NO! You know you want to. The AP test is over... and, well, the soft lull of movies is so calling your name.
Okay, this is totally on the fly, but I thought I'd try to jump start you into having AMAZINGLY AWESOME discussions with your somnambulent students in their post AP haze. How do you, how do they stay interesting? Here are some ideas... and if you have some you want to share LEAVE A COMMENT! IT TAKES A VILLAGE, GURUS!
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Pardon my theatrics... I hate to be morose, but I can't teach this unit without thinking of that awesome song by The Clash. There are really so many great songs out there with which you can open this unit, and kids really gravitate to issues surrounding these rights, or what little they know of them.
I take my time (relatively) through this unit. Besides the fact that I get more way more interest and lively debate, which always freaks me out, I find that there are some kids out there who really excel in logical "lawerly" thinking. Maybe they have never applied it to less objective reasoning than math and science... and find that they like these hypothetical, no-one-is-100%-right kind of arguing for the sake of arguing (I call it word math.) I have my kids work through basic precedent by completing the Gallery Walk in the previous post, which is fun, but gets mixed results because... well... not all the kids put forth equal amounts of effort. So, I need to come in and clean it up. The biggest problem that the students seem to have is whether or not a case is incorporated or not. When the dreaded AP Testing window opens, I have to get creative to keep up with the bizarre scheduling and fried kids.
I also, generally, have a metric ton of material still to get through, and I don't think the kids can stand another lecture. So, getting to the SCOTUS cases I need to requires some creativity, flexibility, and patience. And FOOD. Lots and lots of FOOD. I love the idea of turning this over to Project Based Learning... telling a kid, "hey, we need to know more about Clinton v NY. How about you teach me?" In the past, I have lectured, I have jigsawed, I have videoed, and the result is flat. And I end up repeating myself over and over and over again as new rounds of kids show up. So here is my solution: A major project that I count as TWO test grades (one for the project presentation, which I do online and therefore I can have kids from different classes that meet on different days teach each other) and one for harvesting the data. It's food and art themed through and through... The possible activities kids can do (like boiling cases down into tweets, recreating facebook battles over the court case, prettying up major quotes into art) comes in a menu form, and since we have food on the Gallery Walk Day, it's kind of like dining with the SCOTUS. I got most of my cases from this lovely little synopsis of major court cases... I can deal with the revolving door of kids coming and going, and I get to listen to kids get excited to learn things like how to jazz up a QR code so it isn't so boring. (They were totally excited to learn about canva because they can make pretty posters painlessly.) When we do our Gallery Walk, I will post pictures of the festivities, but if you are interested in getting this for yourself, head on over to my store and get yourself a copy. You won't regret it, I promise. |
Jen's bookshelf: nerdcation
I want to start by thanking Mr. Snowden and Mr. Greenwald for their uncompromising dedication to giving the NSA violations air time and transparency.
I wanted to share some of the most important things I have learned from this book bef...
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nerdcation
tagged:
nerdcation and to-read
tagged:
nerdcation and to-read
tagged:
nerdcation and to-read
AuthorI lovgov. LOVE IT! I love teaching government, learning about it, debating, discussing, asking questions about government. And not the standard boiler plate questions, but the hard ones that are NOT in the books. Archives
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