Archive for the ‘Teaching Tips’ Category

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Save Yourself from the Boring Book Report

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

50 Book Report IdeasDo you find yourself slogging through book reports that your students write?  I remember thinking if I had to read one more paper with plodding sentences I was going to throw up. . . or at least throw the papers across the room.  But then something occurred to me.  I was assigning those ridiculous book reports.  You know the ones.  Read a book and write a 2-page summary.  Make sure to include the high points of the story.  Tell what you liked best about it.  Oh yes, that makes for scintillating reading, doesn’t it?

I’m not sure when I wised up to this, but it might have been about the time that Los Angles Unified published their own book called Scrip and Scrippage.  Even the name had an amazing ring to it.  What ever did Scrip and Scrippage mean?  I still don’t know.  This book, now over 30 years old, still holds a place of honor on my bookshelf.  It’s an 11 ½” x 8” book, so it’s oblong.  It has a soft brown cover, brown ink on beige paper.  It evokes memories of change for me.

For no longer did kids have to do rote reports to let me know they had read the book they were reporting on.  They could choose from a dozen fabulous projects.  Each one included detailed directions.  They also included more than writing.  Sometimes art was involved, or math, or social studies.  The reports were often cross-curricular.  Some of my favorites were the projects that had the students. . .

• create personalized stationery and then write a letter from the protagonist describing a significant incident in the book.  The kids would go crazy for this project.  The stationery inspired them to write wonderful descriptions.  The project is just as valid today, especially since the stationery can now be created on a computer.

• combine poetry and summary-writing skills.  Kids had to create a diamante poem about one of the characters.  It was quite a task to get that description down to 16 words.  These kids had always written very long summaries, so this was a good way for them to learn to edit themselves.

• complete an employment application for one of the main characters in the book.  I used to have my students use this when they read animal stories.  I would have them fill this application out as if they were one of the animals.  Some of my more creative students would do things like use animal paw prints for the applicant signature line.

There are many types of creative book reports.  There are lots of sources on the web.  TCR publishes 50 Book Report Ideas (TCR 3948) filled with many creative ideas.  Do yourself a favor.  Find a new way for kids to express what they have learned so that you can take joy in reading what they have to say.

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Tips for Lesson Plan Sharing

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

I teach students who have multiple disabilities in grades 3-5.  I have a unique class since some are from the district we are housed in and other students are from surrounding districts.  It is a countywide program housed in a particular building.  We have K-12th grade classes in 2 districts in the county.  There are 2 other classrooms within my program that have 3-5th graders.  Since we do not have the luxury of having particular textbooks and workbooks that we use like students in the general education curriculum, we have to make most of our lessons.  We are still held accountable for teaching the state standards.

We just recently began making theme bins based on the standards.  We used the science and social studies standards and grouped them in categories to name each bin.  For example, standards on land, rocks, geography, and earth were grouped together and called “Where in the World.”

Included in all of the bins are 3 weeks worth of lessons for each subject area (reading, writing/technology, science/social studies, and math) based on this theme and content standards.  Each lesson also includes a higher level and lower level activity since the students’ abilities are so diverse.  Each teacher created 2 bins for the year and each month we rotate the bins.  This really cuts down the preparation time that each teacher has to spend.  In each bin, there are 3 weeks worth of lesson plans, handouts, games, books, and anything else needed for the unit.

This is a very fun way to teach the students the standards and they love having themes.  And as the teacher, I love having great lessons with half the work!!

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Pandemonium With Purpose: Teaching Vocabulary and My Secret Weapon

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Inevitably, as you get to know your students at the beginning of a new school year, you also begin to think of new activities and variations on existing lessons that honor their personalities and learning styles.  I know I did.  I was full of ideas.  What bothered me, though, was that when I was a new teacher, I often didn’t know how those ideas would pan out.  On top of that, I had heard that teaching a lesson doesn’t become natural until you have done it five times.  Understandably, I found this frustrating, until I found my secret weapon.

My secret weapon was named Maggie, and she had the classroom next door to mine. After school, I would visit Maggie and expound on the mysterious nature of the pre-teen. Maggie would sympathize, and then magically, a new color-coded graphic organizer or a vocabulary game would appear in her hands.  “It works great with my English learners!” or “My kids love it!” she’d proclaim. I’d seen her students’ shiny faces smiling up at her enough to know that anything Maggie gave me would be a winner.

Maggie continued to be my secret weapon all through my first year teaching.  Here is one of the vocabulary games Maggie taught me:

Fly Swatter Vocabulary: This game will be most successful if you wait to begin playing it until your class is comfortable with the class norms and boundaries.  You will need four unused fly swatters.  You will also need a list of eight to ten vocabulary words that your students are studying.  In class, have your students come up with sentences using the words, then send them home with the list of words and their definitions to study for the next day.  Let them know there will be a fun game using the words.  Print out four to five copies of each vocabulary word in a large font size, cut them up (one word per piece of paper), mix up the words, and staple them all over the walls.

When you are ready to play the game, have your students move their desks to the middle of the room and get into four large groups, one in each corner of the room.  These are their teams. Depending on your class size, each team (a quarter of your class) could consist of five to ten (or more) team members.  Each team has the same goal:  to be the first to find the given vocabulary word on the wall, give a correct definition, and give a sentence using the word correctly.  You may decide to separate some students out to become your judging panel.  These students must be impartial and must know the words well (or have notes to refer to).  Once you have done that, have the students in each of the four teams count off, so each team has a #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and so on.  Give each #1 a fly swatter, then call out a vocabulary word.  Now, you will have four students (your #1s) roaming around the walls as they search for the word. It shouldn’t take them long to find it since you have about five of each word up.  Have your judging panel help you keep track of who hits the correct word first.  That person’s team will then have the chance to try to come up with a good definition and sentence.  Here’s the tricky part, though; it is the team’s #2 who needs to give the definition and the team’s #3 who needs to come up with a sentence. If your judges decide that the definition and sentence are good, everyone on the winning team gets a prize or points toward a prize.  Then you start over, with the #2s swatting, the #3s giving definitions, and the #4s giving sentences. If time permits, keep playing until every student has had a turn with each role.

One great thing about this game is that students become invested in each other’s learning.  Since your students don’t know what number they will be or what word you will call first, this means that every person on the team needs to know the words in order to win.  To encourage this, you may decide to give each group five minutes to study vocabulary together every day for a few days before playing the game.  This game can also be modified for different content.  It can be used to teach vocabulary in any content area, and can also be used to teach word roots and affixes.

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Reading Aloud in Middle Grade Classrooms

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

After lunch my kids used to come barreling into the classroom.  They had wolfed down lunches and then run off to play basketball or gossip among themselves.  They came into class sweaty and chatty.  They would throw their backpacks down, grab their books, pens and papers, and sprawl in their chairs.  How would I ever get them to focus after lunch when they really wanted to continue that basketball game?

So here’s what I did.  You might want to try this, it was easy and it worked.  I read aloud to them.  I picked up a good old-fashioned book, and took the first few precious minutes of the class to read.  Some might question this.  After all it wasn’t getting them right to work, they weren’t being engaged in an assignment.  But to that I say, phooey.  They were getting to hear a story, one that I knew would captivate them.  As 7th graders they wouldn’t pick up books that they thought sounded “babyish.”  But if the teacher was reading a book to them they had to listen didn’t they?

My students hadn’t had lots of exposure to the bigger world so I tried to find things they could enjoy.  One of my favorites was Old Yeller.  Of course it was what Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, would call a “cry book.”  At the end of the book there was always a few students with their heads down on the desk, tears dripping from their eyes.  I found the best way to handle that was to not.  I just let them cry.  If they wanted to talk about it later we did so privately and individually.

Another kind of story the kids liked were those that were a bit absurd.  I remember reading James and the Giant Peach.  Any time I read a book I planned where I would stop each time.  However, with this book we all got carried away.  I almost finished it the first time I read it aloud to a class.  To be that enthralled by a book sometimes makes it okay to just read aloud for an hour.

For a group of particularly challenged learners I read the first of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  With these I had to spend a lot of time talking about vocabulary before I began reading.  While it might seem simple, most of my students were second language learners, so it took a lot to help them understand.  But they did enjoy the books and often asked me to read the next one in the series, which I happily did.

If you teach young students no doubt you read to your kids, but what about older ones?  I always felt if nothing else the kids could hear a really good book.  And it must have worked, as they always calmed down as they listened and enjoyed the story.  I had finished reading and we could progress through the rest of the class, focused on whatever the task at hand for the rest of the day.

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