Week 2

I teach high school--tenth grade. Honestly, I am more interested in pragmatic ideas that I can try (and possibly adopt) right away than I am in the research behind the philosophy of the ideas. That is why I am enjoying the book more now. Regarding the use of games--I did try a "Jeopardy" style approach this week as a review activity before a unit test. I allowed the students to generate questions corresponding to the categories on the board. In two classes, I observed good enthusiasm and co-operation along with good responses. One class couldn't handle the more informal nature of the activity. The two classes who "played" successfully had higher scores on the test the next day. These are not scientific results, yet. . . .

For the academic vocabulary terms, I generally define the term and offer examples. I ask students to look for other examples in the texts we are reading. For example, when we studied King's "I Have a Dream" speech as an example of persuasive literature, I asked them to highlight examples of antithesis, parallelism, repetition, metaphor, simile, etc. Jacque Scarbrough sent some good ideas for teaching academic vocabulary. I especially like the "Word Wall."

The dry erase board/paddle idea also appeals to me especially for review activity.