Ah....yes, our Faculty Follies, what you all have been waiting for. This is an event in which teachers get the "opportunity" to show how shameless they can be in order to motivate/entertain our students. The large 'woman' above is a perfect example of this. That is me as Cher...what? Can't see it? Nevertheless, below are some highlights from the follies including my best Cher impressionation. Enjoy.
The Chicken Dance by multiple teachers
Cha Cha Slide by Mrs. Fisher, Mrs. Brisco, Mrs. Messley, Mrs. Morris, and Mrs. Hilderbrand
The Twist, by fourth grade teachers and friends
The grand finale....I Got You Babe by Mrs. Messley and I
As apart of our celebration for our annual MAP testing, we held assemblies all day Friday for our "Rock the MAP Day". This included performances from students from our high school and from our primary building. Below are a few highlight from Friday's action.
Friday was a busy day.....after all the assemblies we decided to blow off a little steam using Diet Coke, Mentos, and a Steve Spangler Geyser Tube....and now, your moment of Zen....
On Friday we hosted a concert to celebrate the beginning of MAP testing. Our performing guest was Benjamin Del Shreve from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Below are some highlights from Friday's concert. Please excuse my sound quality.
What a way to prepare for the MAP, the students absolutely loved the performance and from talking to the band they enjoyed it just as much. BIG thanks to Nicki Angeles for setting it up and thanks once again to the Benjamin and the boys in the band for performing for our school.
On Friday we concluded our propaganda unit in communication arts. For the past two weeks we have been reading the book Number the Stars, and studying how propaganda was used to deceive a nation and turn the Jewish population into the enemy of Germany. As a part of this unit, students were asked to reproduce a propaganda poster from this time period (1936-1945), write a small abstract about the intent of the poster, and use a translation website to write the title in German. Below is a slide show of their results. Enjoy.
That's right, Throw Down Thursday! After presenting my students with the get up and get moving lesson yesterday....by the way, thank you everyone for your insight on this post...I decided to take the classroom dancing one step further. Today I introduced Throw down Thursday to my students. This is very similar to want we did yesterday, but students get to challenge another classmate to a 'dance off'. One student has to follow the other's every movement....no matter how silly the move is. Everyone else was asked to vote on the best dancer from the the 'throw down'.
Today we honored our Terrific Tigers for the month of March. Terrific Tiger is an award that is given out by homeroom teachers to a student they feel as excelled in the school setting; this can be for academics, behavior, effort, or just for being a caring individual.
Sixth grade Terrific Tiger Awards went to Ryan from my homeroom, Dustin from Mrs. Hamm's homeroom, and Anyely from Mrs. Drake's homeroom. Each individual is absolutely excellent students and very deserving of such an honor. It is a pleasure to have them in class. Congratulations to all!
The past two days we have continued work on our propaganda posters. Students have been using a two resources to help complete this project; the USHMM Website and a translation site (for German to English) have been used for our projects. Above is a picture of Ben tracing his picture of Hitler for his propaganda poster. Progress has been great this week and we are hoping to finish these projects and have them posted for viewing by Monday.
As we start to wrap up our class reading of Number the Stars, I have asked my students to record three book reviews over different sections of our reading. Below are recordings by three different individuals from my homeroom.
Teachers can really be sticklers about keeping students in their seats at all time. From the time the time they arrive to the time they leave, we are asking them to stay seated and be quite. As we all know this can be very hard for a middle school child to do. Students come to school every day with high energy, and that energy is often discourage in classrooms. For me, I love the energy and encourage it....but this energy needs to be channeled. Our solution? Dancing....why not?
In class I demonstrated to my students the mirror dance. This dance involves two students and some good music. Student number one will be asked to repeat all of the dance moves performed by student number two. This goes on for about a minute then we switch. Below are a couple of videos of this practice in action.
On Tuesday we used acrostics to help us better understand our spelling words for the week. A acrostic is when you write a word, or in our case spelling words, vertically and then you associate a term horizontally next to each letter in the word that describes the whole word. Below is an example of a acrostic:
F ans A pplause M uch-admired O utstanding U nequaled S tar
For our spelling lesson today, I allowed the students to use their spelling words and make acrostics that were more humorous than descriptive. Below are some highlights from today's lesson:
O ld people B uy V iolins and hide them I n O ur U n-used S nuggies - Ben
P eople R emark E very time V illians I nfamously O pen U p S torage rooms - Courtney
O ctopus B abies V iolently I nk O ther U nderwater creatures S hamelessly - Colby
The picture above is my man Louis from the fourth grade. Louis obviously listens to a lot of ZZ Top on Tuesdays, because this young man has made it a habit to wear a suit every week to school....I need to step my game up. As you can see, this week he is sporting a stylish suit as usual....nice.
For his efforts the past several weeks, this joven es guapo is being inducted into The Tie Tuesday Hall of Fame. His credentials? Forget the fact that he belongs simply for being the best dressed male in the entire Noel School Building, but anyone that wears a blazer faithfully when it's not required, deserves recognition. Here's to you Louis!
Last week my students were given two assignments in communication arts. One was a short story called a "Potato Plot" and the other was a poem called "What If?" Students were asked to perform this task by using Google Docs. Google Docs is a free web-based word processor and spreadsheet, which allows for users to share and collaborate online.Students were asked to compose their assignments online using Google Docs and invite me as a collaborator. By adding the teacher as a collaborator, it allows the teacher to add corrections or comments to a student's paper.
Google Docs is an amazing tool for teachers. There is a little bit of work involved in the beginning. In order for this to work, students are required to set up a e-mail account g-mail is preferred, less problems. Also it will take about a week or so to train your students on how to correctly sign-in and operate the program. It is well worth it. There are several benefits to using this program, first off there is no more carrying papers around from school and home and you can access the papers from anywhere. Second, giving immediate feedback is made simply through the collaborator process. Also I actually had a student turn in a paper on a SATURDAY....I was shocked to. Lastly, who doesn't want to save a tree or two?
I would highly recommend that everyone at least check out this program and consider ways this could be tied into your instruction, this is a very powerful tool.
There is nothing quite like feeling of having your fire re-lit from time to time. Ever have those days where you just feel like your passion for your job just isn't there? I have been feeling this way for the past few weeks and looking for something help me find that passion again in teaching. This is when I to start all"geeked up". Geeked up for me is when I get really excited about something, it becomes all I think about, and ideas start flowing out.
Well, I just left an outstanding workshop about a exciting teaching strategy that has geeked me up in all kinds of ways. It is called Power Teaching. Power Teaching is a teaching system that is founded on two key principles: the system could be fun and free. I like that. This started with three teachers, Chris Biffle (college), Jay Vanderfin (kindergarten) and Chris Rekstad (4th grade) in Southern California.
The whole concept of Power Teaching is based around five simple rules:
1. Follow directions quickly 2. Raise your had for permission to speak 3. Raise your had for permission to leave your seat 4. Make smart choices 5. Keep your dear teacher happy (nice catch all)
I know this all sounds standard issue, but there is a difference. Each rule has a hand gesture that is assigned with it. Example, for rule one a teacher would say, 'Class, rule one' the class would then repeat the rule while performing the hand gesture. This action is performed every time a rule is broken. This helps with reinforcement of classroom rules and consistency.
"Teach, Okay" is another key practice in this system. For this practice, a teacher will address the class and give a "Micro Lecture". This is when the teacher presents a short lecture (about 1 minute) about the day's lesson. The teacher will go through their lecture and associate hand gestures with everything they are describing. While the teacher is presenting, the students are mirroring their gestures and behavior. At the end of the end of the lecture, students are told 'Teach!' to which they reply by saying 'OK!' Students will then turn and teach to a classmate while performing the same hand gestures the teacher had taught. When the teacher needs the classes' attention they would say 'class' to which everyone would reply 'yes'.
Class-yes is a strategy that serves as an excellent management tool. To get the attention of the class the teacher would simply say 'Class!' and then they reply 'Yes!'. Next is the catch, the hook that makes this fun, and gets them invested in it in a way that has them looking at me and grinning rather than continuing their conversations. When the teacher says 'Class!' and they say 'Yes!' they have to say it the way their teacher said it. If the teacher says 'Classity-class-class!' they have to say 'Yessity-yes-yes!'. If it is said it loudly, they have to respond loudly. If it is said with a whisper, they respond in a whisper. They have to match the tone and intensity of the instructor.
Above is a video of a professor teaching Power Teaching Basics with his college class
This is a video of a 11 year old teaching a Communication Arts lesson using Power Teaching
These are just a few of the practices used in this system and there are so many worth while practices used in this system. I realize that my little blog post doesn't come close to doing the system justice, but it something that has me all "geeked up" and what better forum to express it?
Power Teaching fits great with teachers who have high energy and more importantly it keeps students engaged through practices that can be fun. That's what it is all about, it doesn't matter how fun/silly your message is, as long as that message is being heard. I would like to invite everyone to check out their website and "steal" some ideas.
As we continue our reading in the book, Number the Stars, it has become very clear that propaganda played an important role in WWII. In order for us to better understand the context of what was going on during this time period, we will be spending the next week studying propaganda. Students will be using the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website. The museum is located in Washington, D.C. and provides an excellent teaching tool with it's incredible website.
The Assignment Students will use the website to study the different themes used in propaganda
- Making a Leader - Rallying a Nation - Indoctrinating the Youth - Defining the Enemy - Writing the News - Assessing Guilt - Deceiving the Public
Students will be asked to reproduce a "Propaganda Poster" from this time period and write an abstract about that particular piece; including: what was the intent, how was it used, why was this important to the Nazi campaign, and who did it target.
The power of Nazi Propaganda goes far beyond just simple posters. Propaganda reveals how the Nazi Party used modern techniques as well as new technologies and carefully crafted messages to sway millions with its vision for a new Germany. Students began this assignment the other day by simply exploring the website and the different categories. We will begin selecting posters on Monday of the next week, and our goal is to have them ready to publish by the end of the week.
I am making an early exit this week to head to Osage Beach, Missouri. Myself and two other teachers are heading up today to attend the Missouri Middle School Assication Conference. This conference will be running from Friday to Sunday. I really love attending educational conferences because there are always so many great ideas out there and these conferences always prove to be a great forum for "stealing" great ideas from each other. Updates will be forth coming as I plan on spending my nights grading papers, blogging, and watching basketball in my room. Have a good weekend everyone.
As a part of our diversity of life unit, today we began our lesson on plant life. To start this lesson off we used lima beans in class today. We took the beans and compared wet vs. dry to see what effects water has on beans.
We found that once water is added to a lima beans each one began to shed its coat and detach it's embryo. This is apart of a process called germination. Which means it is changing from an organism that is dormant, to an organism that is alive. We were also able to correctly identify the different parts of the bean: embryo, seed coat, and cotyledon.
In our reading classes this week, we have started a series of books that highlight World War II events. For my reading class we are starting off with a book called Number the Stars by Lois Lowery. This book chronicles the story of ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her family. This story takes place in 1943 in Denmark where the Nazis are "relocating" the Jews.
Over the next two weeks, we will be reading this book and using it to better understand the German occupation during this time.
Last night marked our St. Jude Fundraiser. St. Jude is a children's research hospital that specializes in finding cures and saving children from pediatric cancer and other diseases. For our fundraiser this year consisted of basketball game matching up our 5th and 6th grade boys vs. girls. After several weeks of trash talking it all came together last night. Below are some videos from last night's action....
As our students move forward in Social Studies, they have started their unit on World War II. To better understand events that led to the cause of WWII, Mrs. Hamm has began training our students on how to use chopsticks. Each student has been asked to use these chopsticks at lunch to eat "finger foods". Students will do this for an entire month. Mrs. Hamm explains....
"To better understand the events that took place in the Pacific region during World War 2, it is important for our students to understand the Japanese Culture"
For the next week our students will be studying events that led to WW2 and who were the major players. As you would guess, this is a very LOADED unit. Meaning that there is so much great information and history (potential blogging), I will be working with Mrs. Hamm and will be trying my best to chronicle their studies in her class....I am a bit of nerd when it comes to this period of history.
Today we continued our use of the Foss application that be began yesterday. As with any assignment, you have students that finish their lesson way before others. In an effort to eliminate down time and the question "Mister, what do I do now???" today I put my kids to work. After each student finished their work for the day, they were asked to visit our blogroll and comment on three other class blogs. This worked out wonderfully.
This led to some great imaginative thinking as well. Pictured above is Courtney and Ben visiting the Scholastic Story Starter. This quickly became of interest to all my students and has inspired me to create a communication arts lesson using this application. This is just one example of how class blogs and having an audience can benefit your classroom and a teacher's instruction. We were able to find this application at Room 8's Class Blog.
Hey how about that! Tie Tuesday fell on St. Patty's Day (SPD) this year. If there is one thing to learn about ties and SPD, its that it is very hard to find SPD ties in department stores. I spent two hours looking for a shamrock, leprechaun, or any type of insignia that resembled SPD.....nothing. Nevertheless....we move forward!
This week I inducted a new member to our Tie Tuesday Hall of Fame (TTHF). This week this tremendous honor goes to a fifth grader....unheard of I know. Parker Owens is a student from Mr. C's class.
Parker has worn a tie to school for the past six weeks....so he says. For his diligence and faithfulness (despite the fact its a clip-on!) to Tie Tuesday, it's with great pleasure I welcome Parker to the TTHF. Congratulations!
Today in class we were able to utilize two different types of technology in our classroom. One being the note application provided by Ning. The second is a interactive multimedia application from Foss. Foss is a site for the inquiry-based FOSS science curriculum which we use in our class.
We used this application to help explore "The Ribbon of Life", this refers to all organisms from the simplest life form, to complex multi-cellular organisms and everything that makes up these organisms. You can click here to view the instructions that my students followed today. This is day one of a two day exploration of this application, updates coming again tomorrow.
Strike up the horns!
Our sixth graders recently concluded their social studies unit on medieval studies. To help put a nice bow on this unit, our own Mrs. Hamm contacted some Norsemen reenactors from St. Louis, MO and Oklahoma City, OK to speak perform a demonstration for 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students.
Norsemen is a term meaning "people from the North" and was applied primarily to Nordic people originating from southern and central Scandinavia. Notice the map about that illustrates the different settlements of the Norsemen from the 8th to 11th centuries.
Despite how friendly our visitors were, the Norsemen were not pleasant folk. Well put by one of our visits "they found it was easier to steal than to make". This was referring to pillaging that they were well known for. They frequently would raid churches and villages for goods such as gold, sliver, clothes, food, furniture, and women. Yes women, they were typically taken back to Viking settlements while the men and children were killed.
We are also reminder by our reenactors that the Noresmen were not unintelligent either. This was a group of people that were great skills men. The Norsemen crafted many tools, weapons, and clothing. Among the most famous of their work were their longboats.
Not only did our reenactors bring lots of historical information, but also brought many replica pieces from this time period and also performed several demonstration for us. Below is a small dose of what they shared with us.
After our debate Wednesday, I held a very impromptu and informal debate in our classroom without an audience. I knew my students had become a little nervous from speaking in front of a crowd, so I allowed them to have another chance to argue with each other. For this debate, I selected a random topic for my students (bringing ipod/mp3's to school) and allowed them to go one on one with another classmate, here are some of the highlights.
Yesterday in science, we shifted gears as we move away from aquatic life forms and begin to look at the cell. To start this unit off, we took a look at our own cells. When we first started this investigation, students were not told we were looking for cells, just that we were looking for "cheek tissue".
Each group was asked to take a toothpick and gently scrap the inside of their cheek.
Next students were asked to take the toothpick and swirl it around in a drop of blue dye that will stain the tissue and better enable us to view them.
Notice the darker sections in the field of view, this is what we were looking for.
After investigating and comparing with classmates, students were able to find their own cells. As we continued in this investigation, many students started to make the connection that we were actually looking at cells. We will continue with this lesson next week, as this is a short week for us here at Noel.
Finally the day has come! Today marked our first semi-formal classroom debate. My homeroom students were given a topic of school uniforms. We did have a audience for this debate, we invited Mrs. Polzer's class (3rd grade) to listen in on our debate.
I will say that we did not react well to the "live audience" factor of debating very well. The students were very prepared for this event but tended to become a little bit nervous when speaking in front of a group of people. Overall I was pleased with their performance, of course there things that work, but not a bad showing a first time debate. We did take video, but I am having problems compressing it (help Mr. C!), I am hoping to post it to Ning in the coming week.
As we prepare for our debate (that has been moved to tomorrow morning), today we begin to finalize our thoughts about our arguments. In preparation today, students were asked to practice their arguments for tomorrow, below are a couple of short videos from my students. This will give you a little bit of a taste until tomorrow.
A couple of months ago we set the stage for today's lesson. Today we will be looking at our mini-pods that we created all the way back in January. The students were given their mini-pods and asked to go on a "safari" to see what different types of organisms were alive in their pods.
Students were given the following instructions: Prepare a wet mount from various areas in your mini-pod, use the key in your book to identify the different types of organisms under the microscope. Students were given a key that consisted of about 40 pictures of different types of aquatic organisms, below are three pictures of the most reoccurring that we witnessed today.
Paramecium Euglena Nematode Below is a video that I took of one pair of student's slide, in this video you can see all three of these organisms in the field of view. My students were able to organize them accordingly, but can you spot the three different types of organisms?
Thank you to everyone that took part in my little impromptu poll questions about our class debate. One poll question was a success and the other question prompted no sufficient results. First off, "Do you think it is a good idea to have a school dress code", we had 46 people vote in this poll question. The results were 72% said that this was a bad idea, 26% said this was a good idea, and 1% were undecided.
This was about what I expected from this poll. While school uniforms or stricter dress codes have their positives such as school pride, less closet hassle, and decrease in discipline issues, there are still some very valid arguments against them. In some districts cost my be an issue and the major complaint you will hear is that this takes the individually away from a student.
On this blog we have at some outstanding input from visitors on our ongoing debate. Over the next two days my class will begin to refine their debate skills and their topics as we prepare for class debate Thursday. I am very excited and I am hoping that my students echo some of the same arguments (and present new fresh ideas) that you all have had on the comment boards. Stay tuned for up-dates and I will be back in school on Tuesday.
Realizing that the topic of a school dress code or school uniforms is such a hot topic, I decided that I would post a couple of quick and dirty poll questions. Below are a couple of polls involving school dress codes in school, take a minute and let your voice be heard....by me at least.
As we continue forth with our persuasive unit in communication arts, yesterday we prepared to read a short story called "Dressed for Success". This is a article from Time for Kids Magazine and in this story it poses an argument for school uniforms. Almost immediately the room was divided when it came to pros and cons of school uniforms. I knew right away I had to seize this teachable moment. We started a discussion about what are the differences between debates and arguments, also we discussed what makes a great debate. We decided as a class that we would continue this topic and work our way to a class debate over school uniforms. We took the first step yesterday and divided our class room into "for it" and "against it" teams.
Cheesy I know....for the past two weeks our sixth graders have been developing their own products and working on how to sell them. This whole thing started with our studies of emotional appeal. We have been studying how commercials use different types of emotional appeal (better of well being, better self-image, etc...) to sell their products.
Each group of students completed a radio advertisement (recorded by Vocaroo) and recorded a TV commercial. Each group of students were asked to consider each of the following areas when creating these commercials.
Creativity Originality Know your audience Types of appeal Product design
Over the next two days I will post these advertisements and allow my readers to vote on which radio and TV commercial are their favorites. Enjoy!
Last night marked the end of our sixth graders Medieval unit in social studies. To help culminate this event we held a sixth grade parent's night. Students displayed their Medieval projects and also displayed their poster boards from science fair. Also there was a small award ceremony to recognize the 6th grade science fair participates.
Unfortunately I do not have video yet from last night because I had to attend my graduate class in Fayetteville. I would like to thank Mrs. Drake for filling in for me last night and also Mrs. Hamm for putting the whole thing together. Well done.
Its been a while, but we are back with another Tie Tuesday post! I wanted to recognize a student as a new member to the Tie Tuesday Hall of Fame (TTHF).
Courtney has been a Tie Tuesday regular since last semester. Not only has she displayed her professionalism on a regular basis, but has also talked her sister into strolling to school with a tie, and she has even managed to put a tie on her pets as well. Also she has done an excellent of promoting this event on her personal blog. Well done Courtney! Enjoy all the perks that go along with the TTHF. "Promoting Professionalism One Tie at a Time"
Last week I made a post about how my class is taking a different approach to morning bell work. We call this "Morning Discussions". In these morning discussions I pose questions to students about topics ranging from classroom assignments to news that effects them. Take a minute and check out our discussion board hosted by Ning.
"A blog about education from the perspective of a shop teacher" Well put Gayln.... Mr. Wiemers is the middle school shop teacher at Dallas Center-Grimes Middle School in Dallas Center, Iowa. Mr. Wiemers' classes in the shop consist of an introductory class for sixth graders, 18 modules for seventh grade that include industrial and technological projects and a nine week woodworking class where each eighth grader builds an end table from oak. His blog consist of not only of happenings in his shop class, but also reviews from professional development workshops, personal experiences and travels, and even personal views on Wall Street. Overall this is a very entertaining and informative blog and I encourage everyone to stop by and leave a positive comment. You can visit his site by clicking here.
This blog is no longer active, but does serve as a retrospective look at my first year of teaching at Noel, Missouri. You can check out my new blog at:
http://jkmcclung.edublogs.org
Ah....yes, our Faculty Follies, what you all have been waiting for. This is an event in which teachers get the "opportunity" to show how shameless they can be in order to motivate/entertain our students. The large 'woman' above is a perfect example of this. That is me as Cher...what? Can't see it? Nevertheless, below are some highlights from the follies including my best Cher impressionation. Enjoy.
