"Of those who say nothing, few are silent."
Thomas Neiel
The teacher I was subbing for today left plans to have "an easy day." Great! I don't mind the OCCASIONAL easy day. Especially if the students have New York State Exams over the next few days. Not to mention, this meant I had a say in what the classes did today. Instead of setting the kids loose, or strictly playing games, or some pointless activity that would have wasted fifty-four minutes of the day, I grabbed a Story Works magazine... well, I grabbed 3 sets of Story Works. They're amazing - thought-provoking articles, engaging activities; overall, perfect for an "easy" day. The first thing I did with the students was read an article titled "The Day Aliens Attacked America," which discussed Orson Welles' broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938, space exploration, and more. The students were captivated! After, I thought I would move onto something fun, but still educationally related: Mad Libs. See, Mad Libs require students to associate words with parts of speech. As they're creating sill paragraphs, they're also learning nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and so on. This is where my lesson came in today. The kids completely enjoyed the Mad Libs, which I expected they would. However, they also began getting carried away, as I put a stop to their slightly goofy, slightly inappropriate (think bodily functions) suggestions one student blurted out a very offensive word that silenced the entire class. Not only was my point of "let's not get carried away" received after that, but the class made their own point about boundaries. We were able to go back to having appropriate fun.
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