It's College Tour Season Part 2

So, our second college tour happened to be the Historically Black College, Bowie State. Before we toured their campus, we went to the National Mall. Now, we didn't have a lot of time to go each of the museums and tour all of the monuments so I created a scavenger hunt for my students, so they could take in as much as possible.

Unfortunately it rained, so it dampened my students' spirits a bit, but we still had tons of fun. One of the rules of the scavenger hunt was to post their pictures on Instagram they could not however, post their answers on there because all the other teams would see it.  (yes, we use this a lot because the kids use it a lot why not incorporate it into my lesson?)

the hunt begins

one of the clues

of course I had to make the Capitol one of the clues

After our scavenger hunt, we trekked on to our tour of Bowie State. It's a little off the beaten path, so we couldn't tour the neighborhood like we did at Georgetown. Our tour guide were very helpful here. Usually, tour guides have trouble with middle school students...they aska ton of questions and a little on the immature side. They usually prefer high school students, but our tour guide joked around with our students and made them feel right at home. They were also very thorough and we were able to go inside some of the buildings. My students really appreciated the welcome mate being rolled out for them.  

and the tour begins

Our tour guide, joking around with the students and showing them the Performing Arts building.

My students loved this tour!

It's College Tour Season Part 1

First let me start this off by saying that in addition to teaching a creative writing course, I also teach a college readiness class called AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination). Last week proved to be pretty productive for my AVID class. We knocked out 2 out of the 3 college tours we had set for this quarter. We've been talking about college all year, and I've been preparing them for one component of the college admissions process by having them work on electronic portfolios using Google sites. They've added their autobiographic sketches, resumes, pictures, and outline for their 5 year plan to their portfolios.

One assignment I added when we got closer to touring the colleges was the college profile. They had to choose 3 colleges they wanted to attend and give me information on admission requirements, costs, scholarships/financial aid, available housing, student organizations on campus, and course requirements for their chosen major. This had a tremendous impact on how they viewed the college tours. One, they knew what to look for and to ask the tour guide, and two, they asked more detailed questions. Last year, when I took my students to Georgetown and Howard, they asked questions like, "What dining selections are available?" This year they asked, "What are the meal plan options and how much does each one cost?"

So the first campus we toured was Georgetown's campus. We went down to Georgetown and walked through the neighborhood, ate lunch at the restaurants on M and relaxed by the riverfront before we went to campus. This way, students considering this university had a chance to see the neighborhood they probably would be frequenting and the campus.

Walking through the neighborhood.

Playing Frisbee by the riverfront

 By the riverfront..I wanted to take them on a riverboat cruise to see the monuments, but our grant money was way too specific for that :-( 

 touring the campus 

touring the campus

Haiku for the Blue Planet Student Mosaic Part 1

So, in the previous blog post I shared a mosaic that my students put together for Earth 2010. This year, we were already working on haikus which are traditionally written about nature to for our unit of poetry. (Happy Poetry Month!) I had my students decide what they wanted the picture to be, draw it, cut it up and each student wrote his/her haiku on a piece of the planet.

We started first by drafting our poems:

Then we checked over them to make sure they followed the correct format:

Then we wrote our haikus on our little pieces of the planet:

Next we put them all together to create our mosaic:

I added a little extra credit assignment that my students were really excited about. We went outside and took pictures of nature with our camera phones and then I had the students post their pictures to Instagram and put their haiku as the caption. We used a hashtag them so I could find them and give them credit. They liked that they could share their assignment on a social media site they often use:

Ode to Earth Student Mosaic Part 1

Back in 2010, I had my students create a mosaic to honor Earth on Earth Day. Each picture has a poem, in the form of an ode, celebrating nature. We pieced them together to create this beautiful mosaic in the hall which we dubbed, "Ode to Earth". This year I plan to do the same thing with my Creative Writing class only this time we'll be focusing on haikus since we're deep into our poetry unit and are focusing on poetic form. (Happy Poetry Month! btw) That mosaic will probably be much more detailed. I will be posting the results. Stay tuned!

Facebook Profile Character Development Lesson

Standard:

CCSS RL 9-10.3 Analyze how complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.

Objective:

Students will analyze the characters’ multiple and conflicting motivations in “Hamlet” in order to determine how these interactions drive the plot. Students must have an understanding of internal/external conflict, plot and character traits.

Essential Question: 

How do the internal conflicts of certain characters affect the external conflict between other characters in the play and how does this advance the plot?