Thursday, February 6, 2014

The Amazing Human Body

I used this video as the hook to my unit on the amazing human body. I had to preface it with the catch phrase do NOT try any of this at home.



Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Sentence Combining

I think I will use this with my level 4 ELD class tomorrow:


Why Do We Need To Know This?

I love the ideas this blog post had about answering this question (the post is about math, but I also hear this from my ELD students on a pretty much daily basis). I think the answers and logic posted here would work for any subject.

I especially like how the author gives suggestions for having students take some of the responsibility for connecting knowledge to what they may or may not do in the future. Below is a quote from the blog:
Upon hearing the "When will I ever use this?" refrain, a high school teacher I work with tells her students, "I'm not sure because I don't know what you want to be in your life. But if you give me a list of everything you plan to do and accomplish, I'll do my best to let you know when we cover something that I think you might use." When kids say, "I don't know what I'm going to do,” her response is, "Exactly. You might need it next week, next year or never. But it is going to be on Friday's test, not because I want to make you miserable, but because at the end of the year, it is going to be on the state test, and if you want to pass, you need to know it.”