Hail, Caesar

Kristine and Erica worked on presenting Ancient Rome to our whole class Social Studies after school extension. Ancient Rome, amiright?

I really enjoyed watching my peers try their hand at teaching a band of students between various grades, various learning abilities, various attention spans and much, much more. Some students wanted to jump out of their seats every second possible, while another student actually brought his own tablet to record the lesson because he was so excited to learn more about Ancient Rome (shout out to that kid, by the way). Teaching a class that is not yours, that is multiple grade levels and that you have only seen once a week for possibly three consecutive weeks is intense. The kids are exhausted, annoyed, irritated at each other, wondering how laid back or strict you are and very, very curious. It's a lot.

The best part about these lessons, however, was that they were about Ancient cultures, like Romans, Greeks and China. As a history nerd, explorer, avid reader and Indiana Jones pretenderer (that's a word now), I was all about it. Yes to ancient cultures, and yes to teaching about Ancient Rome during the month of March. Can we say, Ides of March? Et tu, Brutus? I will not stop.

Ancient Rome is amazing, dramatic, particular, good food, drama, goverment, art, drama, drama and can I say drama? If you can't get kids excited about Rome (GLADIATORS) then you are simply not trying.

Kristine and Erica really put a lot of thought into their lesson. They offered a lot of physically engaging lessons, found niches within their lesson to gear to students who needed to be engaged a little more and motivated a class of students who could be hard to motivate at times. As two students started to shift in their seats and become a behavior problem, my peers tried their hand at disciplining students they had almost never worked with. It was difficult, the students pushed boundaries and tested waters. It is so hard to come into a strange room, where you don't have direction about how a classroom is generally handled as well as various students who are unsure who is in charge, in a way. The student's behavior was disappointing, at the least. I was surprised any student would be so callous to a teacher's direction or motivation, which were given multiple times.

But it is a learning experience, for all of us. Any time I have had to work with a student who has been disruptive or disrespectful, I get to strengthen my abilities at managing a classroom. And I hope, hope, that when I do have my own classroom, that classroom management will be one of my strengths.

It's all Greek to me!

Rachel and I spent hours pouring our hearts, minds, brain matter, cookies and the like into developing a Unit Plan that would be engaging, motivating, historical and sincere to a group of students we didn't really know. It was not easy, to say the least. 

It was frustrating. Let's say that. 

Direct Lesson is important, I know this. My Constructivist ways, aka Hippie Ways, feels different. But Direct Lessons are needed. Sometimes I feel we throw so much Inquiry Based Learning, Cooperative Based learning into theory and debate that we stop talking about the importance of Direct Lesson. It is so important. As Rachel and I began the process of constructing a durable Direct Lesson, we found ourselves changing and reformatting and changing yet again almost all of our work. Here, we would agree, we have our prerequisites done. And then we would begin the lesson only to realize, oh actually we don't. We would move onto Inquiry and realize that we had to take a step back because that wasn't covered in Direct. Cooperative would have forged ahead, and then we would stop and look at each other with panic, realizing we hadn't touched on the topic during Direct. Direct was the master key, everything else was just extra. 

Now that we have created our Unit Plan, run through it with one another, taught it to a class, I can say wow. Even after all our careful planning, scrutiny and demands of our Unit Plan, it still wasn't enough. And it was good! It had hiccups, many, but it was good. The kids were engaged, they were motivated, they were given tasks that were approachable and friendly but scholarly and demanding. It was so exhausting. 

What can I say about Direct Lesson? I need to keep studying it, it is the beast of burden of the Unit Plan, it paves the way for higher order learning. In a way it is the glue to the Unit Plan, the chore that must be done before anything else. 

Because up my sleeve I have some really cool riddles for us to solve. 

Exploring China

 The first group to present their three part lesson was Group 1, or better known to our class as Colleen and Michael.

The group presented Ancient China to students ranging from third grade to eighth, which is no easy task. We had all performed an opening activity with the students the week before, which was a fun introduction to the civilizations we would be presenting.



Colleen and Michael hit the ground running, presenting Ancient China with vokis, videos and images. Colleen and Michael worked to bring an old world back to life to young students. They introduced the topic with images of China: dragons, rice fields and ink prints of an ancient way of life.

The students were tired but interested, excited but hesitant. The students were work with come to us after a long, hard day's work of school and adults explaining things. We ask them to give us their attention and respect, which might not sound like much but some feel like a puddle of exhaustion and can barely master either.

Colleen and Mike addressed students by name and were extremely organized. I like Colleen and Mike's dynamic. They were friendly and courteous and worked really well together.

The kids drew off of Colleen and Mike's enthusiasm as well. The first initial resistance melted away and became curiosity. Terracotta soldiers got everyone out of their seats to see the images clearer and discussing Confucius wasn't labors-om.

For the Cooperative Learning segment, Group 1 asked the students to really think about the Great Wall.
The group showed off the Great Wall of China and asked the students to work independently and then in small groups to pose a question about the Great Wall and then solve.

 

I enjoyed watching Colleen and Mike work together as they learned how to teach a classroom of new students and become co-teachers. I gave feedback that focusing on one element of Ancient China would have been more successful and that the Great Wall could have been trotted out a little differently. Such as, did you know that people used to think that The Great Wall of China could be seen from space? Now we know that's not true. What else do we think we know about the Great Wall that isn't true?

Is Toon Doo a toon to do?

Well, well, well....

Let me preface this quick entry with an author's note; I love art. I love all sorts of art. I love the art that the classical painters made, I love the art that the minimalist artists showcase at DIA and I love strange art that makes me look at it twice. It's taken some growing pains on my end, but I love art.

I was excited to use ToonDoo, since it combined two of my favorite things; art and talking about myself.

But in my Rotten Tomatoes style of rating ToonDoo, I have mixed feelings. First, the website feels, how can I put into words....Cranky? Stubborn? Mulish? Do you get the drift?

I'm a quick learner (if caffeinated) and enjoy putzing around on something new, but this website drove me a little crazy. It took me two hours to put together one strip!

 Most of that was trial and error as I learned how to use the different tools as well as analyzed all the different cartoons that were available.

 But the other issue was the website itself, it's cranky! I would save a Toon and the website would stare blankly back at me, unimpressed. "Save", I heard myself say, waving a pen at it in hopes some magic might occur. The website would roll its eyes. Ok, you are saying, you sound crazy and maybe need to lay off the caffeine, but I swear, it rolled its eyes. After a brief struggle and a couple of broken pencils, I figured out that I had to reload the ToonDoo page itself and go through my saved toons, and that my toon would pop up there. I was nervous about that, because honestly we have all lost work under the false assumption that the computer "saved" our work. We've all been there. But ToonDoo was true to its word (or not immune to my magic, what have you) and there was my toon.

So, aside from the website's bout with angst, let's talk art. Yay! I sort of loved the art, sort of hated it. The nice part was that you could select toons drawn by various in-house artists or from a slew of types of toons. On top of that, you could add emotion, color, stance, to these previously drawn toons. If, for whatever reason, you decided that these toons (how funny is that word. it's ridiculous) were just not up to par, you could go ahead and make your own toon.

Making my own toon ate up most of my time, it was engrossing and self-sabatoging and so much fun.  The make your own toon portion, also known in ToonDoo world as , allowed you to select hair color, eye color, shape of nose, skin color, eyebrow shape, head shape, head length and so on. You could spend an entire half an hour on the shape and length of your toondoo's head, like I did, only to scrap it, like I did.


Here is what I ended up with:

One thing that I would have to caution anyone about, however, is that some of the toons are not totally acceptable for children. Some of the people are suggested at being naked or along those lines.

Otherwise, a great site, a great app!