Teaching Tips for the Upcoming School Year

Teaching Tips for the Upcoming School Year

“A good lesson plan will not make a poor teacher into a rock star. But a poor lesson plan can make a well-intentioned teacher look bad.” – Eric Jensen, Super Teaching

Dennis Sevano

Author’s Note: I have prepared this article for parents and educators to offer strategies to engage students in the beginning of the new school year. These activities cover math, reading, writing and thinking, and are rooted in current events that are relevant to the students lived experiences. I hope they help make teaching and learning more effective and exciting.

In mid- August the school bell rings. Positive tension elevates, your mind casually unpacking and rewinding the mental tapes of ideas. While classroom management and the safety of your students are your highest priority, raising interest, attention, and curiosity through well planned lessons planning is the grueling groundwork.

You are graciously reminded that lesson plans need to be aligned with standards and statewide testing objective. Don’t stray too far from the district script especially in the middle and high school where testing results are made public and may count towards future college admissions. Repeat some, lose some previous plans, be flexible with self-evaluation and seek student feedback.

Staying in line with administrative fiats requires balance. New teachers should seek out respected veteran colleagues or a supervisor for perspective of instruction and lesson planning, as the old saying goes, “If I fail to plan, I am planning to fail.”

Challenging lessons need RELEVANT connections to true life meaning. The following are ideas that might peak learners’ attention in a variety of grades.

NBA FINALS

• Jalen Brunson scored 45 points in game 5 of the NBA Finals. If 12 of his points came from 3-points shots and 13 points from free throws, how many points did he score from 2 point field goals?
• Dylan Harper and Victor Wembanyama scored 19 points. If the Spurs scored 90 points as a team, what percent of the team’s points did Harper and Wembanyama score?
• At a finals watch party, there were 45 adults and 30 teens. What is the ratio of adult to teens in the simplest form?
• The Knicks scored 107 points in game 4 after scoring 111 points in game 3. What is the percent decrease in points scored from game 3 to game 4?

WORLD CUP SOCCER

• A World Cup team scored 6 goals in 3 games. At this rate, how many goals will the team score in 7 games?
• A fan has $120. They spend $37.50 on food and $48.00 on merchandise. How much money do they have left?
• A stadium parking lot has 2400 spaces. If 3/8 of the spaces are filled, how many spaces are filled?

• A World Cup souvenir costs $28. A fan uses a coupon for 25% off. What is the sale price?

MATH ENTERTAINMENT

According to Forbes Magazine Taylor Swift earned $190 million from the first leg of the Eras Tour.

If her agent earns 20% of that amount:

How much money does the agent receive?

How much money does Taylor Swift keep after paying her agent?

If Taylor Swift earns the same amount on the next leg of the tour, how much will she have earned from both legs combined?

MATH

• Give four ways only with coins that add up to a dollar bill.
• Give four ways only with Bills that can add the 100-dollar bill.
• If you add the letters in your first name, multiplying your age, what would the answer be?

9/11

“The Man in the Red Bandana” is a documentary about Welles Crowther an equity trader at Sandler O’Neil in the south tower of the original World Trade Center and volunteer fire fighter during this time. He saved 18 lives by navigating people through stairwells and corridors but lost his own life when the terrorist planes struck.

Show the video on You-tube and discuss courage and sacrifice. Play the song “The Rising” by Bruce Springsteen with the poem from Billy Collins “The Names.” Discuss how images and figures of language create engagement.

Have students interview people in the neighborhood who were old enough to recall their own experiences on 9/11. The teachers and students can form the questions and report back to the class.

MLK

A Tribute to Martin Luther King”- “I Have a Dream” speech.

A play based on this speech was adapted by Dr. Timothy Rasinski, a professor emeritus of literary education at Kent State University and previously director of its award-winning reading clinic.

Cast: Narrators 1, 2. 3, Martin Luther King 1 and 2. It is a fun theater type presentation.

The script is provided below, shared with the permission of Dr. Rasinski, to whom I express deep gratitude!

This is perfect for grades 6 to 12.

Script: A Tribute to Doctor Martin Luther King

Developed by:

Timothy Rasinski, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Literacy Education

Presidential Scholar, Kent State University

In association with Fourth and Fifth Grade Students, Indiana

(Reprinted with Permission of Author)

-------------------------

Cast: Narrators 1, 2, and 3, Martin Luther King (MLK) 1 and 2.

Narrator 1: A man of God, a great American, a martyr to the cause of justice, equality, and freedom. These are words that describe Doctor Martin Luther King.

Narrator 2: He spoke of a dream in which all people, regardless of the color of their skin, or their religious beliefs, or their ethnic heritage, would be treated with fairness and with dignity.

Narrator 3: Sadly, during Dr. King’s lifetime, justice, equality, and freedom were nothing more than dreams for many Americans.

Narrator 1: You see, during Dr. King’s lifetime, black people in the United States were treated differently than white people.

Narrator 2: Black people could not eat in the same restaurants as whites in some states.

Narrator 3: Black children could not attend the same schools as white children.

Narrator 2: Black people could not even use the same restrooms or water fountains as white people.

Narrator 1: This was not fair. And around the country, black people and white people began to speak out against this unfairness.

Narrator 2: Doctor Martin Luther King was one of the leaders of those who, through their actions and their words, demanded that America live up to its promise of a land of opportunity for all people, blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, and all others.

MLK 1: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed... that all men are created equal.

Narrator 1: In the summer of 1963, Doctor King spoke at a special gathering of people dedicated to civil rights, equal rights for all people. The meeting was held in Washington DC, in the front of the Lincoln Memorial and the statue of Abraham Lincoln, the president who ended slavery during the Civil War a hundred years earlier.

Narrator 2: And still, even 100 years after the end of slavery, black people were still treated as second class citizens in most parts of the United States.

MLK 2: But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

Narrator 1: Doctor King helped all Americans see that this was not right, that no American should be satisfied with a country that treats people differently just because some have black skin and others have white.

MLK 2: I can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating, For Whites Only. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the city. No, no, we are not satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Narrator 2: But the road to justice is a long and hard rode. Many people attending this assembly had already been hard at work trying to make things better for all people in America. Dr. King urged them to keep the faith and to continue their work.

MLK 1: I know that many of you have come here out of great trials and tribulation. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.

MLK 2: Continue to work... Go back to Mississippi,; go back to Alabama; go back to South Carolina; go back to Georgia; go back to Louisiana; go back to the slums and the ghettoes of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can, and will, be changed.

Narrator 3: Dr. King knew that the work of people of goodwill dedicated to liberty and justice for all would eventually lead to a new America, an America he saw in his dreams.

MLK 1: I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

MLK 2: I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, ... one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!

MLK 1: This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning --- My country tis of thee; sweet land of liberty; of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring --- and if America is to become a great nation, this must become true.

MLK 2: So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

MLK 1: But not only that.

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

MLK 2: And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of god’s children -- black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics --- will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, Free at last, free at last; thank God almighty, we are free at last.

Narrator 3: Dr. King was one the greatest leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 60s.

Narrator 1: Unfortunately, he never lived to see the day when his dream of an America for all people became a reality.

Narrator 2; In 1968, five years after giving his I Have a Dream Speech, Dr. King traveled to Memphis Tennessee to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers. While standing on a balcony of a motel, Dr. Martin Luther King was shot and killed by an assassin.

Narrator 3: Still the legacy of Dr. King lives on. These words of Dr. King that you have just heard, continue to inspire people of goodwill today just at they did on that special day in 1963.

Narrator 1: Dr. Martin Luther King taught us that people who want what is right and who desire equality, justice, and freedom for all can make it happen by working for it. We continue to work for it today, so that one all of us, no matter who we are or what we may look like, will be able to say,

ALL: Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

See: Rasinski, T., & Griffith, L. (2005). Texts for Fluency Practice (Grade1, 1, Grades 2-3, Grades 4-8). Also: Building Fluency Through Practice and Performance: Grs 1-6 and American History.

Teacher Created Materials (Order @ 888-333-4551 or www.teachercreatedmaterials.com) – search Rasinski

WRITING PROMPTS

A famous writer Henry David Thoreau, once said, “We do not ride upon the railroad, it rides upon us.”

• Thoreau meant that modern technology may hurt us more than help us. What are some of the effects of technology on our lives - such as cell phones, chrome books, I pads, open AI, You Tubes and video games?

• Imagine that you were asked to write about the rapid development of technology for your teacher or the school principal. Submit a thoughtful essay supporting or opposing the amount of technology in our lives, especially in schools.

“The Outsiders”: What is the Question to the Answer?

This is a great novel for Grades 7/8

Instructions:

·See the list below of six words or phrases from the book, “The Outsiders”.

·Ask students to create a “question” from the book that would be correctly answered by that word or phrase:

1.Autowreck

2.Nothing Gold Can Stay

3.Greasers and the Socs

4.Things are rough all over

5.Ponyboy and Cherry Valance

6.Dally and Dallas

CLOSING THOUGHTS

“The lesson plan is like a restaurant menu-its extremely useful planning tool but its not the meal.”

The skill and knowledge of an artful teacher who understands student behavior plays an equal role in the success of lesson planning with engaging activities.

Reference: Super Teaching by Eric Jensen

Happy School Year!

Dennis Sevano was born and raised in Hoboken, where he served as a teacher and the Supervisor of Reading for the Public Schools. He is the former Assistant Superintendent of Paterson Schools and mentors future teachers through St. Peter’s University, where he also taught. He has also taught at New Jersey City University and Ramapo University. He served as a Professor-in-Residence at William Paterson University. He writes frequently about education, sports figures and notables in the Mile Square City. He currently resides in Teaneck