Students and Stairs
Oh! so many stairs! Everyday I walk 12 flights, each flight has 10 steps, of stairs to my classroom. It makes for a long trudge up to work each time I go to my classroom, but I am thankful for the chance to exercise a little extra before sitting down for hours at a time for lesson planning. As I start into my third week of teaching, I look forward to more great days of learning and instruction! Last Friday I tried something new with my students. I rearranged the desks into a discussion circle and then had my students toss a tennis ball back and forth to each other. When each student was passed the tennis ball he/she had to share the observation or question he/she had done for class homework. I did this activity in multiple classes, but it worked best with one of my sections of 8th grade. We were analyzing a war poem by Wilfred Owen and they brought up some excellent observations--some that I had not even thought of. It was different taking a back seat in the learning and letting t...