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No matter how old the kids are, the #1 best way to hold their attention is to be funny.
If you have a sense of humor, USE IT! :)
(I read back over this, and realized that the above statement is probably the most useful thing I said. So you can stop here if you want.)
The games, candy, and stuff like that can make the kids equate your class(es) with play time, instead of learning. On one hand, Jeopardy will hold their attention in class, but on the other, too many games will encourage them to see your class(es) as joke time rather than learning, which would defeat the purpose. You can use the games and such as rewards to motivate the kids, rather than as teaching tools.
Motivation=Good. Loss of Focus=Bad.
School should be fun, but not to the point that it supercedes learning.
I haven't heard of most of those books, but I trust your judgement in picking good ones. Books bring me back to having a sense of humor. Well, not exactly humor...but a certain zeal for the material. If you can talk about the book to the class and sound like you're interested while at the same time choosing your words to get them interested, they'll be happy to follow along.
My English teacher from this past year was certainly interested in the books...in fact, she loved them. The problem was that she was an extremely dull person. We all fell asleep as she rambled on, and on.
Now, about student teaching. STUDENTS HATE IT. *ahem*. Well, I've always hated it anyways. I can't really speak for others. I always felt an underlying sense of redundancy, because I knew that everyone had already read the material that I was about to "teach". You absolutely should do presentations in class, because it's good to develop those skills. Students get more enjoyment out of picking their own subjects to present about. I don't mean you should give them total creative independance...the choice between peaches, pears, and coconuts is probably enough (by that I mean let them choose a topic from a prescribed list of options that relate to the curriculum material, but are not directly a part of it.)
Those are my thoughts, based on my experiences and observations. I don't know if they helped or not, but maybe there's something useful to be scrounged from my ramblings.
Best of luck in the coming school year!
Although I am not between the ages of 12-18, I have worked with those ages in social services and I found that games make them motivated. Make your curriculum fun and they will retain the information longer and will be inspired.
i had a teacher that did class in the grass i loved it, reading is much more enjoyable outside. i had a geography teacher that used a song from animaniacs to teach us the states and their capitals, i still know it today, i had an english teacher that use to close all the shades n dim the lights, burn incense, play soft jazz or classical and tell us to put our heads down on the desk and no talking while he took roll for 15 minutes. no one even wanted to talk. when the music went off and the lights came on we were more ready to listen, offer ice water if u can in ur class room, most kids drink soda all day and are dehyrated, it may refresh them, allow them to eat in ur class but only fresh fruit n vegetables, no junk, it may make them more alert. at the end of a book break them into groups, give each group a section of the story to interpret and perform however they choose ( give them some ideas). Give extra credit for students that are willing to dress up for a day in a costume that correlates to whatever u are reading. Students family and friends will question their attire and they'll have to explain over and over what they are reading and why they're clothes are relevant
well i just got out of 8th grade and i am going into 9th. my science teacher always did this thing that was really fun. about ten minutes of starting the class she has this useless facts page she tells us about. she will find some useless facts on whatever the topic is and share them to the class. then she will ask the class to share their useless facts. our class loved her. she was our fave teacher. she also did jeopardy but a little different.
she would have a student pick a name of our classmates out of box. then whoever got chosen would have to go up in front of the class sit next to the teacher and the teacher would ask questions. there was a 2-point ?, a 4-point ?, 6-point?, 8-point ?, snd finally a 10-point ?. they would be trivia ?'s on what we were learning at the present time.( she would also do this before a test for review). the ?'s were extra credit. say if u got the 6 point question right, u would get 6 extra credit points.
then she would have a lifeline, 50-50, and ask the class options like the show who wants to be a millionare. anyway she also had a great sense of humor and didnt talk to to the class, but was more like our friend and was always asking questions about us. just to show she was interested. she was great! hope this helps!! good luck with those 8th graders for they can be pretty tough sometimes. GOOD LUCK!!
Well, I'll be a senior this year and in my sophomore year I had the best World History Teacher. We had just ended a unit and so we were supposed to be starting a new one. He told us that some of the students' grades in the class were really unsatisfactory and he would be averaging all of our grades into one and that would be our grade for the semester. He said we would all start out with a C. I was so mad because I had worked so hard and had earned the A that I previously had. I told my mom and she complained that night. The next day in class, we talked about this and we talked about how it was unfair to a lot of people and that the only people it was good for were the people who never did their work. He told us at the end of class that day that he wasn't really going to do that and it was a modern way of teaching the concepts of communism. It made me think and I still remember everything about his class and communism. We did many other things like this. Once, he put us into two assembly lines and had two people sit alone. All four of the teams had to draw a doll. Each person in the assembly line had one thing to draw: I had the nose. The two people who were on their own teams had to draw the whole doll. In the end we learned that although assembly lines were a lot faster, they weren't a very good quality. His class made me get interested in History and I was never bored.
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