Can I fill an 85-minute block?

Dec. 2010, Joel, first-year teacher, Iowa
At our school we have block scheduling, how does your typical day look with using Students Friend? I read your article on how to use Students Friend, but I just don't know if I can make that last 85 minutes. Also, is there any way I can get some of your projects and tests?

Student's Friend reply:
Oh to be a first-year teacher again. Gotta be one of the hardest jobs in the world.

You know, I hadn't been teaching too long before I had a real hard time fitting in all the things I wanted to accomplish during my 90-minute block.  I suppose you have looked at my suggestions for covering the content in the Student's Friend alternative textbook. If not, click here and see "Covering the Material."  And I have some lesson plan ideas including various projects and a seminar in the "Teacher Tools" section. click here. Essay questions and reports can take a lot of time including some library time.

I tried to begin every class with a thought and discussion question on the blackboard. When the bell rang, the kids started working on it while I took attendance and had quick meetings with individual students.  Then we would discuss these questions as a class, which could end up involving some time depending on where the discussion went.  These questions are included in the Study Guides that I prepared for each unit. click here

Hope this helps, and keep me posted.

Joel reply:
I agree with you, this job is soooo tough! But I love it!
Your study guides are AWESOME!! I knew that Student's Friend was the way I need to go second semester but I did not know how to do it. The study guide kind of completes the puzzle :) Your essential questions are great. They are loaded, important, thought provoking questions. Do you give the kids the study guide, and this is their assignment for the unit, or how does that work?

Jan. 2011, Student's Friend reply
As regards the study guide, I would introduce it near the beginning of a new unit -- we went over it in class as sort of a preview.  Then I would generally use one of the questions from the study guide as a thought-provoking discussion starter written on the board at the beginning of class each day...at the appropriate point in the unit.  

If you are interested, here is the general sequence I followed at the beginning of each unit.  Maybe it will provide you with some ideas.

Day 1 of a new unit: Web activity:
On the first day I conducted a class discussion that I called a "web" activity.  It was meant to get the kids thinking about the subject matter of the upcoming unit, link it to what students might already know, and provide a preview of the upcoming unit.  Let's say we were beginning Unit 11: "1950 to the Present."   I'd ask students to suggest things they know about this period, and a student might say, "The Cold War."  I would write this term on the board, and we would discuss what the term means. Then another student might offer, "The moon landing."  I would write this term on the board and ask if there might be a connection between the two terms.  Well, it was Cold War missile technology that made the space race possible.  So, I would draw an arrow connecting "moon landing" to "Cold War."  Another student might say, "The Vietnam War."  And another arrow would connect Vietnam to the Cold War because Vietnam was a manifestation of the Cold War.  The term "Berlin Wall" would generate another arrow to "Cold  War," and so on.  Discussions like this usually produced webs of related terms along with some stand-alone terms.  During this discussion I would try to get most of the important terms from the new unit up there on the board for everyone to see on the first day.  You could ask students to draw the web in their own notebooks.

Then we would begin our study of the historical content in the Student's Friend using a writing activity such as "Key Points" or "Notes/Quiz."

Day 2:  Hand out and review the Unit Study Guide.  

Day 3: Hand out outline maps and identify the unit's map locations.  I projected the map, and students liked to volunteer to come up and try to identify the proper locations. I repeated this process at the end of the unit as a review before the unit exam, only this time I chose which students did the identification.

Joel reply:
We started on Jan. 4th, so I have been using Student's Friend for about two weeks now. It is going very well! We cover about two topics per block. Right now, we are just focusing on Key Points and Why Is it Important. After they identify the important information I go in to a lecture that is supplemented by pictures and video via a powerpoint.

Also, when do you assign the research paper? Do you do it at the beginning of the unit and let them have x amount of weeks to work on it? I am going to start the research paper process by putting the kids through a library scavenger hunt, helping them understand how to research and utilize the resources we have at our school.

Thank you very much for helping me with this! I very much appreciate all the resources you have provided me with. Finding the resources is what takes me the longest (it took me two months to find your website!!)

Student's Friend reply:
A lot of teachers tell me it took them a while to find the studentsfriend.com website. I wish I knew how to do a better job of getting the word out. A Google search of "Teaching World History" will generally return this website among the first few results.

Research Paper: I assigned it during the first week of class, but there is no reason you would have to follow suit.  (Scavenger hunt would be a slick way to get students familiar with library resources--good idea.)  My students chose one of the bold topics in the Student's Friend as the subject of their paper, or they could choose a different topic with teacher approval.  I took the kids to the library for three research sessions to get them started, and to check their first 15 notecards for proper formatting. Then we spent no further class time working on the papers, and the remaining products were due at appropriate intervals.  A word of caution...try to have the paper come due well before the end of the semester.  It is no fun to read and grade the papers (and return them for a revision if that's your choice) while trying to complete all your other year-end duties including final exams.

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I don't want to fall behind.