Body parts vocabulary lesson down the drain
The 12-year-olds were outrageously annoying today. They just do not stop talking amongst themselves, ever. And my tactic for dealing with this is to make lessons way easier. Which is probably not good. I had this bizarre yet interesting, I think, lesson planned for having them create towns in the shape of bodies and equating body parts to places in towns, since they are learning the vocabulary for both of those things. For example, ¨the eyes are the police station, because they see everything¨ or ¨the face is the museum because it is beautiful¨. And then they could draw it and shit. But they suck and talked and screamed and wasted the whole first 10 minutes of class trying to quiet down, so I just played body part bingo with them.
I guess also I was mildly embarrassed about my wierd-ass lesson plan, and I didn´t feel like explaining it. (Luckily, I wouldn´t have had to be embarrassed about the teacher hearing my silly lesson plan because she fucking left the room after 5 minutes). I was inspired by a science lesson we did when I was in 8th grade where we made a theme park using the different types of cells of the body and what their functions were. I had a great time with that project, and I thought these kids might maybe enjoy it too. But they´re too obnoxious as a group to do anything.
There is one problem kid in that class, Jonathon, who has a really hard time behaving and all of the teachers yell and him and throw him out of class. I´m ashamed to say that I threw him out once too. But he had gotten up and was in position to punch another kid (who deserved it), so what was I supposed to do? Anyway, I try and be really encouraging towards him and show him extra attention and praise him when I can, and he is really quiet in my class, and works pretty diligently and pays good attention. I like him a lot. Actually, I like nearly all of those children individually, except for one absolute demon; it´s just that together they turn into this roiling, screaming monster. I will look into taking advantage of the fact that we are two teachers in the room (sometimes) and splitting the class into two groups in two separate rooms.
I did a debate-like activity related to environmental law with the 14 year olds (that group is so focused. I can do any activity with them). I will wait until I´ve done it with a few other classes to report on it.
I am oh, so stinky. Luckily all of the children smell terrible after a long day, so no one knows whether it is me or them.
