Dec 23 2008
Teaching Ideas
I am out of school right now, and I really shouldn’t be thinking of work, but I have decided to start posts on teaching ideas that I have used with success in the past. I teach secondary English and Social Studies. For English I started a Wall Of Fame for some of the exceptional writing that I received in class. The kids really started striving to see who could make the wall, and other classes would come in and get a kick out of trying to guess who wrote what. I also did an assignment where I brought a rock to class and told the class to write about it. After about 10 minutes, I had them stop, and I asked them to raise their hands if they used typical words like, rough, hard, jagged, dirty… to describe the rock. Most raised their hands and wanted to know immediately how I knew this. I told them it was easy as they were all writing about this rock and these would be very normal words to use. I then told them not to write a bout rocks, but to write about a particular rock. They then continued to write very creative stories about their own personal rock. I have alo done this with a coffee cup. Any ordinary object will do. It really got them going. More next time…
