Teacher Daniel

First of all, my goal is to start putting my lesson plans on this blog so that I know what I need to focus on for the week. If other people would like to see my teaching methods that's all fine and dandy, but I seriously need to do this for myself. I find it's easier to blog my lesson plans because they are always there. I want to move away from a hard copy way of keeping records. I'm constantly losing papers and those distractions keep me from the task at hand.

So...it's all about me. I guess, I could close it down to other people but for some odd reason, I won't write the blog if I do that. I guess I like the idea of having some audience.

Ok...back to work.

The school year has started for many of my students so many are transferring to other classes. I'm a bit worried about my Writing Focus 3 because I think I am down to 3 or 4 students.

Jin ha, one of my Tuesday night students has transferred to my Sunday morning class and I haven't had time to grade his papers. I have to photograph them and e-mail them to him.

First, I'm going to go over their homework. I won't have time to go over the vocabulary. They read On Discovery pg234 and Coming Home Again 244. I should focus on the relationship between The mother and son and how food is symbolic of their relationship.

Then I'll go into the lesson.

I'm going to start with Taylor Mali's How to write a Political Poem to illustrate ideas emphasis, parallelism, and length.

I'm going to give my students quick definitions of

Emphasis,
Loose and Periodic Sentences:
Loose Sentence-A sentence that introduces the main idea close to the beginning and concludes with a series of modifiers.
Periodic Sentences: A sentence that builds to the main idea.
Climax-
Parallelism-Grammatically similar words, phrases, and clauses arranged to highlight similar ideas.
Antithesis-The arrangement of contrasting ideas in grammatically similar phrases and clauses-The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. To be or not to be, that is the question., and
Length


I think it would be better to start with the reading Abe Lincoln's The Gettysburg Address. Then go into definitions and then point out the the writing skills that we just defined in the speech. Then I'm going to talk about Taylor Mali. I'll go over the poem, talk about it and then move on to MLK's essay entitled "Nonviolent Resistance."

At the end of class, I'll hand back their previous essays and offer suggestions for improvement.

For homework, they can write the assigned topic or they can write a political speech on a trivial campaign like the importance of pooper scoopers^^

Dan

For this class I'm going to briefly go over the lesson in the book and then give kids a chance to write definitions for words. I'll start them with:

Clinchpooper and then Wisterpooper and finally thenan.

These are really words. You can find out what they mean here

Then I'll ask them what is a definition of...should I do nationalities??? I don't think that would be wise. I think it would, but it would have to be in depth. I should get students to define the French, Australian, New Zealanders or Kiwi's, Canadians, the Americans and Korea.

I should get them to focus on a national symbol. For example, the Kiwi should use the bird Kiwi as their symbol, the French the baguette...etc.

I think this will be fun and then we can brainstorm about their topic...what it's like to be Korean.

Dan

I've seriously got to focus. I mean last night I said some unkind words to Yea Jin and I'm going to have to be extra nice for the next couple of days to get back my footing. If I was her, I would have used my footing to kick my own ass...I mean her ass...I mean..

Anyway, the whole point is that I'm lacking ideas and originality. I need to prep better for my classes and I should use this blog just like I used the blog at Wonmyeong Elementary School.

Determination. Let's get my prep done.

Dan

I'm going to get students to write political speeches for WF3 and I'm going to get a list of ambiguous terms in order to get my students to define.

I am too nice to my students. I need to be more strict with them because they are not improving, they are simply going into a lull. Sigh...I really admire Erica and Richard. They are really strict, but they get results. I've always felt that I should nurture the students and let them find their own way. The problem with this is that after a while they tend to lose that edge and they de-prioritized my class for another. Hello, don't they know that my class is the most important one! I need to get mean and if they drop, then it's not my fault, it's theirs'.

I don't want to be the teacher that gives "Easy A's."

Let's make them work for it.

Dan