Tuesday, August 30, 2005

The Next Day

I just hate the first day of school. You get run ragged trying to figure everything out, especially when you're like me and this is your fourth year of teaching and your fourth school. I want two years in a row in something. It would make things easier. And the first day you have to give rules and just be boring. If I were a kid nowadays for junior or senior high, I would skip the first day and come on the second.

I am starting my business unit today. I want to put real world applications under the assignments so the kids don't feel we are just doing exercises out of a grammar book. They are going to group up, create a product, write a letter to ask me, the Bank of Butcher, for funding, and market the product with an actual audio commercial and video commercial that me make in class. It gives some buy-in, and then when we are doing some little grammar, I can say, "This is what we missed on the business unit." Also lets me see where they are. If a class is ahead of the curve, I am not going to dwell on little stuff. I also need to know if the class is behind. My first period class I have some "non-readers" they were called. They are so low on the reading scale that they are considered non-readers. This will be interesting to teach eighth-grade grade level expectations to someone who can't read.

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