Tricks of the Trade

My kidlets and I are currently in the midst of our Science Fiction/Fantasy unit which includes the short story "Dark The Were, and Golden Eyed" by Ray Bradbury. Because Martians factor into the plot of the story in a big way, and extra terrestrials in general seem to be a recurring theme in this section of our literature book, we spent some class time on an alien related project.

The alien project is actually an exercise in descriptive writing, which I think is one of the most enjoyable language arts activities. When I hear the phrase "descriptive writing" I immediately think about smearing vivid adjectives around like finger paints or using alliteration to turn a simple sentence into an interpretive dance routine for the tongue. But when 87% of seventh graders hearthe phrase "descriptive writing" they immediately think about slow, spirit-crushing, mind-numbing paragraphs of torture. They sigh. They whine. They groan. So I have to disguise the "descriptive writing activity". I have to dress it up to look like ...well, NOT a "descriptive writing activity".


So our alien project is a descriptive writing activity disguised as an art project topped off with a sprinkling of competition. Seventh graders love competition.


So here's what we did after reading our story about Martians...First the kidlets had to draw and color a picture of what they think an alien might/should look like. Then they had to write a paragraph that described their alien well enough that someone else would be able to duplicate the original drawing with nothing but the paragraph to guide them. The aliens and accompanying paragraphs were numbered (privacy laws have sure changed public school since my days in the desks) and the paragraphs redistributed to other class periods so other kidlets could try to recreate the original alien.

After everyone had the opportunity to draw a peer's alien, all of the extra terrestrials and descriptions were handed back in so that I could reunite original aliens with their long-lost descriptions and introduce them to their corresponding doppelgangers. We are now in the competition phase of the project, where expert judges from NASA (or whichever of my friends I can con into do it...Zealanda? Ruth? Krystal? Liz? Is anyone out there?) decide which sets of aliens most closely resemble each other. The winners will receive a supply of the most valued and treasured of all seventh grade commodities...gum. But not just any gum. The kind with juice in it.

Squishy-juicy gum and the knowledge that they totally thrashed their peers in a competition. 7th grade just doesn't get much better than that.

So I had to be a bit tricky to get the kids to hone their descriptive writing skills. I then covered my walls with the results of those finely honed descriptive writing skills.


Literally COVERED the walls. I have, like 847 kidlets, so that makes for a lot of alien life forms that need to be displayed.

Well, OK, so I don't have quite that many kidlets. There are, after all, less than 400 kids in the whole school ( so the number of names in my grade book during the year is usually somewhere between 120 and 150) , but that still equals enough alien projects to completely cover my walls and make me pray that the state fire inspector doesn't make a surprise visit anytime soon.

But the problem with having that many projects on the walls of my classroom (besides increasing the odds of said classroom turning into a flaming crock pot of death should my overhead projector over-heat or a static electricity shock competition go horribly, horribly wrong), is that the kidlets are much more interested in staring at the walls than they are in listening to me extol the virtues of complex sentence structure. So I had to use yet another trick of the teaching trade to refocus their attention on me.

With the State Direct Writing Assessment less than three weeks away (don't forget you will need at least one back ink pen that day, punk rockers! --That includes you, all you forgetful 1B-ers! Start stocking your lockers and backpacks with them NOW!!!) I really, really need to have their full attention. So I pulled out the big guns...or in this case, the big ear rings.

Why the big earrings? Because seventh graders are distracted by shiny things. And they are intrigued by any sort of change. The combination of the shininess and the novelty of seeing me in jewelry that is not part of my normal school wardrobe completely fascinated the kidlets. They were a captive audience completely dedicated to learning about complex sentences (except for when they were asking me where I got the earrings and what the earrings were made out of and if the earrings were heavy and if they could borrow the earrings) .

All things considered, I think I did an exceptionally good job of tricking the children into participating in the educational process this week. Now if I could only discover a trick to help me with the aftermath of the educational process...the education excretion known as "grading".

Midterm report cards are being printed on Monday (half way through 2nd quarter already!?!?!) and I have several inches worth of papers that need to be read and/or corrected and/or scored and/or graded.

I thought about trying the same tricks I used earlier in the week to help make the grading process less painful. I considered drawing little pictures on the papers and rewarding myself with a piece of gum for every inch of papers I managed to score and record (both in the paper grade book and online), and possible even trying to talk another teacher who had procrastinated weeks worth of their grading into racing me. But alas, I am not a seventh grader; art, gum, and competition for the sake of competition hold little value for me.

So I guess I will just have to resign myself to the idea of my whole weekend being dedicated to grading papers, taking breaks only to eat and work on various Sunday school and institute lessons. It really is a shame that I am too mature for those simplistic tricks to...

Wait...

Hold up...

I just saw something shiny.

Cool.

Now, what was I typing about again?