clair055

What you see here is a little booklet a group of students created in my classroom once we completed our study of World War I. It’s very simple…just a ring binder and unlined index cards. The activity begins by asking groups of students to review the notes in their notebook. Working with group members they should create a series of factual statements tracing the events of World War I. Statements should be fairly simple and straightforward. The number of statements created should correspond to the number of students in the classroom. For this particular activity we needed 18 statements. Class size determines how many statements should be assigned. Now…..before you tell me how lucky I am that in this particular group I only had 18 students let me remind you that the actual class size was larger, but a few of my special needs students had been pulled out for the review and were working with the special needs teacher. Usually this activity would require 24 or 25 statements. Once students wo...

When I was growing up my dad had a constant supply of gravel around our house because he was always using one of his tractors to move the gravel around to fill up potholes that would form on the many gravel drives around the lumberyard. From time to time my friends and I would climb the huge pile of white and grey granite stones and proclaim ourselves kings and queens of the world. That is, until we got knocked off our perch and onto our keisters. To this day I have scars and divets in my shins, knees and elbows from my rather abrupt ousters from being a world ruler. From time to time I need a diversion in the classroom…maybe I don’t feel particularly well, perhaps the weather is really crummy, or it could be that a certain student is pushing my button a little too often. Then again, maybe I’m just simply not in the mood to teach that next lesson in my American Revolution unit or World War II, or I simply can’t face explaining how the Korean War has never really ended . Yes, believe i...