NOTE: This is the first in a series of four posts on easing your students into Elizabethan English without terrifying them.
I didn’t take any fun pictures of this next lesson, because I was too busy clapping (more on that in a minute), but as I prepare my sophomores for our Hamlet unit, I have to share my favorite trick for introducing kids to Shakespeare:
Let Dr. Seuss do it for you. Continue reading “Chapter 18: Sam-I-Am(b)”
If I could give new teachers just one piece of advice, it would be this:
Let the kids drive.
Yes, you’re the one with the degree in education. Yes, you’re the one who knows the Common Core standards. Yes, you’re the one who’s seen the blueprint for the flavor-of-the-week standardized test. But your kids are the ones who know themselves, and that might be more important. Trust them. Seize the teachable moments, and let the kids drive — the lesson, the unit, even the curriculum if necessary.
Here’s what that looks like in practice: Continue reading “Chapter 14: Let the Kids Drive”
When I hired in last year, I was delighted to find that two walls in my classroom were covered with big chalkboards like the ones I had in my very first classroom. I was less delighted to learn that we didn’t have any of those big chamois erasers like I remembered using 20 years ago, and the teacher-supply stores in Amarillo and Albuquerque didn’t carry them, either.
Enter my husband, who came in one day with some leftover pipe insulation — the kind that’s about as big around as a Coke can, with a split seam along one side — and asked whether I thought it would be good for anything.
I certainly did. I cut a section about a foot long, wrapped a soft car-wash rag around it, and tucked the ends into the seam. Voila! Instant chamois knockoff.
I made a pair of them and took them to school, along with some spare rags. They work really well on my chalkboards, and they’re easy to maintain: When a rag gets too dusty to use, I just swap it out for a clean one and throw the dirty one in the laundry.
This fall, we got new Promethean boards, which are basically ginormous iPads the size of a big-screen TV. My faux-chamois erasers remove fingerprints from the touchscreen on my Promethean board as effectively as they remove chalk residue from a blackboard. In fact, they’ve come in so handy that I wound up making one for each of my colleagues for Christmas. I hope they find them as useful as I have.
Emily
