Teaching Character

Be the Bean

by Kendal Privette on May 15, 2012

Coffee Beans 

The North Carolina Teacher of the Year, Tyronna Hooker,  spoke at one of our faculty meetings recently – a shot in the arm as we enter this season of testing. She shared an inspirational story with us, and, although I have to admit that I don’t always pay attention to the heartwarmers, I was…inspired. In the story a woman who is facing adversity boils a carrot in one pot, an egg in another and a coffee bean in another. The carrot gets mushy and the egg hard, but the coffee bean? Changes the water. School isn’t always easy, but we all, teachers and students alike, have a choice in how we respond to challenges.

I thought about the ways in which my students have been the bean this year. Making bracelets to raise money to provide clean water in Africa, welcoming students with special needs to their classroom, writing award-winning speeches, assisting teachers in a grant-writing project to provide a defibrillator for our school, pitching in to help our custodian while another has been on medical leave for four months, and the list goes on.

I want to be the bean everyday for my students – challenging their minds, dispelling myths, breaking up stereotypes and always, always pushing for more.

I want to be the bean everyday for my colleagues – smiling, working as a team player, and helping in any way I can.

I want to be the bean in my community – listening, advocating for students  and speaking positive words about my school.

How about you? In what ways have your students been agents for change this year? In what ways do you want to be the bean?

Kendal teaches 7th grade social studies and blogs at a spacious place

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Integrated Teaching {Bringing Happiness to Venn Diagrams}

by Laura Parker on May 5, 2012

Today’s guest post comes from an English teacher in China, Amy Young. Amy shares about how an unlikely pairing of subjects and ideals became a memorable classroom experience. You can read more about Amy’s teaching and life experience living in Beijing at her blog, Messy Middle.  You can, and should!, follow Amy on twitter at: @Amyinbj.  {Interested in guest posting?  See our guidelines here.}

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Like the average reader of this blog, I believe in integrated teaching and learning. Can you find biology in an English class? Absolutely you can! Turns out even after all these years of teaching I’m not as integrated in my thinking or lessons as I thought.

A couple of weeks ago I walked into my 3rd period Senior One (10th grade) oral English class in Beijing, China, and was greeted with cries “teach us math!” Not going to happen (even though I’d taught math in the US); but then I had one of those inspiring moments we all long to have, where things just come together. We were working on a unit about money. On a whim I wrote “happiness” and “money” on the board and asked them to make a mathematical equation showing the relationship between them. I made a pathetic sample I’m not going to show you because, well, I look like a simpleton. As I walked around the room there was a buzz in the air. “Miss Amy, can we use functions?” Can you?! I randomly chose four students to write their equations on the board, but others wanted to as well. They blew me away. Here are some the finished products:

I wish I could remember the explanation! Or these two:

Or how about this one:

I love that it culminates in a venn diagram! Even I can grasp that one.

There were graphs, exponents, sets, functions, greater than, less than, infinity, and diagrams as they depicted deep and significant things in relating money and happiness. This is what integrated teaching looks and feels like. In that class, I learned more than they did.. .

1. My definition of “Chinese Creativity” is far too narrow. Over the years I’ve been asking them to be creative in ways I know how to be creative without linking it more often into some of their strengths.

2. I’ve been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking what my students don’t know and filling in gaps, I also need to ask what they already know and incorporate it more.

3. My teaching categories are too rigid. So much for priding myself on being integrated! I would not have put money, math, happiness, and oral English in same lesson because they didn’t seem to go together.

But, apparently, to a classroom full of Chinese students, they most certainly did.

- Amy Young, orignally posted in part at Messy Middle

 Where might your definition of student creativity be too narrow, thus hindering lesson integration? Could you try a similiar activity in one of your classrooms this week?

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Teaching Self Evaluation {Video and Lesson Ideas Included}

by Laura Parker on May 1, 2012

As we approach the end of the school year, it might be a perfect time to give students space for some self evaluation. The following is a simple lesson idea for middle or high school students which asks them to look back over their school year and evaluate changes in themselves. It’s not a bad exercise for us as teachers, either.

Lesson Idea for Self Evaluation

You’ll need 15 minutes to a full class period for this exercise, depending on how much discussion you want to give to the topic.

1. Show the following video. It’s a time lapse a father produced of his daughter. He filmed her every week, from birth to 12 years, and documented her growing up in 2 minutes and 45 seconds. It’s a fascinating look at change . . .

{If you can’t see the video, click HERE.}

Lotte Time Lapse: Birth to 12 years in 2 min. 45. from Frans Hofmeester on Vimeo.

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2. After watching the video, talk to your students about how change is a slow, but definite occurrence. You may want to point out that the parents of Lotte probably didn’t recognize how much she was changing as it was happening, but when the clips were spliced together, the change is undeniable {obviously}.

3. Ask each student to get out a sheet of paper. Divide the paper up into four categories: Educational, Personal, Friendships/Relationships, Other. Ask students to list ways that they have changed this year in each category. You might have them start by writing some of the major events of the year in their lives, to help them remember some of the past year.

4. Be sure to allow students to keep their lists personal, but if they’d like to share, give some time for that, as well.

5. Talk to students about positive changes and negative changes, and ask them how we can tell which is which. You may also want to ask them to circle the most positive change the year brought about, as well as the most negative one.

Giving students time to reflect and evaluate a school year is an important exercise. It not only gives them the space and life skill of assessing their own lives, but it also helps foster a community of acceptance and honesty in your classroom. It can also provide valuable insights into your students’ personal lives, which is always a critical piece of effective teaching.

How do you intentionally mark the ending of each school year with your students?

Related. Begin with the End {Goal Setting}  |  Stop the Nag  |  Perseverance and a Rocky Video

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Using Audio Recording Technology

by Laura Parker on April 23, 2012

Looking for a way to spice up your lessons with some tech-related fun? One of the easiest ways to enhance your lesson plans is to incorporate audio recording technology.

If you have a computer lab available to your class, each child can access the sound recorder found in the Accessories folder of every Microsoft Windows-run machine. This voice recorder is limited to simple record, save, and playback functions, but young kids love to hear their own voices played back to them, so this limited functionality should be enough to keep them engaged.

Ideas for how to Use PC Audio Recording

  • Put on a Play. Assign each child a part in a very short play script. Each child can record his or her line (or sound effect) ahead of time, and have it ready to play back on cue. Then, point to each child in order, have them play their respective line, and watch them light up as the story unfolds and they each get to help create it.
  • Create Audio MadLibs . Assign each child a noun, adjective, adverb, or verb according to a MadLib script. Then, read the MadLib story out loud, and when you reach an opening in the script, ask the kids to play their appropriate recordings. Hearing the hilarity of the story will keep kids engaged, and they’ll learn the parts of speech while having fun.
  • Play Audio Recorder “Telephone.” Begin by reading a short poem or tongue twister for one student to hear. Then, in “telephone” fashion, have each child record what they thought they heard, and share it with the child next to them. Next, replay each version for everyone to hear and watch, step by step, how the communication degrades. In this activity, the children will be exposed to poetry, and they will have the chance to witness common breakdowns in communication and memory.

Ideas on How to Use a Digital Audio Recorder

If you don’t have access to a computer lab, lesson plans can also be enhanced using a single voice recorder device. A voice recorder can cost anywhere from $7.00 to $250.00, though for these purposes, a very simple, inexpensive model should do just fine.

    • Create a Collaborative Poem. Simply pass a voice recorder around the room, and have each child contribute a line to the poem. Then, play the entire poem back for everyone to hear. You can use this technique to teach the different genres of poetry, or to teach rhyme, alliteration and onomatopoeia.

As you can see, incorporating audio recording technology into your lesson plans can be a great way to enhance your students’ learning experiences and make learning more interactive, at very little or no cost. Audio recording can help students learn in a new way, and can help them find their individual voices. Just remember to be creative and have fun, because that’s what learning should be.

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Today’s Guest Poster: Sarah Stockton is an Outreach Coordinator for Voices.com, a site that connects businesses with professional voice talents in the audio recording industry. She enjoys helping potential voice talent find their start in the voice industry.

Photo credits: Woodleywonderworksand Dave Kobrehel

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How to Teach Kids Respect

April 18, 2012
How to Teach Kids Respect

One of the most highly searched character-related education topics is how to teach kids respect, according to google searches. It’s the character trait teachers scour the internet to find ideas on how to teach most often. And it’s not difficult to see why– respect has its fingers in almost all classroom management issues. Respect can [...]

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Reaching and Teaching the Impoverished Child

April 17, 2012

How many of the students with whom you regularly interact are disorganized, frequently lose papers, bring many reasons why something is missing, don’t do homework, are physically aggressive, like to entertain, only see part of what is on the page, only do part of the assignment, cannot monitor their own behavior, laugh when they are [...]

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Teaching kids (and ourselves) about being judgmental

April 5, 2012
Teaching kids (and ourselves) about being judgmental

Have you seen this video? It’s been making the rounds on the interwebz for awhile and recently gained attention again when a high profile video-curating site shared it. Currently it has over 70 million views. Take a look–it’s only 45 seconds: What thoughts floated through your mind as you listened to this child sing?  Maybe [...]

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Top 10 Teacher Tools for 2012

April 2, 2012

I just got back from attending Ed Expo 2012– a huge convention for teacher store owners where we get to see all of the brand new classroom products that are being introduced this year. As a former teacher, I look forward to this event every single year and can’t wait to get my hands on [...]

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Technology Timesavers for Teachers

March 29, 2012

Teachers today are fortunate to have access to technological tools that make our jobs easier and minimize the paperwork involved in educating our students. I didn’t grow up with computers like today’s students did, but I’m very much on board with becoming more tech savvy and, yes, even accepting help from my students when I [...]

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Energizers!

March 15, 2012
Energizers!

Teaching Tip {And-It’s-Not-Even-a-Tuesday}:  Energizers. Looking for some fresh ideas for classroom energizers?  Need an activity that refocuses your students and provides a fun way to get out some of that extra energy that seems to be coming between them and their math problems? Consider the following several ideas from an excellent resource called Responsive Classroom. [...]

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