Yesterday we did a role play in the form of  a news cast.  The subject was Alexander the Great.  The students had already done some reading and answered questions about the reading so they could use this to guide them in their news cast.  Some of them were very funny.  For instance they started out announcing something like "My name is Dimitri from Ancient Greek Fox news and today I am interviewing Alexander the Great"

It was a great way for the kids to do a review of the content and they enjoyed doing this activity.

Katie Cook

I am struggling with my students using their time effectively on the computers. We have a separate computer lab for the middle school students. They have to use good integrity in this lab or they lose their computer rights for the rest of the quarter.
I think their time on the computer has to be extremely stuctured and have a specific purpose.
Thre is a great power point slide show on the computer about the Pelponessian War. We are an older school and do not have updated technology to show this to all the students on a big screen.
So, I think I am going to have them watch it and ask them to answer some focussed questions about the slide show. I am also going to give them a time limit! Wish me luck.

Katie Cook

I am having the students taste greek food because we are going on a field trip! We are going to the Greek Cusina restaurant on March 18th in Portland, Oregon. This restaurant is used to having groups of students come and eat Greek lunch and get some exposure to Greek culture. My cooperating teacher loves to take field trips so he was all for the idea.

So far I have given the class Greek olives, hummus, greek bread and feta cheese. They love this activity. I am finding that some students are more adventuresome than others. Many of them have not had this kind of food, so the exposure is good for them.

We are now working on Persian/Greek war diaries/journals. I am doing pretty well with this large class of middle school students but I feel as though I am getting tested by a few of the boys. This is to be expected and I am using my behavior strategies, such as pulling them aside and talking to them individually as well relocating them to different parts of the classroom. I am also working on keeping up my repoire with them. I know these are all helping, because the infractions are not terrible just a little disruptive at times.Is this the best I can expect from this age group of kids?
Katie Cook

One teaching strategy that did not work so well was to have the students come up to the board and fill in what they know about different types governments in Ancient Greece. It was hard to do this, because when I had students come up and fill in facts on the board the other students got silly and disruptive. It seems to work better to facilitate discussion and work on projects individually or as a whole group. Small groups have worked for some projects but they can also be problematic, because time gets wasted when the students spend too much time visiting with each other.

Katie Cook

We are now learning about the Persian Wars. I was trying to think how I could make this subject matter come alive for middle school kids.
I came up with the idea of Dodge ball using Nerf balls. One side is Greece and the other side is the Persian Empire. There are four wars that the students need to fight. We did the first war yesterday, "the battle at Marathon. I weighted the two teams unevenly in the gym so that there were more Greeks than Persians. This way the Greeks had an unfair advantage and they could win.
Today we are going to start making diaries, pretending to be a Persian or Greek Warrior and then at the end of class we are going to the Gym to fight the second Persian War, The battle at Thermoplyae. Of course the kids love this and it helps them understand the subject matter better.

Katie Cook

Febraury 21, 2009

The last couple of days I have been working with my 7/8 the grade class on making some large murals. One is for Sparta and one is for Athens. The students first had to do an individual assignment about comparing and contrasting these two cities during ancient times in Greece.
Now they are gathering information and making fabulous art work which we will compile and put on two murals. I am curious to see what the final product will look like.

Katie Cook