middle school

A First Day Of School Ice Breaker You’ll Want To Try This Year

| Marisa Donnelly

Okay, here’s the thing. Ice breakers can be awesome…but when you’re teaching a middle/high school classroom, the last thing you want to do is be:

a. lame
b. cheesy
c. boring

So if you’re looking for something different, if you’re hoping to grab your students’ attention in a way that’s fun, but still relevant to the classroom, and if you’re plain out of ideas, here’s some great suggestions from Laura Randazzo, a secondary teacher who created this fun activity for her first days. Continue reading →

My Hamburger Narrative

| Marisa Donnelly

The focus of my sixth grade classes is narrative writing: short stories about the student’s own lives. To help with the structure of writing a short story, we explained a hamburger model of writing–the buns are the topic and concluding sentences, the meat is the essential components of the story, and the condiments are the supporting details, evidence, and sensory details! Continue reading →

Figurative Language Focus

| Marisa Donnelly

Today’s focus with sixth graders was on figurative language. The class activity was song/music based, where students were asked to look up different (previously selected) songs and find examples of figurative language. This was a computer activity. Students downloaded a google document, which was a Double Entry Journal. They put the song title, example of figurative language and then filled out a ‘What I Inferred’ column with what they thought the example was saying. Continue reading →