Semester in Motion

As my niece said in a Facebook posting yesterday "Has anyone seen my motivation?  I already checked under the sofa cushions and it's not there."

Somehow we've past the halfway point of the semester and I'm behind in almost everything (except reading - I always manage to get the readings done).

So here we are - students as designers, eh? 

In some ways, students are almost always designers. When they write a research paper, do a PowerPoint, make a speech – they’ve designed it.  While there are times the design is more tightly controlled than others (a formal research paper has many controls), they are still the ones designing the content – what words they choose, which parts they emphasize, how they shape their thesis, sentence structure.

Word choice is actual a huge design tool.  English has so many shades of meaning in the language.  When we have exchange students, we always have them keep a notebook for vocabulary as they learn it.  They inevitably end up with a whole page of “smile, smirk, grin, leer, sneer” words and when you would use each one.  

Review

          I was thinking about students as designers.  I was also seeing teachers starting to try to come up with creative ways to review.  Why not combine the two?  Have the students suggest authentic problems for the areas of review.

1)   It ensures that they can see real-world applications for the information

2)   It ensures the teacher knows they can see those applications

3)   It gives them more ownership of the review process

Students as designers

Let's start with looking at the statement "students as designers" literally.  How often do we ask them to produce a PowerPoint, or another document?  How often do we really help them become better designers of those documents?  I'm not talking about correcting grammar or punctuation, I'm talking about design.  Are we sharing the principles graphic design, or just looking at content?  If we are teaching that PowerPoint is a tool, shouldn’t we teaching them the right way to use it?  Too often I see kids who create a collage for a background, don’t fade the pictures and put huge blocks of fancy text in a bright color over top so you can see it.  It’s hard to read and visually distracting.  That’s without getting in to the “what about folks who are colorblind” discussion.  The whole “modeling” part is left out when it comes to this aspect of an assignment.  Just as we embed and scaffold learning to use the affordances of the software within the context of the lesson, we should scaffold and embed learning the fundamentals of graphic design.

Reverse Engineering

As I think I mentioned before, part of the advantage to not currently being a teacher is that I can decide to write a lesson on whatever topic I want to - assuming that I can find SOLs that it fits with.  That's what I did with my telecommunications lesson, although I had to make some alterations to make it work with SOLs.   This is really not a rational way to write lesson plans - on the other hand, it's good practice writing SSCC & ACTS lessons. 

I also have had to go find teachers and ask them if, next year, I might be able to borrow their classes to do the lesson.  Fortunately, they all seem interested and willing.

Patriot Pals

I decided to head up a club here at the school this year.  (It’s similar to Best Buddies – pairs up regular ed kids and special ed kids for social stuff)  Don’t ask me why I thought it was a good idea.  Actually, I never thought it was – but my daughter was President of Best Buddies at the middle school and she insisted we do the same thing here.   Given the nature of the club and the fact that my 14 year old daughter wants me to sponsor it, I could hardly say no. 

It suddenly occurred to me that if I can come up with a fun, authentic problem, I might be able to add some technology education into the meetings.  We usually do a craft – maybe instead we could solve a mystery or do a scavenger hunt.  Hmmm……..

ARRRGHHHH!!!!!!

So, after spending hours in the car over the weekend planning this database lesson plan, I came home and asked my husband how to do one thing in the database I couldn't easily figure out.  Turns out it is non-trivial.  In fact, I have to start from scratch.  Anyone have any ideas they didn't use?

Figurative Language

I took the mystery database idea and adapted it for an English teacher to use for figurative language.  The premise was that she had left some candy she was going to share with the class in the staff lunch room, and when she went back, there was an unsigned note saying "I've got them", but no name.  On the back of the note was a rough draft of a descriptive essay.  Database includes teacher names, kind of figurative language they really like, kind they don't and their favorite color.  Students analyze the essay to determine what their is the most of and what is completely missing.  When it turns out it could be one of two teachers, the teacher added "oh, the ink was  ___" which is the favorite color of one of possibilities.  She then sends a kid to that teacher's room (pre-planned) who turns over a bag of candy.  Then she has the kids write a new descriptive paragraph that would make a different teacher be the answer......

Still waiting to hear from admin on the tardy project.