Monday, March 03, 2008

musing

So this morning I prepared myself to be a hardcore strict badass once again. My classes were nearly doubled in size, with three of my best students removed as an extra cherry on top (my students are now able to recognize that this is sarcasm!).

So I wore a suit and my hair up, and I had all the students, new and old, rewrite the daily procedures. I assured all the students that we do NOT have any nonsense in our classroom. I briefly went over rules/expectations, and then jumped into the lesson.

Working with the media literacy stuff, there are so many great opportunities to get the kids actively engaged with something. Last week they explored newspapers, and at the end of the week I might let them go through magazines. But, where do I draw the line with being on task? With the newspapers, there were always a few who were reading the sports or admiring the dresses (post Oscar issues) or some nonsense. That makes me want to snap at them and take evreything away. Magazines are even worse. I can't afford to buy those, so they'll have to bring in or I'll use some of an old stash from previous years. But still, I want the kids to analyze and think about the content and meanings, not flip through lazily to look at pictures. Ack.

I would love to assign them a project creating their own magazines. Should I assign it as a group project? I kind of want each of them to come up with their own idea, a cover, including a picture and titles, and then one or two articles (including an editorial?). We need to review the writing process, which I think could make work with this.

Also, I really want to do a project for women's history. The kids already wrote regular biographies and brochures, so I don't want to do those again. What about a diorama? Would it be difficult to show suffragettes or others in a shoebox? The issue is research and plagiarism--not enough of the former and too much of the latter. Also, I'd need to prepare a list of women to investigate. I started some notes and thinking about this today and I don't want to wait too long to get started. Ideas or suggestions?

2 comments:

17 (really 15) more years said...

Why not have the kids make a scrapbook for your women's history project? I'm not sure about the demographics in your school, but if you had them work in groups, maybe you could set a maximum dollar amount for each group to spend on supplies. You assign each group a famous woman in history, and then they make a scrapbook of their lives/accomplishments.

Just a thought- I'm so tired, I'm babbling, lol

Ms. M said...

If you want I have a big stack of New York Magazines just waiting to be donating to a needy classroom. Maybe we could get together for lunch or dinner sometime in the near future and you could pick them up. Let me know.