Wow! The material available to a teacher is slightly overwhelming. That’s one of the great recourses of being a teacher, sharing ideas with others in the profession. Teaching is hard enough and it’s nice to know so many professional organizations support what we do. Again, the resources on the web are tremendous but I found two great lessons that I would use in my future classroom.
Literature Circle Roles Reframed: Reading as a Film Crew
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=877
I was introduced to literature circles during my first semester at ASU and it was love at first sight. This literature circle lesson puts a new spin on a fairly new concept. Take the traditional roles out of the circle and replace it with film production roles. Students love films and movies and roles such as director, casting director, and set designer will surely peak student interest. The idea behind this lesson is to let students think like filmmakers when reading a text. Literature circles will definitely be part of my teaching strategies. Having my class read text as a filmmaker or film crew should up the level of excitement and enthusiasm for the project.
The Dictionary Game
www.col-ed.org/cur/lang/lang43.txt
I have found traditional vocabulary lessons boring and came across this unique spin on introducing vocabulary words. The lesson is written for science or social studies lessons but I think it can be modified to fit any content area. The purpose of this lesson is to take the boredom out of learning vocabulary. This game makes the process fun and when students have fun while they learn they tend to remember what they learned. The game works with the teacher choosing a word that no student can define. Each student (or group) will make up a definition. Once all possible definitions are in the teacher will have the class vote for a definition that fits the vocabulary word. The winner is the one with the most points. Again, this lesson is a definite way to introduce vocabulary in a fun and exciting way. I could see me using this as a way to introduce the class to a new concept or word. I think this game allows students to be creative and use prior knowledge to make an education guess about the definition of the word.
