April 25th was International Pay It Forward Day.  The term "pay it forward" is well known from a movie in which a young boy tries to change the world as part of a class assignment.  He did 3 great things for 3 people in need and then they in turn were supposed to go on and pay it forward to 3 more people each. While we did not have the time to plan anything huge to change a life, we decided to fill the day with ...

I think it's really important to prepare for something like Anti-Bullying Day so that it doesn't just become a fun excuse to wear a pink shirt to school.  Bullying is, and has been, a hot topic in education so rather than present my own ideas on bullying I wanted to hear from my students and have a candid discussion about bullying. We started our class with the question: What is bullying? Here are their ...

I always try to be as upfront with my students as possible about the way that I am assessing them, how I give them feedback, and what I am looking for.  Our lesson started with a brave student standing at the front of our class (thank you Bryce :) and doing a 10 second dance which I was then going to asses.  Those were the only instructions he was given.  After a dazzling display of dance moves, the student got a 2 w...

We have been looking at Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear and in scene three there are some fantastic insults flying around.  So I decided to capitalize on Shakespeare's creativity and do a lesson on insults. We began by watching a clip from Hook, where Peter Pan is having a hard time using his imagination and gets into a fight with Ruffio. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsJxIoFu2wo Then we used ...