Seriously?

Today's middle school art lesson plan? "Junk Sculptures." Now, don't get me wrong, I was subbing for one of the best art teachers in the district, her students are really well trained, friendly, and engaged, and it's a cool project to promote recycling and reusing and to creatively solve problems. However, it's probably best done when you aren't going to have subs (looking at the notes there was a sub last Friday as well) because the project is accomplished with:

-8 giant tupperwares of random crap, including sharp things and yanked apart computer parts
-1 vice and 3 saws
-2 hot glue guns
-15 pairs of pliers and 1 pair of tin snips
-20 different screwdrivers
-4 hammers
-1 drill press

Holy crap! I thought that the day I had to hand out 8 razor blades for flower dissection was the craziest sub plan ever. I was wrong.

SHS Continued ...

So, I have been at SHS since the first day of school and it looks like that trend will continue for another day or two. I'm filling in for the very tardy design teacher's substitute, if you can wrap your head around that. It's been really nice, having a steady job with great kids and a fun curriculum. I actually stay after class to lesson plan! Weird! These are some of the InDesign compositions that turned out quite nicely (2-3 days work on average).

Running down the clock

Have you ever gotten a classroom with skimpy (or no) lesson plans?

Thankfully, this does not happen to me very much. However, when it does, you can feel very panicked and worried about losing control of the room, especially when dealing with younger students who need structure and direction all the time.

There are some basic time fillers:
-SSR
-Study Hall time
-Heads up 7 Up

These are great because students all know how to do them and it requires no extra materials on your part.

If you feel like lugging them around you can have emergency supplies like:
-Worksheets and puzzles
-A nerf ball for a round of silent ball
-Story book for youngsters

One of my favorite time fillers? Paper airplane contest! You can use binder paper or old paper out of the recycle bin. Students work in pairs or solo to create the best airplane they can, with a time limit. For the end part of class, you can either move furniture to create a flight path through the room or take them into the hallway and have them compete for distance. Any students who chose not to make a plane can be judges or write down the names of winning teams for you. You can also assign extra awards for "coolest trick" (for the plane that just looped or crashed spectacularly) "most innovative design" (for the pair that ripped, folded, and torqued their plane in unexpected ways) or "prettiest design" (in case anyone decorated their paper in addition to folding it.)

Do you have any favorite emergency lesson plans???

Great week so far!

Wow, I have never been so glad for Christmas (oops, I mean Winter) break to be over! It ended up being a 3-week break for me because the calls stopped on Tuesday the week before break and I didn't get a gig until the day after they came back. Luckily I have a part-time retail gig that keeps me busy in the weeks before Christmas, but ... I'm a teacher, dammit! I want to hang out with kids!
Anyways, my first gig back was a three day stint in a friend's special education room back where I used to teach (OHS). Because the curriculum for these classes is so complicated (they work from a special textbook and workbook that seems like it was written in another language, there are so many routines and jargon words), the teacher and I worked out an alternate arrangement. Pretty much for the three days we would read part of an article about the British graffiti artist Banksy (image above, but your own google search is highly recommended), then work on our own stencils. It was awesome, combining special ed literacy with ART ART ART! By day three we were in an abandoned shop classroom spray painting our stencils. The kids got really creative with color combos and special effects. I really love doing these fun projects with kids and it makes me even hungrier for my own classroom!