Friday. Oh, yes. Friday.

The weekend is upon me. Sleep.

But before all that, school. Teaching.

The junior class once again amazed me with the depth of their interest and emotional investment in The Crucible. We are in Act III and finished at the part where Abigail Williams effectively quashes the inquiry into the truth growing through the presentation of Procter and Hale's evidence.

After class, Mrs. Manning and I talked about the importance of passion in the classroom -- if a teacher does not love and is not genuinely interested in the subject and express that through his or her classroom demeanor, questions of method and procedure are entirely moot. Students will not be tricked into being motivated; however, their interest can be won by a person who is intellectually and emotionally moved by literature being discussed.

Due to testing throughout the morning hours all week, the 6th period freshman class has gotten slightly ahead of the 1st period freshman class. So, Mrs. Manning and I had talked about my coming up with game or activity for the 6th period class. After deliberating for a couple of days, the answer struck me: Fish Bowl. The class been learning about and identifying nouns as a part of their DOL at the beginning of each class. And Fish Bowl deals with nouns: each one writes down five nouns on a small piece of paper, folds it, and places it in a hat, bowl, box, or whatever else is available (said receptacle then becomes the "fish bowl"); next, everyone finds a partner; one from the first team draws a piece of paper from the fish bowl and describes each of the five words one at a time; after his/ her partner has correctly identified each of the five nouns, he/ she has to repeat them in order; each team has one minute to go through as many of the cards as possible. While a team is playing, all other teams must listen closely because if the playing team fails to make it all the way through a card, the card goes back into the bowl and will be an easy point if the next team who draws it manages to remember the nouns in the right order.

So, that's what we did for the last half of the period. The students loved it because it was fun, humorously frustrating at times, and good-naturedly competitive. In addition to those reasons, I like it because students get to interact with nouns, think of synonyms and other creative ways to express each word, listen carefully, and remember accurately.

After school, one of the students from the 1st period freshman class came by the room. He is kid who craves attention; he just wants to be noticed. He came asked how our days had been, and after we answered, started talking about his day and how he hates stories. I pointed out that he had asked us to tell him stories by asking how our days had been and that he had told us a story as well. He explained that he liked that because he knew they were true and that he didn't like reading because it took longer to figure out if the story were true or not. I appreciate the fact that he is thinking for himself, and I told him so. And I then asked him to explain more. Although there are some pretty glaring logical leaps in his reasoning, I didn't point them out. I asked a question or two asking for additional explanation, but I mostly listened. I think that's what he needs -- someone to give him time, someone to listen.