Parent Teacher Conferences

We've passed the mid-nine weeks point of our first quarter. My district holds two evenings of parent teacher conferences. Often the evenings seem to go slowly. Most of my classes in the past have been high school junior/senior level and my parents haven't really needed to conference.

This year, I had lots of interested parents attend. I think it is because my HS classes shifted to freshmen and my junior high parents really wanted to get a grasp on our new schedule. I was very excited by the turn out and I really had some good conversations with both parents and students.

Several of my students commented on our new Reading Like a Historian lessons. They enjoyed the conversations and class discussions. I'm really excited about using the common core integrated lessons even more after our conferences.

A few days later, I treated my World History classes to a Roman breakfast. I found some great Tuscan loaves and boule. I added olives and dates to the menu and had planned on cheese. But as I gathered things that morning, the cheese was left behind in the fridge. :(  I asked each student to simply try a small taste of the dates and olives. They didn't have to eat the entire item. Only a few students weren't up to the challenge. I knew that many of them had never tried dates before, I knew because I hadn't either! If I'd eaten dates, it had to be in the Christmas fruitcake.

The breakfast was a success. The more adventurous students loved exploring the new foods and they were full of suggestions as to what ethnic food they wanted next. I had to remind them I was feeding 40 on my grocery budget. They had some great ideas and we will definitely try new foods again!

Pocahantas

Several years ago, I had a class that refused to believe that Pocahantas and John Smith weren't married. After all, the Disney movie had them convinced and why would Disney be wrong about history. :)

In using Reading Like a Historian, they have a great lesson plan discussing this very topic. As I've gotten my materials pulled together for this lesson my co-workers couldn't believe how many students really thought the movie was true.

We did a quick survey of students in the hall, including some older students I had in that first class. They couldn't believe I was actually going to show my class the movie (about a 5 minute clip) because I had refused to show it to them. I can't wait until Monday to see if this group of students has as much faith in the movie as my Disney loving class!

Reading Like a Historian

I was flipping through the Teaching Channel two weeks ago and came across a video of an inquiry based classroom. I loved the environment and knew with Tennessee's leap into Common Core it would blend perfectly with my teaching technique.

The teacher used curriculum from Reading Like a Historian and I knew I needed to try it in my classroom. For the first two days of class, I integrated the intro materials with the beginning of my back to school curriculum. The second lesson involved creating and writing an autobiographical book. I had run across a bound book project on another blog (one I can't find now) and I changed the lesson up just a little to use the bound book.

My students wrote their autobiographies and interviewed people about events in their lives. I have finished reading all of the books and they did an excellent job. I asked them to use as much artistic talent as they had after I explained that my talent lie in stick people but I could color with the best of them.




Here is a sample of one of the books. I learned so much about my students and I loved this lesson as an introduction to my students. I have made instant connections with them.