Being Creative Takes Work!

This week I realized some of the differences between fun/creative/active lesson plans and some of the more hum-drum lessons....fun lesson plans require a whole lot more work. Work before. Work during. Some work after. I pushed my creativity during this week and it seriously wore me out. The hard part is this: I'm not even sure it was all worth it. I saw some students engaged and excited to learn, but I also saw plenty who remained unengaged and seemingly uninterested in the lesson I was teaching. Boo! :(

We started talking about argument and persuasion this week. To introduce it, I showed Super Bowl commercials and other persuasive ads and had the students analyze which ads they found most convincing and why. It was a pretty fun lesson. Yesterday we talked about the use of ethos, logos, and pathos in persuasion and argument. I'm not sure all of my studnets completely understood those terms, but we will use them a lot more this week and hopefully that helps. I have learned the power of repetition in the classroom. Whatever you want to stick in the students' mind, you just have to repeat about 4 bazillion times.

Speaking of repeating things, next week my students will take a test on the use of commas. This week we did so many comma review activities, I could almost see the commas coming out of my students' ears. I don't know why, but I love commas....I even plan on wearing my roommates shirt that has commas all over it for the test day (yes, I have a roommate who is basically as comma crazy as I am). I hope all this repetition has paid off and I can see how they have mastered these concepts.

We are also fully in motion in our Outsiders unit plan. I love coming to school and hearing my kids say, "Ms. Mayans, are we reading today!?!?" They groan when I say no. I'm hoping they love it more than just because they get to draw as they listen to the audio book. (One of the activities I discovered from a fellow teacher is a graffiti wall where the students draw symbols they find in the book. It has been a great assignment so far).  Next week we will read some more and talk about some more symbolism from Robert Frost's poem, "Nothing gold can stay" (which is in chapter 5 of the book).

Speaking of teaching next week, I have been assigned a practicum student to come observe my class and teach some lessons. Weird! It seems like forever ago that I was a practicum student walking into Mt. Nebo Junior High for the first time. This guy will probably be my replacement intern next year, so this is a great opportunity for him to see the dynamics of the school. I've given him a few lessons to teach this week, and I am excited to see what he is able to do in my classroom. That will be next week's adventure.