Pedagogy and Praxis Day 10

I gave the vocab test today and for the most part everyone did better than last week. Using the sticks and flash card drills seemed to make for better performance all around. However, it is somewhat hard to compare since the quizzes that I used were different. Last week I did the blank paper and define. Today I gave them the definition and they gave me the word, Jeopardy Style. However, through the week I had pulled sticks and students that normally appear in a semi-comatose state actually gave me correct answers. While I haven't graded the quizzes yet, kids seemed to do well when I checked the papers as they turned them in. Today was Friday so energy was kind off. Kids seemed ready to go to home... starting with the first period.

In my first period, I had the students make up 5 questions on the various subjects (Islam, Daoism, Buddhism, Major ethnic groups, model minority myth) the test will be on. Then, I will take some of the questions from the students and put them on the test. I'll put the students' name next to the question so they will feel like they contribute to the class and test. And they won't be able to complain that I come up with such hard questions. :)) Also, I showed the students how to make semantic mapping instead of outlines. The ideas is that you should use whatever structure helps you learn better. Some people, like myself, may find outlines more helpful. Some may find semantic mapping better. Then I had students make up outlines for Monday to be used on the test.

In my second period, I answered questions that students had on the text. One question was "What are tariffs?" So I explained tariffs and wandered off into the world of the WTO... I tend to get excited and veer off into other things and then when I look around I see that kids have tuned out. I have to check that. Then I had the students do the 3R part while I called up students and individually checked their questions. Checking their questions I tried to get them to be take their questions to the next level. Instead of "What is yellow journalism?", change the question to "What is yellow journalism and how did it escalate the threat of war and what was its part in the Spanish-American-Cuban war?" For homework, I assigned the last two sections of Chapter 10 along with a 1 page paper critiquing the chapter. We've read about the problems of textbooks and we've talked about the problems with US history, so I want them thinking about possible problems and criticisms they have of the text.

In my 3rd period class, we did the W part of the KWL. I should have done this yesterday but I did it today. I had to try and get the kids to focus and hone their questions better, cause they were being far too broad. But I suppose the question "What was life like in pre WWII?" can include everything before 1939. But I wanted them to stay pretty much in the 20th century. Then we finished looking at pictures while analyzing the picture. This seemed to be interesting to the kids cause they were all paying attention and yelling out their own analyses. Of course I want them to raise their hands, but their enthusiasm was better than nothing. After that I pulled sticks to break the class into 5 groups of 3. It was the end of class by the time I finished with the sticks. But the way that luck fell, when the groups were made "certain" students were in groups with each other. Students made some jokes and I couldn't stop laughing. Then they were laughing at me cause I turned bright red from laughing and they were all laughing... It was bad that I was laughing but I couldn't stop and they thought it was funny too. It was a cool human moment, but maybe not the best teaching moment. But then bell hooks said school should be fun, so that's my excuse.