Pedagogical Knowledge
Nothing feels longer than 5 minutes when you did not plan enough for your students to do. NO TRUER WORDS EVER SPOKEN.
Writing: students despise it, teachers do not always love to grade it, but it sometimes makes the world a little cooler. Every Friday, my class completes a Free Write Friday. It is a timed writing prompt that ties to something in the world, our reading, or a deeper thinking question. I read the responses each week and take little quotes from student writing and post them outside in the hallway for all to see that OUR WORDS MATTER.
Continuing with writing, I take historical documents and have students recreate them in different ways. For example, we read Martin Luther King Jr.'s "A Letter from A Birmingham Jail." Then, we close read it for rhetoric and different devices. Then, we create our own letter about an injustice currently occurring in our world. It has produced some amazing insight and allowed students to see much more than just our little bubble in Mississippi.
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Planning - the second most important part of my job; while others will say it is the most important part. If I do not plan ahead, I am in big trouble! While my first year of teaching was all about survival, I've put extra effort into planning my second year and will continue to do so as an educator. Specifically, I tie together interesting themes and activities to incorporate during units. One of my favorite units I teach, which I never though I'd say, is Romeo and Juliet. It's a tale as old as time, and most students hate it. Yet, with mixing in nonfiction texts about dating in different cultures, group activities, and kinesthetic activities (pictured above when we had our own masquerade ball), my students fell in love with the text and critiqued it until the bell rang (and even into the hallways).
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