You know, if a person were to decide to make a summer of reading professional books in hopes of finding inspiration and ideas, they would choose well. This summer, so far, I have chosen well. Over the past few weeks, I have reviewed a few really good educational books, by some really great authors. This time around, I asked around on Twitter and was asked to review The End of Molasses Classes by Ron Clark. I had already read this book back in 2012 when I first got it, but it had been some time, so it wasn’t so fresh in my mind. I decided to give this book a go, and am glad I did.
Tag Archives: teaching
Teach Like a PIRATE Book Review #tlap
This seems to be the summer of reading… wait, aren’t all summers summers of reading? No, hold on, reading is always good, summer or not. Well anyway, enough of that. Recently, I finished a great book by Dave Burgess, Teach Like a PIRATE. Let me tell you, it was a treat.
Now, let’s start out with the nitty gritty. Yes, the word PIRATE is all in caps. That is intentional. Work with me here and we will get to that.
Using Movie Clips in the Classroom
Many teachers struggle to find ways to engage their students. They often struggle to get them under control so they can get their lesson started. Too often, a great deal of valuable time is lost in doing this.
When asked, many say it is ‘just a rowdy bunch’ or “a rough group of kids’. This may rub some of you the wrong way, but the fact is, if you struggle for that long to get them involved, it’s the way you are trying to engage them that is the problem.
This is not to say you are at fault, just that you haven’t found the magic bullet yet for each class. Obviously, groups of kids can be very different, and no one thing works for everyone. However, one thing I have found that consistently works to get kids involved and on task immediately is using movie clips.