Skip to main content

Dogs in Class

This is How Students Put the Dogs Away!

Everyone knows that dogs make everything better.  My twenty-year-old son still comes in every night to give our golden retriever a kiss goodnight.  As much as I would love to bring my dog to school each day, I can't. However, I did the next best thing--Beanie Babies!  Lucky for me, I connected with a woman looking to give away her collection of dog beanies. She finally realized that they were not going to be worth a million dollars like so many people back in the 90s had hoped! She wanted to give them to someone who would appreciate them, and that person was ME!

 Anyhow, I brought them into class, and just as I expected, the kids went nuts.  They now try to arrive early to class to get a dog to keep at their desk and keep them company!  One boy even asked if he could get one for his friend who was running late.  They put them on their computers, on their arms, on their heads, and even in their pockets.  They all have their favorite dog.  I can truly say that these little dogs have already brought many smiles to my students' faces.  And of course, that makes ME happy!

 P.S. This weekend I purchased a dog bed at Marshalls for our pups!  Can't wait to show my students.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TQE: Get students Engaged and Digging Deep

I've mentioned before how Twitter has helped me grow as an educator.  Edutwitter is a valuable resource for book recommendations, new teaching methods, lessons, and articles.  One of my favorite educators to follow is Marissa Thompson, a high school teacher at Carlsbad High. This summer I read about her TQE(thoughts, questions, epiphanies) method for discussing literature.  I'd always longed for having discussions like the ones I had in my college literature courses, but when I try fishbowl or Socratic seminar with my students, the discussions felt forced, flat, and awkward. That changed today when I tried TQE for the first time.  Sharing homework in small groups Students writing their TQEs on the board When I listened to Marissa's podcast on Cult of Pedagogy ( check it out here ), I was intimidated. After all, her students are in high school and have a rock star teacher.  I think I read the transcript twenty times before finally trying it.  Here's h
5 comments
Read more

Writing an Essay...with a Partner

I love technology for collaboration! Teaching writing to middle school students is not easy.  All students come with different skills and knowledge.  With 35 students in a class, it's impossible to sit down one on one and assist students with the writing process.  Teaching students to write a literary analysis is particularly challenging because most seventh-graders have little, to no experience.  Students need to learn to  develop a thesis statement, find evidence from the text to support it, provide the context of the selected quotations , and write insightful commentary on the evidence they selected. Remember, these kiddos are twelve! Graphic organizers are particularly helpful to these young writers. The biggest challenge is providing feedback to students as they are writing, rather than after they turn their work in for a grade.  Students need to be able to use the feedback they receive and see the difference it makes in the final product.  I was adamant that I was not go
2 comments
Read more

The Outsiders

Anyone else remember reading The Outsiders in middle school?  I remember reading it in 7th grade in 1981. Oh how I loved that book!  Then came the movie!  Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Leif Garret, Matt Dillon, and Patrick Swayze were some of the actors in this Francis Ford Coppola film.  I have to admit that it was a little depressing this year when I mentioned that Tom Cruise was in the movie, and only one student said, "I think I have heard of him."   Yet, here it is 2014 and my students are enjoying this book as much as I did.  On the surface the book is about two rival "gangs," the Socs and the Greasers.  However, the book is about so much more.  It is about stereotypes and prejudging people.  It's about true friendship, family, and loyalty.  It's about courage and growing up.  That makes it the perfect book for middle schoolers. I started off the unit with a web quest about the 1960s to get the students acquainted with the setting of the novel.  They
Post a Comment
Read more