I wrote a guest post for a blog of the author who wrote Creativity in the Classroom.
It is a classic line: If the teacher is bored, we have a problem! In this guest post, Melanie Carbine describes a math lesson that is an example of both creative teaching, and teaching for creativity. Like many creative activities, it emerged from a moment of need. Here’s Melanie.
View the post here: http://creativiteach.me/2012/05/20/if-the-teacher-is-bored/
Today a casual guy friend walked over to start talking to me and said “You look pretty.” It wasn’t forced the way girls pick out some article of clothing to comment on to make conversation. And, it wasn’t forced the way guys try to make some kind of play. It was a genuine, unloaded, compliment that I haven’t heard in awhile. I know that I’m more than how I look but it was nice to hear. It’s also nice that I believed it.
“Open me up and you will see I’m a gallery of broken hearts.
Just give me back my pieces. Just give them back to me please
and let me hold my broken parts.
I just want to know that maybe I will be ok.”
Thank you Ingrid Michaelson.
Click on the drawing to link to the music video.
Piet Modrian, is known for his rectilinear paintings, grid-based squares that were left mostly white with some filled in with primary colors. Definitely modern art…you know 1920′s. Apparently, his work was dismissed at first as good enough only for tile patterns. He really did influence the way space is divided, not necessarily symmetrical but fractal–in a golden spiral sense. (I just wanted to see how many math concepts I could squeeze into one sentence.)
I used the three constructions I covered in the Algebra Prep’s unit on constructions: copying a segment, bisecting a line and bisecting an angle. I left the construction markings for reference; they’re color-coordinated with the directions.
I should have left more space white, but I got carried away with the colors 
You should make one too.
Brady tagged me and I didn’t even realize it.
THE RULES:
11 Random Sentences about Melanie:
Answers to Brady’s Questions:
Now, that I managed 11 random things, I don’t want to write 11 new questions. I really should go plan some algebra lessons. So…not it!
My seventh grade reading class was loath to read. So much of class time and energy was focused just on trying to foster positive feelings towards reading. I signed out reading time just so the students could read in the air conditioned library. I brought back magazines from home after “winter” break. Mostly I focused on building a class library of high (very high) interest books for middle and high school readers, I ordered books like:
I had so many points through Scholastic that at the end of the year I was able to get every student a free book. By the end of the year, I could see success in how delighted they were to pick out their own book to keep–even my most resistant readers.
I read most of the special books I ordered before handing it over to the kids. The only books I didn’t read beforehand was The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I think I even got two sets; they were in such demand. Yet, after the first 10 pages, I handed it over, partly because my students just couldn’t seem to way and partly because I’m picky about my dystopias. All Summer in a Day and Fahrenheit 451 made me cry. 1984 gave me nightmares and I didn’t touch it again until I needed a book on CD as I drove cross country more than five years later. I never liked Brave New World. I didn’t appreciate The Giver until I read it again as a teacher. I liked Uglies, Pretties and mildly Specials but in the end the protagonist doesn’t just figure out what’s happening but successfully changes her world. The only dystopia I’ll read over and over again: Jennifer Government. It’s funny, though, a dystopia of capitalism, and, well, I think it’s hilarious that the only religion that survives in that capitalist dystopia is the Mormon religion.
Back to The Hunger Games. When I got around to assigning independent and jointly related science fiction books, I individually assigned Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Uglies, Pretties, and The Ear The Eye and the Arm, among other books all of which I had read before. When I assigned The Hunger Games to F—a, I glanced at the narrative style and I got filled in enough to carry conversations with students. But, I couldn’t say much when she wrote “and for some reason she keeps kissing Peeta” in her journal responses or things of the like.
Now, if I was to cast F—a in The Hunger Games, maybe she could play Prim but she fits Rue much better. F—a was new to the Marshall Islands; her parents came from the Solomon Islands and Australia. She was small, slender and pretty with light brown, tightly curled hair. She was almost inseparable from my other slender, yet slightly more confident student from Australia. I was certain that M——l, successful on the rugby field but not so much the classroom, liked F—a but with everything going on how could she know and even so what’s she going to do about it. I want to include these details because I knew my students well. I could use my insight to help them, and I should have been able to use this to help F—a connect with what she was reading. Plus, we were having some problems with sexual comments being made in the middle and high school, and she was being objectified in a language she didn’t even speak. Seventh grade is brutal…like the Hunger Games. (I should have read the book first.)
I didn’t plan to watch The Hunger Games, but I was invited by three different groups in the first five days of its release. And, yes, I went twice. Of course, I noticed that there seemed to only be three races in this world, but I figured that was just a casualty of casting and available actors. I wasn’t even so much concerned with the children fighting and dying. It’s a dystopia and the violence really wasn’t visually graphic. You hear the sounds of the blade or the crack of a spine but you only see a spray of blood, no lingering bloody scenes. The music was nice, lots of green panoramic shots, gave the viewer a large space to puzzle out the world, the characters, and how to get out of this conflict alive. The lack of dialogue was good in this way, and honestly the dialogue wasn’t really amazing. However, this also gave me plenty of time to think about how I could have and should have discussed this book with my students.
Basically, I could have taught that one better.
And, now that I’ve finished the book, I really hate to say this, but I prefer the movie. Though there are a few scenes in the book that had been left out of the movie, the wind chimes on the roof, the story about the goat and the scene on the hovercraft at the end, I much prefer the subtle changes made in the movie. Plus, the book is just too straight forward. I liked the challenge of character and game analysis in the movie, since I wasn’t privy to the protagonist’s every thought. I suspect, however, that since that made the movie more engaging, it might not have be had I known the entire story beforehand. So, my question because do I continue on and read Catching Fire now or do I wait to read it until after the make a second movie.
