What I found out today
I have to design three electives for the sixth grade. Each elective will run ten weeks and meet daily for 50 minutes. That's a lot to create lesson plans for!
There is a fourth elective that I'll have to teach: AVID (http://www.avidonline.org/.) Basically, it entails coaching students about time management, organization, note taking etc. Although AVID sounds boring, it is beneficial. Eat your brussel sprouts!
Possible topics:
*Election Central: all about politics, all the time.
*Logic-- spatial problems, word play, logic problems, brain teasers and puzzles
*"Shakespeare"--two or three of the plays. Abridged and non-abridged, side by side reading and dramatization.
*Gardening I: designing a garden, soil analysis, soil building, plant selection
*Economics
*Sustainability
*Comics
*Movies as narratives
*Field research
*Bees
*Sun and solar energy
*Urban planning
*Baseball
*Poetry
*VUE
*Preparing a chicken for mummification
*Inference
I can always connect topics. Mix and match. Random couplings always produce interesting themes. Here are a few that my finger touched-
--poetry/comics (Great way to effectively teach an epic like Gilgamesh or the Iliad)
--gardening/movies as narratives (I'm stumped with this one. Oklahoma!)
--urban planning/sustainability (Design a city that can sustain itself)
--election central/movies as narratives (This would be so much fun to do!)
Any suggestions for elective topics? Think like a sixth grader. Think of topics or themes outside of the normal curricula.
There is a fourth elective that I'll have to teach: AVID (http://www.avidonline.org/.) Basically, it entails coaching students about time management, organization, note taking etc. Although AVID sounds boring, it is beneficial. Eat your brussel sprouts!
Possible topics:
*Election Central: all about politics, all the time.
*Logic-- spatial problems, word play, logic problems, brain teasers and puzzles
*"Shakespeare"--two or three of the plays. Abridged and non-abridged, side by side reading and dramatization.
*Gardening I: designing a garden, soil analysis, soil building, plant selection
*Economics
*Sustainability
*Comics
*Movies as narratives
*Field research
*Bees
*Sun and solar energy
*Urban planning
*Baseball
*Poetry
*VUE
*Preparing a chicken for mummification
*Inference
I can always connect topics. Mix and match. Random couplings always produce interesting themes. Here are a few that my finger touched-
--poetry/comics (Great way to effectively teach an epic like Gilgamesh or the Iliad)
--gardening/movies as narratives (I'm stumped with this one. Oklahoma!)
--urban planning/sustainability (Design a city that can sustain itself)
--election central/movies as narratives (This would be so much fun to do!)
Any suggestions for elective topics? Think like a sixth grader. Think of topics or themes outside of the normal curricula.