Well, I’m back. At my school, as I’ve stated earlier, we are year round. Every three months, we go on our month-long vacation. Well, today is my first day back. It’s a little tough every time we come back, because the students have a hard time remembering what they learned a month earlier. I normally do a review activity the first day just to get their brains back in the game. Today I’m trying something new. I went to an inservice where a teacher/lecturer/author named John Antonetti gave a class on engaging the student. I must say it was one of the best inservices I had ever been to. He was hilarious, but more than that, he reminded us how students learn. You can find his website at: http://www.colleaguesoncall.com/index.html. Today, I’m going to use one of the activities he had us do. I’m going to have the students get into groups and create a poster about some of the laws that the British imposed on the colonies back before the Revolution. The students learned about this before they went on vacation, but they won’t remember much. They will be choosing four out of the five possible laws that I will have posted on the wall to use for their poster. They will create a poster that illustrates the law and describe it. Then, I will have them as a group come up with the one law on their poster that doesn’t belong. They will have to explain why it doesn’t belong. This is the Antonetti part. They will have to come up with an explanation to justify their decision in choosing the one law that doesn’t belong. For example, if they have the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Declaratory Act, and the Townshend Act, they may say that the Townshend Act doesn’t belong because it is the one law that didn’t impose a tax on the colonies. Or they may choose the Townshend Act, because it was an law that was named after a person. Or they may choose the Stamp Act, because it was the only law that was repealed. This activity forces the students to consider and discuss all of the laws, forcing their brains to actually process information about ALL of the laws. This will help them actually KNOW the information. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Thanks,
Sam
