The Ash Hi Chat Really Writes

Asheboro High School's newspaper, The Ash Hi Chat, rolled out its first edition of the school year today.  Last year, Jonathan Dillion took over the reins as adviser and worked especially hard to make reading the paper an important part of AHS.  Mr. Dillion emails teachers a few days before an edition comes out and provides ways it can be incorporated in various content areas.  He has added prize giveaways for students who complete the newspaper's crossword puzzle, which is always based on facts from the reading.  There is also a game show-style class take over called "Chat Challenge" where one lucky class is ambushed and challenged to correctly answer trivia questions based on the articles all for the chance to win big prizes.

Hey Social Studies, Art, and English/Language Arts teachers, how could you use this student-created political cartoon featured in Ash Hi Chat in your classes?

The cartoon compliments the editorial article written by Mariam Kahn, "Do Parents Influence Our Political Views?".  <--(click here) The article can serve as a great starting point for lessons with or about politics, argumentative writing, research, discussion, statistics, psychology, parenting, and more.

Image credit:  cartoon by AHS student Elizabeth Pruitt

~Chandra

The Times

"For the Times They Are A-Changin" may be a familiar Bob Dylan song for some.  The title really resonates with me because, for one, we are definitely aware of the need for a change in the way we teach to meet Common Core standards.  Shift one from the CCSS is to include more informational text into a student's daily instructional time.  That concept brings me to my second connection to the song.  The New York Times (commonly referred to as just The Times) are changing by providing help for teachers in incorporating their articles into instruction.

Please click here to see how The Learning Network has teamed up with The New York Times.  If this has been helpful to you, please share how you used the resource.

~Chandra

Student-Generated Higher Order Thinking Questions

Bloom's Taxonomy, in its various forms, represents the process of learning.  It was developed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom and modified again in the 1990's by Bloom's former student, Lorin Anderson.

Many teachers create lessons and assessments based on Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (RBT) question stems in order to promote higher order thinking skills (HOTS).  How many of us push our students to create their own HOT questions???

I recently visited two 6th grade ELA classrooms at North Asheboro Middle School.  Co-teachers Chris Burian and Matt Edwards collaborated with co-teachers Meredith Wolfe and Kerry Brooks to create a lesson that scaffolded HOT question creation for students.  Here are pictures of their key word "thermometers" that took students from mild to medium to HOT!

HOT Questions Lesson at NAMS on PhotoPeach

Now it's your turn to think about how you can get students to create HOT questions.  If you need another idea, check out this Youtube video about using your SMART board  for a student-generated HOT review  game.


~Chandra

9/11 Teaching Activities

Kathy Saunders, an English teacher at Asheboro High School, has found a great resource for a 9/11 remembrance lesson.  "The Man in the Red Bandana"  is a powerful video, courtesy of ESPN, that can lead into great writing or discussion tasks.

Kathy first shared it with me last year.  She started with the lesson EQ:  What would you do in the last hour? Ask the question, but caution students about writing to their audience (the teacher).  The video works great to teach symbolism.  I used it last year and it fit nicely with our work on epic heroes.  The cross-curricular potential is endless. 

I also found a LiveBinder with 9/11 Teaching Activities.

September 11th Student Activities

Please share any ideas you may have on this topic or how you could use the video in your class.

~Chandra