Category: Curriculum Ideas

Summer Series of Saves: Discuss, please

Twitter, well, Twitter is a lot of things but it does provide some great discussion/debate threads if you’re patient to find the gems.

Here are five threads that gave me some ideas for discussion questions:

What causes poverty: moral failures or society’s failures? (*remember, in strong argumentative reasoning there is always the third rail)

Why don’t more girls sign up for computer or technology classes? 

Is talking and learning about controversial topics more or less important than not causing conflict in school?

What is going on here?

Is it possible to stop gun violence?

 

Favorite Lessons: Box of Destiny

A wonderful question appeared on one of my ELA social media groups the other day, “What was your favorite lesson/unit you created?” and immediately I thought of the (say this in a trumpeting voice): BOX OF DESTINY!

I created this prior to hearing the term ‘role play’ — not being a Dungeons and Dragons person and prior to my time in Azeroth, this idea came organically. While teaching humanities and Ancient Rome, I first create the Voices from the Grave unit, whereby students would draw a card giving them a role in Ancient Rome: it required hours of research on my part, and was a joy to make.

FF83A298-02F4-4676-887F-BB397C4FA692
Over the years, I put something new on the box–it has many layers.

Later, turning to Ancient Greece, I created the Box of Destiny. The idea is this: make a box and present with great fanfare and mystery to students*: the box contains 4″x6″ cards with the name of a Greek god, goddess, creature, spirit, etc. The interview questions are the same. From those questions, students research their character and present in first-person. This is important: explain to students if they are male or identify as male and get a female character, they may change, etc., however, writers do not write in purely their own gender or about their own gender. Some brave souls will take a character who is a different gender from themselves, and it is my hope as students’ awareness of gender identities continues this is not an issue. They can work in pairs, but independent presentations are encouraged. They can choose a modern retelling or update story, change the form, but the first-person narrative is key.

Athena

After the research, draft their short narrative, time to make props and backgrounds begin. The final presentation includes full role-play gear and a reading of their story. Students in the audience applaud, of course, and then there is a Q&A session and feedback.

6A546F78-E4E4-4D0D-A650-AC3B8014051A

*Don’t skimp on this. 

Caution: Satyrs brings students to some questionable information. Be aware of age-appropriate sites.

Some of the characters:

  • Athena
  • Zeus
  • Aphrodite
  • Hypnos
  • Pan
  • The Moirai (good for a team, or have one presenter create a one-woman show)
  • Artemis
  • Zephyr
  • Persephone
  • Demeter
  • Hades
  • Poseidon
  • Eris* (my personal favorite)
  • Circe
  • Nemesis
  • Helios
  • Cronus
  • The Muses/Calliope
  • Eros
  • Prometheus
  • Rhea
  • Cerberus
  • Medusa
  • Ares
  • Dionysus
  • Hypnos
  • Hephaestus
  • Apollo

I am trying to go through years of digital files to locate the original cards, but they’re not hard to make in Word. Use card stock and laminate to give them gravitas. Rubrics? Examples? Well, you will want to update them, of course.

If you have any questions, feedback, or comments, ask away!

Box of Destiny Rubric 2017

Part I: Renaissance Fairness

I make digital art: this is Dolly Blueflower.

Sometimes we teachers may grow cynical about the ‘career and college’ ready mission statement. It’s not hard to see why: when our nation voted gave corporations the same voting rights as human beings we knew we were in deep trouble. To avoid that rabbit hole, I’ll just say this: we still work, and one of our jobs as teachers is to show students the opportunities and pathways so they can make the work-life decisions for themselves with the best and rigorous information.

And a secret to all this is — not all work is bad. Far from it. Modeling passion and personal engagement in our work lives is part of the mix of building relationships with students: when we point to the purpose of learning, the foundational piece comes from us. Establish our own engagement, purpose and love of our time in the workplace.

We were the nation of innovators and dream makers. We were envied the world over for our ability to create, for ingenuity and puppy-like enthusiasm. I am not sure we are that now, with a few exceptions (looking at you, Elon Musk). And I pin my hopes on the next generation of thinkers, inventors, writers, artists, and designers on helping students communicate and build the skills necessary to work together in order to solve problems.

The work I’m doing in the WABS/STEM Fellowship program and the PLU ELL Endorsement is guiding my thinking: I wanted to share some ideas from STEM group in terms of project/collaboration/employability rubrics:

Developed by industry leaders
Some ‘soft skills’ to look for when students are engaged in collaboration
From http://www.bie.org/
http://www.bie.org/
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/assessment-create-student-centered-learning-andrew-miller
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/assessment-create-student-centered-learning-andrew-miller

Part II of this providing those assessment pieces and lessons to go along with these initial rubrics.

 

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes: listening and speaking all the way

From Regular Show.
My.
Favorite.

Always adding and refining: here are some resources to help with class discussions and partner work. Enjoy!

Previous posts on discussions:

http://blog0rama.edublogs.org/tag/turn-and-talk/

http://blog0rama.edublogs.org/2017/07/09/summer-series-of-saves-can-we-talk-about-this/

[embeddoc url=”https://mrskellylove.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/partner-work-protocols-klove-17nhkzw-1swj888.pptx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft” ]

[embeddoc url=”https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/files/2018/01/ELL-Sentence-Frames-Exploratory-Classes-27pmdyh-1iq52aw.docx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft” ]

From a colleague:

[embeddoc url=”https://mrskellylove.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/sentence-frames-1du5k9e-re7twh.docx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft” ]

 

Heroic measures: teach critical thinking

My big question this morning: how do we teach, and learn, to think critically?

Not the surface-level fluff–but the hard questions, the wrestling with the trifecta of intellectual stagnation: cognitive dissonance, justification, and rationalization?

Do we need heroes/heroines?

What would happen…if…we…didn’t?

What if…we were good to each other, did no harm, and made our classrooms, lecture halls, and online spaces engaged and safe places to discuss questions and seek ideas and answers?

Consider and read this thread: keep track and curate the narratives you teach: by every figure, do a character study. We need to face and review the decisions of the past and reconcile and come to terms with our future.

Example: what if Ruth Hopkins didn’t follow this path? Discuss the narrative of Lincoln’s heroism and his great, grave flaws?

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

But we don’t really teach critical thinking because that would cause a potential revolt to order.

What Does ‘Critical Thinking’ Mean?

This feels very big to me right now, and scary, but this is the gift I want to give my students most of all: the courage to question, and draw their own conclusions, and then have the mindfulness and mental flexibility to adjust those conclusions if necessity demands.

Now: that is a big idea. How to go about it?

Okay. Any ideas welcome.