I was super intrigued with this post at the blog Cult of Pedagogy (and the accompanying podcast) about how to upgrade classroom spaces. One of the 12 suggestions is to increase the amount of writable surfaces in your classroom. A colleague at NEH this summer said that tables that the kids can write on have made a huge difference in her classroom. Then, this blog post reiterated the idea that getting kids to write on classroom spaces allows them to feel a sense of ownership over the space. I'm also loving that it gets kids out of their seats (my writable surfaces are on the wall) and that it makes visual sharing very easy - we just spend a minute looking around at what others have written, before any discussion takes place.
Today I introduced the theme for this semester, which has been many months in the making: Monsters. We listened to scary music and looked at various images of monsters. Then the kids went "to the board" to brainstorm ideas and associations they have with monsters. These are some of the resulting lists and concept maps:
OK, that was way more difficult than I expected it to be, so I'm not going to comment on them anymore, except to say that the group that wrote "truth" and "apple" and "snake" exceeded my expectations!
Below is a new idea in the making. I read in Penny Kittle's Book Love (one of my teaching Bibles) about writing letters to students about what I'm reading. I've tried it below with the memoir I'm reading right now. They'll look at this on Wednesday, then write me back about what they started reading last week. I'm hoping the letter writing will encourage them to stick with one book.
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