pre-2011 middle school ideas

[Anonymous]

I will be teaching my 9th grade students about Basho and the Japanese Haiku. This poetry is easy to create and students can put in their heartfelt emotions into writing in this style. This poetry opens a window into the Japanese culture and is an elegant and simple form of expression, that this age group can master without too much difficulty. I am looking forward to teaching this poetry to my many diverse students and cultures in my own classroom.

[Anonymous]

This was actually the lessons I chose for this class. My subject is math so I was going to give the students a brief history of oragami and have students make some of the models. To integrate the math into it, I would have students identify shapes, and find perimeters and areas of the shapes. This would cover standards regarding finding perimeters and areas of shapes.

[Anonymous]

A few posts back I wanted to introduce students to Asian math strategies but when I tried looking some up, I really couldn't find anything. Perhaps I wasn't searching correctly but it would have been cool to show students something like this is how you solve this type of problem in Asia and this is how it is solved here.

[Anonymous]

When I came back from the Institute, I went to my local children's bookstore and found a book on Buddhism entitled "The Prince Who Ran Away". This book is beautifully illustrated and tells the story of Siddhartha Gautama and the creation of Buddhism. Before I read it to my students, I have them prepare a piece of standard notebook paper to use as Reciprocal Teaching notes. They divide the paper into four squares labeling each square-Questions, Pictures, Summaries and Predictions. Then, I read them the story, showing them each illustration to assist them in visualizing what I am reading. As I read, I stop every few pages to give them time to write a question, a summary and a prediction. After that, we share what the students have written for each. This has worked out well, thus far.

Michele Jones

[Anonymous]

A few years ago, when I taught 7th grade history, I wanted to give the students more information about Confucius, but not through notes. So, I went to Barnes and Noble and found a children's book on Confucius. For seven years I used this book to teach Confucius. First, I started out by asking the students to look at the picture on the cover and predict what the book would be about, and to be specific about their predictions. Next, I read the first section of the book, which provides background information on Confucius. After this, I asked the students to examine their predictions and see if they needed to be revised now that they had some basic information about Confucius. So, the students were able to practice predicting. Finally, before I read the last section of the book, I asked students to create an ending for the story. All students shared their endings with partners. I finished the lesson by reading the ending and discussing with students the differences between their endings and the actual ending. The final project was to create the front page of a newspaper all on Confucius. It worked out very well.

Michele Jones

[Anonymous]

A suggestion for teaching orgami. (estimate 3-4 days)
1)Start with a big piece of butcher paper to demonstrate. You can draw arrows and make numbers (for which step is first) on the butcher paper itself. Go through the steps as a demo.
2)Next, walk the students through it with one butcher paper with lines drawn for folds if needed per group so they do each step( the cranes will be ugly, but they will visualize the steps better)
3) Have students, in groups, write the procedure out in their own words, with diagrams.
This will help studetns identify who is the natural folder in teir group, who is good at procedure writing, and who remembers sequences. These are the go to people to take the heat off the teacher.
4) Afterwards, leave the big papers and group procedures on the table and let them go for it with the crisp paper.

[Anonymous]

A math teacher at my school suggested "paddy paper" for a non-expensive teacher purchase
regarding the first stages of learning Origami.

('paddy paper' is what one can find in the warehouse stores like SMART & FINAL,
it's original purpose is to be placed between hamburger paddies...so the size and square
cut really work well for beginning Origami)

[Edit by="cforfar on Sep 17, 5:04:48 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Sixth graders study early Chinese civilizations and 7th graders study Medieval Japan and China during the Middle Ages. The students are asked to consider political, economic, religious and social structures. I'm interested in these areas but I'm especially interested in reading and using traditional Chinese and Japanese literature. I'm also developing a reading list for our school so I need literature to recommend.

[Anonymous]

I just finished teaching the Chinese philosophy lesson to my seventh graders (Clayton Dube gave us). I was a little worried at first because I thought they would struggle with the primary source documents. I had to help them a little bit at first, but they were able to pick out the big ideas. It was especially nice to hear them helping each other out as they were discussing the documents. They all really were excited about the commercials. Ninety-nine percent of them came out very nicely. The one that didn't really make sense was because they made themselves look bad (this was the commercial that was supposed to extol the virtues of their school of thought). Most groups brought in extras (paper made costumes, props, signs, banners, garbage band made music, and masks). I had fun watching some of them get carried away in the lesson. This lesson will have taken five class periods for us to complete. They will include the suggested writing assignment in their China sequence book project.

[Anonymous]

The Chinese philosophy section of our large binder has great resources. I have a test on the 4 Schools of thought on Friday. I was going to use the standard material for the test, but in reading the primary source documents from the teachers of these schools, I got an idea to use direct quotes from Confucius and all other notable philosophers, and will have my students identify the correct school of thought from each quote. Sort of a profound matching segment for my 6th graders. The quotes are amazing, and fully illustrate the various ideas of government, education, human nature, etc.. Hopefully my students will become good at identifying and applying the 4 schools to their thought process.[Edit by="tstevenson on Feb 26, 11:17:18 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Thank you for suggesting the movie Hero to bring to Emperor Qin's unification and standardization of China. It will come in handy to give my students a sense of his character and motives. Our culminating project for our study of Ancient China is a court trial to evaluate whether or not Qin's accomplishments justify the costs to culture and individuals.

[Anonymous]

This sounds like a great lesson. Can you post any handouts or rubrics that you used? Thank you,
Miriam

[Anonymous]

I was hoping to utilize the book that you referenced. Can you post the title and author? Thank you, Miriam[Edit by="mstevenson on Mar 2, 9:46:54 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Hi Miriam,

Thank you, and here is the test I gave my students.

Troy

[Anonymous]

Thanks Troy. I appreciate it.

Miriam

[Author]

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