anticipation

This week was a week of emotions. Last week I touched on the fact that needed to be stricter with my students...lay down the law of sorts. This week I tried my hand at having a firmer hand. I first thought it would be very difficult, just because that is not my personality, but I did not have a hard time committing to my firm standards. At first, my students tested me, but I stuck with my guns and did not let them walk all over me. I hope to continue this next week.

Since I found out that I was teaching Lord of the Flies and Great Gatsby, I was so excited to do anticipatory activities. I believe that discussing themes of the book before reading the book is extremely important. It allows students to be thinking about certain themes so when they encounter them in the book, they are more apt to noticing them.

For Lord of the Flies I wanted to simulate being stranded on a deserted island. The main goal of this activity was to have students think about what they would do if they were in that situation. What would be their first priority? How would they make decisions? Would there be a leader? How would they get food and water? Obviously, the students would not deal with ALL the issue in Lord of the Flies because there is ...well....murder. After listening to their conversations, I could tell that they were really giving some thought to the situation. Some groups really focused on surviving long term where other groups focused on short-term survival with the hope to be rescued.

I had a lot of positive feedback from this activity from the students. To me it seemed like a sneaky way to have them learn.

The anticipatory set I had for the Great Gatsby involved the students answer a series of questions with true or false. The questions were controversial such as "There is no such thing as true love," "Reality is what you make of it," and "You should not be punished for accidentally doing something wrong." After they individually answered these questions, they then had to defend their opinions in front of the class.

I did this activity with the class that I usually struggle with behavior, but before I had them engage in discussion, I set ground rules. They did really well! And I even had students come up to me after telling me that they loved the activity. Discussion is my favorite classroom tool. I think students learn so much more by discussing with each other rather than listening to a teacher lecture.

Overall, this was a good week.