Happy Monday!
I read a blog post last week of a teacher I follow and it made me think of our Discovery Projects. This middle school teacher is dedicating one class period a week to what we have built in to our schedule every other day. Click the link here to read his post. Also check out his link on "Innovation Day". I like his model and from his perspective it seems to work.
Patrick Dempsey
8th Grade Science
"You probably want to do something interesting, let me get out of the way."
-Daniel Pink
Phone:
314.963.6450
Class Website
Twitter:
@midschoolsci
Hi all--
I've talked to a number of teachers who had said that narrowing the topic for a research project can be difficult for many students. It's been lots of years since I taught English, but I certainly remember that to be true then.
This is a link to a pdf which address this task pretty well, I think. It's provides a good example of narrowing a topic. Even if you don't run these off, it would be pretty easy to illustrate on the board.
http://rpc.elm4you.org//guide/docs/step1/narrowing_a_topic.pdf
The pdf comes from the list of resources that is in the link Patrick sent last week. Other good stuff is there, also, to use as needed.
http://rpc.elm4you.org/guide/support_materials.php
I'm teaching students in English classes this week and next how to access the new library catalog throught the new library website, so I hope that will help, also. We'll need to stress that even if the library doesn't have a book completely on Siamese cats, we do have books on cat breeds, so a chapter or even pages in that book could be used as a resource. We're doing research projects, not just book reports.
Thanks for the positive reaction I've heard from so many of you. Any feedback is appreciated!
JoAnne
JoAnne Williams
Hixson Middle School LMS
314-918-4568 ext. 14918
