Ok, so we met this morning and man were we ever productive. Has there ever been a department meeting when there a lull in a conversation occured? I can't remember any in the 7 years I've been at Mack High. I seriously think that the comment period on the blog beforehand really made today's meeting successful. So many good ideas. Here's what I recorded, in somewhat randomish I've got to go to bed because I'm exhausted order:
- project bulletin board (to display projects in September)
- eliminate selections and replace with cheap books, online materials, etc.
- howsa bout a film/book/article combo?
- advertising push - teacher visits to classrooms, etc.
- an incentive reward program...a marathon of reading contest
- most active blog participant, 1st person online, most books read, parent signatures, etc.
- other incentives
- automated phone call
3 comments:
Hey guys! I apologize for missing the meeting last week. After the snow day I completely forgot about it...I guess unexpected freedom kind of makes me lose my sense of teacherly responsibility! Anyways, thank you Joel for posting the ideas that were discussed. I love the idea of a film/ book/ article combo. It encourages media literacy and text to text connections across genres among other skills which would be excellent for AP Lang kids. I was thinking that maybe we could do book-talks in June for the books on the lists so that the students have a sort of preview and can choose something that really interests them. Then when they get back in Sept. we could organize lit circles where students do their own book-talks and "sell" their book to a group of students who read something else. They could present the culmination of their summer work such as a movie trailer for the book, an art project (collage, illustration, new book cover, etc.), or a response in the form of creative writing. Just some ideas to keep the conversation moving...
I like the book talk idea. I think we should shoot for May. Maybe we could film some teachers talking about the books...that way we could throw them online. Might help kids put names to faces.
By the way, I canvassed my AP Lit class about their summer reading feelings. Surprisingly enough, the majority did the summer reading between 8th - 9th grade. They were also pretty pissed when it wasn't counted. Some of them complained about doing the summer reading between 10th and 11th and not having it counted.
A lot of my 9th graders have asked me about it at different times so I know that many of them did buy the books and do the reading, which is pretty cool. I was just too busy orienting myself to everything else to figure out what to do about it at the time.
Post a Comment