Ideas for Next Year
---Janna's More Solid Project Ideas---
Overview: Students write six words that describe themselves or their lives so far. I want to do this to learn a little bit about each student at the very beginning of the year.
Time: 2 days |
Overview: Students write their first narrative pieces of the year in the style of Sherman Alexie's "Indian Education." I want to do this because students would be using a really great model for their writing, AND I get to discuss with the class the purpose of education.
Time: 3 weeks |
---Texts I'd Like to Teach---
---Janna's Random Brainstorming---
Editorials
This whole unit comes from Heather Lattimer's wonderful book, Thinking Through Genre.
Week 1-2: Develop Comprehension, Ask Essential Questions
Week 1-2: Develop Comprehension, Ask Essential Questions
- As you read, ask the following questions:
- What is the issue?
- What is the author's position?
- What are the arguments that support this position?
- How does this editorial change how I feel?
- Decoding the editorial structure
- Students recognize the common structure of the editorial and the signal words that help a reader know when the author is presenting his position or the other side's opinion
- Tips for Finding and Choosing Articles: At this stage in the unit, it's important for students to be successful. The purpose is for students to practice answering the essential questions, explaining the structure of the piece, and finding the signal words. Students shouldn't be bogged down in confusion because of the difficulty of the texts. For these reasons, the teacher chose the articles very carefully at this stage by keeping these things in mind.
- Primary concern: content: will this engage the students?
- Difficulty of the language and the level of background knowledge required
- Texts that presented editorials on both sides of an issue. New York Times Upfront and "Debate" section from USA Today usually had both sides. The teacher could then model the task with the one side, then have students do the task with the other, and come together for a deeper discussion of the topic.
Can Humor Solve our problems, or at least help?
Don't know what to do with your life? Maybe become a Career advisor
Use crime scene/DNA knowledge to write Detective novels
Financial Aid Confusion? No problem! we're here to help
Fairy Tales and fashion: how certain stories become popular depending on the times
What does sustainability really look like?
People yell at me for wasting paper. Whenever I'm in the copy room, I feel bad for printing out hundreds of pages for the students to read. But I don't really know the impact. Isn't there energy being used when students stare at their computer screens, or save information in a google doc? What are all of those data centers google and apple keep building? How much energy are those using? Is paper really the worse of the two? And what is it doing to students' eyes when they stare at computer screens all day to read what I could have printed out for them?
And on a barely related note, where do all of the cans and glass jars go when I throw them in the blue bin instead of the black one?
And what does a truly sustainable village, country, world look like? How much effort are people willing to expend to create such a world? Does it mean that we keep our glass jars and fill up our spaghetti sauce in the grocery store? Should we go back to having milk men come to drop off milk and pick up old glass cartons?
Does our use once and throw away mentality keep the germs away? Those plastic reusable grocery bags always freak me out. Last week you had raw chicken wrapped in plastic in that bag, and now you put in apples. The week before you forgot to take the oranges out and mold grew all over them and inside that bag. And now you're using it...yucky.
And why so many plastic bags for vegetables? Plastic bags inside plastic bags inside the plastic bag that's in your trashcan in your house.
And even if we figured out all of this and came up with a system that fit our busy lives, would people be willing to change their ways?
And on a barely related note, where do all of the cans and glass jars go when I throw them in the blue bin instead of the black one?
And what does a truly sustainable village, country, world look like? How much effort are people willing to expend to create such a world? Does it mean that we keep our glass jars and fill up our spaghetti sauce in the grocery store? Should we go back to having milk men come to drop off milk and pick up old glass cartons?
Does our use once and throw away mentality keep the germs away? Those plastic reusable grocery bags always freak me out. Last week you had raw chicken wrapped in plastic in that bag, and now you put in apples. The week before you forgot to take the oranges out and mold grew all over them and inside that bag. And now you're using it...yucky.
And why so many plastic bags for vegetables? Plastic bags inside plastic bags inside the plastic bag that's in your trashcan in your house.
And even if we figured out all of this and came up with a system that fit our busy lives, would people be willing to change their ways?
What is the real impact of technology on our lives?
I see people working incredibly hard all around me, and then they go home and are so tired that they sprawl out on the couch and stare at the t.v. until it's time to go to sleep. I thought technology was supposed to make our lives easier, but I recently read an article about how much people worked in various time periods in various places in the world, and in no other time period are people working as hard as they are now in developed countries.
Now isn't that sad? And backwards? Or am I missing something here?
Now I understand that when you build infrastructure, like roads and power lines, you have to employ people to maintain those things. That is the most basic level. But I see something far stranger going on. People work obsessively, and they are so afraid to lose their jobs. They say it's just what they have to do in order to keep their job, and by keeping their job, maintain the lifestyle they've grown accustomed to--sailing on the weekends, living five blocks from the beach, going off to Europe every other year, shopping at Trader Joes, etc.
That's all fine and wonderful. Work hard play hard. I get it. But I wonder what the impact it has on people. Are people more lonely now? Are they happier? Are they healthier? Are we afraid to make friends more now than in the past? How does all of this technology affect our social lives, our happiness, our sense of self worth? Are we all just keeping up with the Jones's? And is there a solution if this is a problem?
Now isn't that sad? And backwards? Or am I missing something here?
Now I understand that when you build infrastructure, like roads and power lines, you have to employ people to maintain those things. That is the most basic level. But I see something far stranger going on. People work obsessively, and they are so afraid to lose their jobs. They say it's just what they have to do in order to keep their job, and by keeping their job, maintain the lifestyle they've grown accustomed to--sailing on the weekends, living five blocks from the beach, going off to Europe every other year, shopping at Trader Joes, etc.
That's all fine and wonderful. Work hard play hard. I get it. But I wonder what the impact it has on people. Are people more lonely now? Are they happier? Are they healthier? Are we afraid to make friends more now than in the past? How does all of this technology affect our social lives, our happiness, our sense of self worth? Are we all just keeping up with the Jones's? And is there a solution if this is a problem?
Social Services to get people back on their feet: what works?
An in-depth look at what services are offered in San Diego for people who are living at or below the poverty line and what works and what does not.