We are now T-minus two and a half days until I am free of kiddos for twelve glorious weeks. That being said, my class has been the best class ever for students to come to for the last week or so. I say that because the English curriculum basically tells me to do a project and teach a novel study for the last few weeks after state testing is done. All of our "real teaching" is done before the testing.
My students completed the epic Middle Ages research project and Keynote (yes, we're an all Apple school) presentations that took all of three weeks. Then they wrote a theme analysis of a novel we read in class back in March. This was their end of the year "Writing Assessment" we must complete for the district.
After that, all bets are off. I can't logically teach a novel study because (a) I just taught one six weeks prior and (b) the students are reading a novel in Science class (Hoot) and in World History class (Catherine, Called Birdy). Do I really need to confuse the 12-year-olds even more?!
So, yeah, here's what my class has looked like since last Thursday:
Thursday, Friday, and part of Monday - Watch From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler because one of my classes read it in March. The other classes read The 39 Clues: Maze of Bones, and there is not yet a film version of that book.
Other part of Monday - Make students organize all of their writing assessments from 6th grade in their writing portfolios because I don't want to do that for 100 folders.
Tuesday through whenever it takes - All classes now watch The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe while the teacher takes down bulletin boards and packs up classroom. Why this you ask? Because it's based on YA literature, was on my syllabus, and is easily justifiable if questioned. Oh, and it's ridiculously long.
So, does this make me a teacher made of awesome or of fail? I don't care. It's made me a teacher free of stress.
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8 comments:
lol i would love to have you as my teacher for this. it's educational AND easy :)
Definitely awesome. Man, if this were me I'd be showing Fellowship of the Ring as it's even LONGER than The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (though admittedly not as defensible as it's not as obviously YA lit).
If (or when) I ever become a teacher, this will be my best weapon. Movies. Ha. I love it. When I was in the 12th grade, someone in my English class convinced our student teacher to let us watch "The Girl Next Door." ha. I'd be THAT kind of movie watching TV.
I wish I could have watched The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in school. You sound like a great teacher! And a stress-free teacher is a very rare species, so good for you.
Haha. The last couple weeks consisted of movies and writing a short summary and then creating music videos with powerpoint by taking a line of a song and adding a picture of imagery. It's taken a lot of time since songs are long, and I'm evil haha. But mostly they've enjoyed surfing the web and I can play on the computer, too. :-D
Teacher Made of Awesome. Hands down!!
We used to watch one of the old BBC versions of Narnia in my grade school - it was usually near the end of the quarter, they'd put all 60 of us from one grade in a classroom and the 3 teachers for that grade were take turns "babysitting" us for the afternoon while the others worked on finishing up grades.
Occasionally we'd have a movie day for the whole grades chool - I remember watching Willy Wonka in the gym at once on a slide projector screen they set up.
Yeah, so watching a 135 minute long movie has definitely taken up all 3 days of class this week that I needed to! (My longest classes have been an hour!)
Thank you all for being awesomely supportive in my #teachingfail last days of school. I mean, really, what would you rather do, anyway?! :)
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