interesting couple of weeks, and I have one more to go before the Christmas break, which I am looking forward to very much.

Where is the time going?

My plane was delayed on Monday, so I was a little late. I called Susan and she said it was fine and that it would give them more time to work on world geography. Since I was in a hurry when I got home, I didn't have a lesson plan ready. So while I figured out what I was going to do, I had them each tell me what they did during the long weekend and especially on Thanksgiving day. I thought this would get them a little more comfortable speaking in front of people. I followed it up with a reading and analysis of 3 poems: "The Kid," "from John," and "Greensboro Narrative #23." They all liked "The Kid" the best. Maybe because the main character was about their age and could have been either a boy or a girl, because it's not really stated. I also started them on their next writing assignment, comparing news media. I handed out an editorial written by John Gold of The Daily Aztec. It had to do with the basketball brawl between the Pistons and the Pacers. Gold wrote the column as if he was Ron Artest, the player who was suspended. The students had to write one paragraph, commenting on the content and style of the article.

I only had 2 8th graders, so I had them write down what they did for Thanksgiving instead.

On Tuesday, I gave the students a more detailed article from the CBS news website. I told them to compare the new article to the one I gave them yesterday, and write on paragraph commenting on both. Coincidently, a fight had happened the day before and I wanted to use this incident to compare it to the basketball brawl. So I had several students give me a play by play of the fight, including who was involved. There were 7 conflicts that occured. We discussed what happened, and who did what, and finally was it worth it. I then played a video of taped news programs on the basketball brawl. I then had them compare what they saw with the second article they read. Most of them liked the t.v. coverage because they could see the action taking place.

I gave new spelling lists to the 8th graders and let them watch the rest of the video from last week; It's A Wonderful Life. I had one problem student who just could not stop talking. She was absent the day before and it was heaven.

Today, I asked the 9th graders to go over the fight one more time. When a student asked why we were going over it again, I told them that the news constantly repeats events that happen over and over again. This time though, one of the students suggested that they act out what happened. This was interesting and quite appealing to the students. So we went over the fight, step by step. I then played the video one more time and asked them to compare the fight at school with the basketball brawl. "Do the news stations tell the truth? Can you believe what you see because the angles keep changing? How are the fights similar and/or different? Is the news a reliable source of information? or are first hand witnesses a better source because they were actually there?" We also started reading "The Gift of the Magi."

With the 8th graders, we started a new story, "Soft Rains Will Come," which is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury. It is an interesting story that I hope will keep their attention. I've also assigned the next writing assignment; writing a technical document. I told them to write new bylaws in the Options program. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with.