The votes are in and they picked a caption for yesterday’s photo. It was among the best and, after we edited it a bit, I think it’ll be one of the strongest sentences in the finished script. It’s a shame the author was absent today ’cause I’m sure she would have gotten a kick out of it and it couldn’t have hurt my cred with her (or her cousin). 
I am hoping the sentence sees even more improvement by script time. I tried to push toward “different varieties” being a mistake, but no one hopped on board. It was enough to get the sentence this far, though, so I let it go. I’ll also bring up that the photo is not of a club activity and see what they say.
I Need Your Attention
We pressed on to the image for today, but only after I showed them that it took us twenty-five minutes just to get that far. And those were twenty-five long minutes. Yeesh… Even with several usual suspects gone, it was all I could do to keep them with me for longer than two minutes at a time. I can only imagine the horror of today if we were at full attendance.
Activity: Restaurant Storyboard
A hot-dog, then hamburger fold later, we have a piece of newsprint paper working as a four-square storyboard. In pairs, they are drawing images of the restaurants to showcase near our school, the exact image they wish they had of that food place. “Can’t we just look on the internet for the pictures?” “Nope, I want you to go out and take these four photos yourself. Borrow a camera if you have to or use a cell phone.” I’m not sure of the fidelity of those images in our final product, but I’m sure we can get something worthwhile out of it. And students will know the precise shot they need to take.
They are also working on captions for each image. And since all of these storyboards will go up on the wall — hence these as posters instead of handy graphic organizers (PDF) to keep in a binder — more fodder for the script we’ll write on Friday
We Stopped… Again
Today was rough because it took so long to do so little, with me stopping every few minutes to gather up everyone’s attention, to get them into a new seating chart, to stop this one group from talking. Yeah, so maybe I just need to let them talk because the other kids in the room are ready to press forward, but I just can never seem to think that in the moment. These two have sat next to, across the room from, next to, and now across the room from each other. Nothing’s changing their behavior.
And they know what’s up: this is elective credit, not English credit, and they don’t really care about that. Four years is forever to them and they can make up those units later, but they can talk right now, so why bother paying attention? And what do you give a 14-year-old wanna-be gangbanger to get them to sit up and take notice? Whose only response to, “Why are you here?” is “Because I halfta”? I swear, I could be dishing out the coolest project on the planet and it wouldn’t stop these two from talking. They only respect me so far as to not throw down in the middle of the classroom. Any further, and neither one is having any of it.
Handouts
You sort of hand images out.
- First image – catapults
- Second image – homecoming
- Third image – class meeting
- Fourth image – campus landscape
- Restaurant storyboard for the binder: PDF | Word
- Generic Four-Square Notes: PDF | Word
2 comments
2. Todd says:
I feel like it’s too late for that. Plus, it’s not just them that are trouble. If they were gone, it would just be another two kids or another disruption. I think I just need to learn to push forward when the rest of the class is right there with me and ignore those two. At one time, the class needed me to set the straight every time. Now, it seems like everyone’s over it and hates it when I let them soak up our time. They are across the room from each other again, so let’s see how that works out.
1. Laurie says:
[10/14/2008 - 8:58 pm]
Sounds like it is time to split up the dastardly duo…why not send in a request to move one of them to another support class? I would love to see what you could do with this class without their continual distraction.