Teacher Talk Tuesday: Activities

Hey guys! I apologize for the break in posts after having done so well posting regularly the past few weeks. We had Easter break from school (four-day weekend, YAY!) and I really meant to get some posts queued up for the blog and I just didn't make it. Today's Teacher Talk Tuesday is supposed to be about activities that we've been doing in class lately. Being that we've only had a couple days of school since last week, some of these activities are a little bit older, but I think they're worth mentioning.

I only have a couple of pictures, but I'm going to share anyway. The first one is of a "graffiti" piece that I did on the white board during To Kill a Mockingbird. The point of this was to showcase things that we learn as we transition from children to adults; this is meant to mirror the fact that Scout Finch learns a number of lessons as she grows up in the novel. We spent a class period discussing the different sayings and defending whether we thought they were true or not. Students had varying opinions and it was kind of a fun activity. When we were done discussing them, the students had to pick a couple and summarize their thoughts on them. They seemed to really like this activity! I'll do it again next year if I can!

    

The second picture I have is kind of hard to make out, but it was a fun memory. In LA2 (sophomore-level English), we are talking about parodies in preparation for End-of-Course Exams. We showed a number of parodies - videos, lyrics, etc. - to students and ultimately gave them a couple of days to create one of their own to present to the class. We have a student in this class who is wheel-chair bound (and all-around fantastic) and his group really wanted him to be able to participated so they decided to spoof NASCAR by creating a "NASCOOTER" race/commercial. They brought in an electric scooter and essentially, we went to the parking lot and filmed them racing. We got our Activities Director involved waving the finish-line flag and we all took pictures and videos. It was a fun memory, in addition to them getting to storyboard and execute some sort of project that isn't just an essay.

What are some great things you're doing in class??