Remember when I was an artist? Now I get beat up by students and school admins; I mean, it's not that bad, but kind of. Today I had a class where the school librarian came in and read a book about a guy in Africa who saved some elephants from poachers, and afterwards/seperate was a vocabulary exercise, and all the words listed, related to the story they were just told; so on third period, after the librarian left, I asked everyone to take out a piece of paper--the eight graders didn't even have one--everything is done on iPads. So I found a stack of copy paper and had someone hand a piece out to everyone. "Wait? What are we doing?" They were actually shocked/disoriented to writing on a piece of paper. I asked them to write the title of the story (Thula Thula) atop the page; now list the vocabulary words underneath: Ineffectual; Indifferent; Pandemonium; Vile--off the top of my head this moment. "OK, how might we apply the word Ineffectual to the story we just heard?" A student replies that the government was ineffectual in protecting the elephants from poachers; another replies the fence was ineffectual from stopping the heard from breaking free of captivity. "How would we apply the word Indifferent?" A student replies that the locals were indifferent to the elephants. "What's the opposite of indifference?" Caring a student replies. "Who wasn't indifferent?" The guy who took the elephants in. "How about Pandemonium?" It was pandemonium when the elephants broke out, with the guy and his wife and helicopter buddy searching for them, a student said. "What about the word Vile?" Everyone replied the poachers are vile for killing elephants for ivory.
Was disappointing that the vocab and story weren't linked, like two separate assignments. Left papers with teacher so hopefully an idea moving forward; also, was the shock and disorientation of students when asked to write on paper.
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