7th Grade Read Alouds

Sometimes middle schoolers can have a reputation for being superficial and academically apathetic. While I'm sure there are days when they earn that reputation, that doesn't mean we should expect it of them. When we had to do a read aloud in our dyad placement, I was a little nervous. It seemed unlikely that a 7th grade math class would want to listen to me read aloud about anything. So naturally I chose a children's book.

Before I began reading, I asked students to pay attention to both the author’s intended meaning as well as the ways they could relate it to math. After the read aloud they told me a few of the things they noticed. They compared the book to their lessons on proportional reasoning, noticing that there was a part to part ratio of 3:1 of wolves to pigs. After this comment was made, another student commented that the part to whole ratio would be either 1:4 or 3:4, depending on whether you were comparing wolves or pigs. They also noticed that the ratios in this story were inverses of those in the original story of the 3 Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. They also related the story to math by saying that the wolves really had to think and work together in order to come up with the initially less obvious solution to their problem.

Before I read them the story, I had pretty low expectations of the outcome. I wasn't even sure that the students would pay attention. Interestingly enough, in the discussion following, students who didn't typically participate in math class were some of the first to raise there hands. It was a great experience to remind me to set high expectations for my students no matter what.

Trick or Treat?

I remember when I was in elementary school, Halloween was a huge deal. My friends and I would spend recesses planning our costumes so that we could show them off at the school parade on Halloween day. Generally that whole week would be a build up of excitement until our class party that day, where I can't say much learning went on. I guess this might explain why many schools (secretly to my disappointment) have refrained from celebrating the holiday all together.

This is why I was relieved when my master teacher from my main placement asked if I could help her out at their Halloween Party, the Friday before Halloween. While it wasn't what I expected, I was very impressed with the way she was able to incorporate learning into their activities while still making it a fun experience.

In the morning, before the party, she did a science lesson on spider anatomy involving vocabulary. For the party, she set up 6 stations between which the 4th graders would rotate. One of the activities was to draw an anatomically correct spider. After the kids rotated through every station, they played spider bingo. That morning, while they were learning about spiders, they learned 16 vocabulary words pertaining to spiders and/or their environment. Then, during bingo, she read the definitions and they had to mark the correct vocabulary word in order to win.

It was great to see my 4th graders again and to learn some fun ways to incorporate learning into class parties!

This is one of the most dynamic examples of whole brain teaching I've seen in a classroom! Check it out!