Middle School Workshop Feedback

Middle School Social Studies

First – Social Studies has utilized "Story Telling" many times this year… (like Sarah's story and your kiddos doing the Magic Flute today). It usually involved a dramatic reading by a teacher or a student while the rest of the students act out what is being read without knowing the story.  It is WAY fun and students LOVE this technique.  We have found that it truly heightens students' focus in class as they either love performing or love watching their peers perform! Ironically, the two topics they enjoy the most are love and death and our best "performances" always stem from these topics.  Recently, we have performed Greek wedding customs as well as training to be a Samurai Warrior.  Students can always comprehend and recall the content from these improv sessions so readily!

We also recently used the "dinner table" strategy to hold a simulation discussing the Israeli/Palestinian crisis.  Students were given background information on a character in either an Israeli or Palestinian family and had to improv a discussion that might have happened amongst their family.  This was a powerful way for students to connect to the emotion of the topic as well as visualize the similarities between the families!

Brainstorming today…we really focused on 8th grade which deals with large concepts instead of historical stories or people.  We thought we could use the World's Worst to review about the branches of government – Worst President ever? Worst Congressmen ever? Worst Supreme Court Justice?

Also – the dinner party would be a super strategy to use for the Immigration debate as well as the political spectrum.  We could give students background content on a character dealing with these issues and have them improv what would happen at dinner with others with different viewpoints!

Middle School English

1.) Character Dinner or Party- students could understand or review characterization by showing up to a "dinner" or "party" as one of the characters from our class novel.

2.) Academic Vocabulary Party- Students could show up to the party as a part of plot, type of figurative language, world leader, part of a cell, etc.  The host has to guess who/what they are, based on their behavior and description.

3.) Adding to the story one word at a time- great way to summarize a chapter.

4.) Chapter Tableaux- the students could physicalize the most important moments of a chapter in order to strengthen summary, sequence, and determining importance skills.

5.) "Tour Guide"- a take on taxi driver, the driver and characters can provide a tour of the novel's setting.

6.) "World's Worst"- students can review/analyze character traits of archetypal characters in literature.

7.) Kara noted that any of the activities could be useful for strengthening students' social skills, especially in the area of "perspective taking."