Too Much Rope?

                Had and interesting couple of weeks recently. Since the CSTs have been all completed, I have been focusing mostly on project-based activities for my students. One that I recently did, a CD Project that I got from my first CP, seemed like it would be a good fit. I changed things around for the project to fit in with the students, and I felt that things were going great. The final portion of the project was for the students to present what they had researched for the project. When the day came for one of my periods to present, it turns out that nearly half of the class was not prepared to present. I found this out through random assignment, picking the students from the roster at random. After hearing multiple students saying they weren’t ready to present, I asked the class as a whole who had completed their projects. When I saw that only half were fully prepared, I was a little disheartened. I had lectured my class about my expectations and the need to be prepared for the presentations multiple times. I suppose that, with the amount of time that I had given the students, maybe it was just enough rope for several of them to hang themselves with? Thankfully my other class that had done the project was more prepared, and I was spared having to talk to them about getting their acts together, since this project counted for so much.

Got a LOT of Student Excitement!

                 One of the closing plans I did with my world history class was to do a history vs Hollywood project. We picked a time period for the class, in this case WWII, and we learned about a specific event. I Chose the Battle of the Bulge, as it was something different from D-Day, which they had already learned about. We spent a portion of the class going over the historical notes of the battle, and then began watching an episode of Band of Brothers. It was very well received by the class, as they were all engaged by the film. We had a great closing discussion comparing history to Hollywood. Many of the students actually wanted to keep watching the series, and thought that it did an awesome job of presenting different portions of the war. They even wanted to keep doing this style of project, watching further episodes and comparing them to what actually happened in history. Definitely a good feeling that I created a fun lesson for them that they would want to continue to use to learn!