Website Review: Flocabulary.com - Ways to use Hip Hop in the classroom.

Here’s a web site you’ll like which uses hip-hop in the classroom. You may have come across it in your search for new material. If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat. www. Flocabulary.com is a knockout..

It can be used to motivate, teach an entire lesson or summarize one previously taught. It can also help understanding. In Hip Hop reading closely is necessary for rhyming—and as well as a tool to improve vocabulary. But best of all, you’re on your way to creating a happy better managed classroom.

Students may work alone or together in groups. Competition between or within groups might be another energizing activity. What you’re doing is cashing in on the built-in energy of kids in your class. There’s a good reason why American Idol and Dancing with the Stars are hits, commanding huge audiences.

I like the idea of using hip-hop in a lesson, but was really sold when I looked at the videos and sample songs. They are dynamite. For example, a lesson on the five elements of a short story: character, conflict, climax, theme and setting uses lyrics with a hip-hop beat. At the end of each stanza, the five elements are repeated so the kids won’t forget.

The nail biting video of The Pit and the Pendulum which follows accompanied by a rap of Poe’s suspenseful story, should hold your class’s interest. The Pit and the Pendulum can easily be combined with Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, which doesn’t have a rap so that the kids can create one themselves.

In my experience, the five elements of a plot can be reinforced by using current or recently popular movies as a follow-up. Start with plotless one character movie; for example, you might say: A few months ago I saw a movie in which the main character did nothing but sleep throughout the entire performance. The character snored, turned over, stretched, etc. The camera panned the sleeping figure, moving in and out, but nothing happened.

Then, ask the class if any of them have seen it? (Questions will follow such as: “Why bother? What a bore .”)Ask them what they would do to make it more exciting without awakening the main character? The idea is to encourage the class to create a storyline using the five elements of a plot. Then draw the storyline in a line on the blackboard, demonstrating the highest point of the conflict. The plot also works with the addition of other characters.

The Flocabulary web site sells a Writing Academic rhymes Package which includes “everything needed for students to write, perform, and record their own Flocabulary style raps. “

For other ways to use this toe-tapping plus motivator; click onto the Flocabulary web site and look at the videos, songs, and text. Have fun.

Guidelines that Work for the High School English Classroom

I’ve discovered that one of the best ways to communicate confidence is to be prepared with a list of guidelines which are distributed the second day of school. Gaining control and stopping interruptions for bad behavior is helped by giving a Cooperation/Participation mark.

1. Make sure you do not interrupt others while they are speaking.
2. Make sure not to call out. Raise your hand (not while someone else is speaking and wait to be recognized.
   
3. Do not have private conversations.
4. Listen to your classmates and teacher. Do not be disrespectful of their opinions. Wait until your turn to disagree.
5. Acceptable language is expected when you do disagree. No cursing of any kind is allowed.
6. Participation counts. We want to hear from you, and you will be given credit every time you take an active part in the class.

Gaining control is helped by giving a separate mark for Cooperation/Participation. The key to the success of this mark is that it is added in with quiz and test marks, and can help raise a student’s average. Keep a mental record of those students who are cooperative and participate. On occasion, to encourage participation, also note names on a piece of paper. But it’s simpler to give grades for participation based on an overall impression rather than to add them up on paper.

I’ve given other rewards out to students besides marks. I’d become frustrated by student lateness in several classes. Teaching would be interrupted any number of times by students walking in late to one of my early morning junior classes. Finally, fed up, I announced that any student who was in class on time would receive a surprise. Thoughts of a reward filled their heads; behavior changed so much that by the end of the month, I was able to give 75% of the class lollipops. No kidding, lollipops! (Kids of every age like them.)

Above all, a positive and caring relationship with students, along with involving lesson plans are the best way to minimize the need for discipline. You can’t, overnight, make up for years of bad habits including rude behavior and poor academic skills. You can, however, insist on appropriate classroom behavior and a higher level of learning. Demonstrate by enforcing the rules you’ve established. Your persistence will be rewarded.

The English Class Guidelines described above evolved from years of teaching and observing students.

Book Review: Hook your students with Ron Clark’s The Essential 55

One of the best books on the market that might be of help in hooking your students is Ron Clark’s The Essential 55.

Clark, an award winning, Teacher of the Year, first taught in rural North Carolina and then made a major move to New York City and a Brooklyn middle school. His ideas and teaching techniques have received much attention, including an interview with Oprah after he received the Teacher of the Year award. But he wanted more personal control, so he opened his own private academy and is presently raising money to open others.If you want more information, check out The Ron Clark Story

Life’s Lessons, his 55 rules, cover nearly everything from student behavior in the school cafeteria, in a hotel room, on a bus, at a movie theater, answering a phone or riding an escalator. They’re a combination of rules for everyday situations and for the classroom. Each rule is followed by an explanation of its necessity, and, in most cases, his follow up.

Although Ron’s rules are primarily for junior high school, many of them can be adapted to a forty or eighty minute high school class session. His approach to rewards and punishments won’t always work with high school kids, but can be adapted. One outcome of Clark’s sensitivity to his students’ needs is a section that includes a discussion on four universal truths which you may already know:

1. Kids need and like structure.
2. Kids will work hard for you, if they like who you are as a person.
3. Kids like to know what is expected of them.
4. Kids like to know they are cared for.

Below are some of Clark’s rules:

Here’s a. rule I like, # 8: Do not smack your lips, tsk, roll your eyes or show disrespect with gestures.

First, Clark discusses the rule with the class, and asks them to role play by exaggerating negative actions. Once they learn what not to do, a student caught smacking lips, rolling eyes, or tsking, will be asked to write his/ her name on the blackboard. Then, finally, many tsks, and eye rolls later, detention will be given. The kids will quickly learn what is expected of them as well as the consequences, so they’ll tread carefully before crossing the line.

He also rewards students for good behavior.

Rule #16, Homework will be turned in each day for each subject by every student with no exceptions.

A banner with the names of the students and their homework records is hung in Clark’s class. If a row of students completes homework for a month, each student in the row might receive brownies or other goodies, which in his free time this all around teacher bakes himself. (A tough act to follow)

Will his rules work for older students since they’re for a sixth grade class? For that answer, look at my next blog: Rules that work in the High School Classroom

Website Review: Teachersfirst.com

Even though I no longer teach on the high school level, old habits die hard. I now run workshops for English teachers. I still find myself drawn to UFT newspaper, the New York/City Edition. Recently, the October 29, 2009 issue referred to topnotch lesson plan web sites, and I checked some out. Teachersfirst.com is a very good resource for lesson plans, units, and other web material. Lesson plans can be searched for by subject and grade level, calendar, keyword and holidays. In addition, there are blogs about teaching, technology and education in general.

The writer of the NY Teacher article suggests that you “make sure to tailor the lessons you find online to the needs of your students, and try to reshape them to match your teaching style. But even an excellent lesson plan can earn an unsatisfactory rating if you do not perfect your delivery of the topic.”

Nowhere on this site was there any information about communicating with your classes effectively so that they will listen, and then becoming involved in what you’re teaching. How do you perfect the delivery of your topic? I was a drama, speech, English major, and trained speaker, but it took me several years, and many observations of the best teachers in my school to realize what communication was all about.

A passionate, energetic teacher with a good lesson plan can involve students, but that’s usually not enough. Teaching is a two way street: There’s you and then there’s THE CLASS, and if you can’t hold their attention, as you know, you’re in big trouble.

In this blog we’ll combine everything that involves the teacher and teaching with tips on classroom management as well as my own insights on the topic.