6 weeks nears an end

This coming week will be my last week at Coble Middle School. I don't know where the time has gone. God has given me a great experience in the fact that I was able to teach both 7th and 8th grade at this school and have been able to see a night and day difference between the two. Even though 7th graders never stop talking and are always out of their seats, they are still awesome and I love that age. Since there is no school on Monday and all classes are testing on Friday, I only have 3 days with them this week and then I move on to Mary Lillard Intermediate to teach 6th graders. I am in the midst of planning my last lessons with them and I want them to be fun and something they remember.

Last week we talked about why people take risks. I showed them some videos to get them hooked to the lesson and even had one student tell me that she was really enjoying the lesson! That made me feel so good to know that my work had paid off for them. I always try to make it fun and give visuals to help with what we are learning. Here is one of the videos I showed them. We then read about a volcano chaser and how he risks his life to explore unknown parts of the world.

http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/best-of-adventure/dean-potter-video

To assess students in this lesson, I had them write down 3 or 4 goals that they wanted to achieve in life. They could be risky like the ones we watched and read about, or they could be safer, like traveling to another country or learning a new language. I also encouraged a lot of them to think about what they may want to be when they grow up and what college they wanted to go to. They were then to share one of their goals with the class and tell us why it was important to them and how they were going to achieve that goal. Here are some of the goals that were shared:

Deep see diving
Skydiving
Attending college at Standford
Becoming a lawyer
Going on the game show, Wipeout
Traveling to Paris
Learning Spanish and traveling to Spain and Mexico
Get a scholarship to play football and then play in the NFL
Own a vacation home in Hawaii
Become prom queen
Be the valedictorian in high school
Become a makeup artist for celebrities

They all had very good goals and I think it really made them think about the next steps in their lives as they prepare for high school and what they need to do to achieve their goals. Overall, I was very impressed with their responses!