Feb

26

Are you apathetic? Are you unmotivated? Are you bored? Good!!! Read this.

Filed Under Behaviour Management, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students | 1 Comment

underwear.jpg Feeling tired, listless, apathetic, unmotivated and not interested in school? I thought as much. Well, help is on the way. Since I am a special education specialist, I have shelves of resource books all giving advice on how students can deal with boredom, but… they’re all too boring. So, I thought I’d ask the www for some advice about dealing with boredom in school and then pass it along you.

Yahoo! Answers advises:

- face it school is a boring place……. just try to pay attention and dont zone out……i’m 13…… i kow these things…..(I’maFruit)

-That’s easy. Get a pice of paper out and draw your worst enimey in their underwear OR you can listen to your teacher talk about stuff that don’t make any sence to you at all.(but that’s no fun now is it)Me i like to make my owne songs.Or make my own fashion. (Starr)

-Things are only boring when you are doing something that you don’t see a value in. When you’re forced to do something that you’d rather not do. The trick is this - ONLY do things that have a purpose. I’ll tell you though, school has a GREAT purpose for you. Learning to read, do math, how to interact with people, how to get yourself to do what your boss (teacher) is asking you to do all these skills will make you a MUCH happier person as you grow. Get in there (school) and don’t allow your time to get away without you getting those skills - and getting them BETTER than anyone else! You are getting FOR FREE what people in other places have to pay a forune for. Take full advantage of it!!! Then go out into the world when you get older and take over!!! But only if you’ve picked up the needed skills…..(teran_realtor)

If you actually listen to what the teacher is talking about, and you participate and raise your hand with answers, you will become more interested what you are learning. I get really bored in my geograpyh and history classes, but I try to participate and enjoy what I’m learning. We go to school to get an education, so that when we are older we will be smart and have a good job.

You don’t want to be working at Burger King when your 45 do you? That’s why we go to school, so we can be able to get a job when we are older that pays a lot of money. (Joseph)

You know what, I think I’m going to ask my students to share their strategies for dealing with boredom at school. That can be their blog entry for this week.

PS. I just reread the suggestions above, and I think there’s advice in there for me too-although I can’t draw.

Feb

14

SOS for Teachers- Using the Internet more effectively

Filed Under Computers In The Classroom, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, SOS for Teachers, Teacher Support | Leave a Comment

cool.gifI recently came across Internet4Classrooms which helps teachers use the Internet more effectively. It’s a great site. It was selected for 101 Best Web Sites and I can see why. I found the on-line practise modules very user friendly because you can go at your own pace. They’ve helped me get my students beyond the absolute beginner stage and create more sophisticate projects. Not all kids have the new technology at home. (I’ve talked about this before. ) So when I find that a student can’t go home and create a PowerPoint presentation or a concept map using Inspiration because they don’t have computers or printers at home, I have them drop into the Credit Resource Centre where they can learn to use the program and complete the assignment.

Feb

5

More Kids exposed to Web porn

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students | Leave a Comment

Today all things came together at school . Sweet! My grade twelve class started working on the using-the-internet-safely pamphlet aimed at elementary school kids. One of the grade seven teachers, Lynn, the teacher librarian at our elementary school invited my class to share the pamphlets with the grade seven students. Sweet. I introduced my students to the class blog (see here) and told them they needed to get a registered user’s name at Wordpress so they could access it. Then one of my at-risk kids told me if the administration made me move out of my classroom, he and his friends (some of my other students) would pull all the fire alarms in school and committ others acts of vandalism to get even. It’s “nice” to have that kind of support. I guess my attempts at teaching my students appropriate ways of resolving conflicts haven’t been successful, yet. Oh, well. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunity to do so.

As I was driving home from work, I was thinking about kids surfing the Internet and what they could get exposed. Wouldn’t you know it, when I got home, I open the paper and this headline caught my eye “More kids exposed to Web porn”.

More children and teens are being exposed to on-line pornography, mostly by accidently viewing sexually explicit websites while surfing the Internet, researchers say. Forty-two per cent of Internet users aged 10 -17 survey said they had seen on-line pornography in a recent 12 month span.(Toronto Star, Feb. 5, p. A 15)

Whoa! And, I’m telling my students to go on line at home to complete research assignments. Something definately needs to be done. I guess parents could install some type of filter to prevent the accidental viewing of pornography. I wonder what is being done. I know I’ve typed Barbie into Google and I got some surprises. Try it yourself. When a seven and 1/2 year old types Barbie into a search engine , she definitely shouldn’t see what we saw. She looked at me, and I looked at her and she said, “I don’t think I’m supposed to see that.”

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