Allusions, Baseball, and Service!

This has been a good week. We started off with a fun class all about Allusions. We used Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire". The song is filled with allusions from his birth up to the time the song was written, 1949-1989. The first time through, I had them work with a group to identify as many of the references that were alluded to as they could.

Then I let them see the video of the song and try to clarify any of the misconceptions they had. Then we went online to a wikipedia article about the song to check our answers. It was interesting to hear what they thought certain things alluded to, for example one group thought that "Buddy Holly" referenced the song by Weezer instead of a rock-and-roll legend. We then moved from the song to creating a timeline of allusions for their lifetime. Again it was interesting to see what they thought to be the major events since 1993 or there abouts.

The second class of the week, we played more literary baseball on Qwizdom. It seems to working. It helps us review literary elements, grammar, and EOC type editing. It's a lot more fun than taking quizzes. When we finsihed our game, we created groups. I had them split to the corners of the room by their shape. Then they joined groups with different shapes. They'll use these groups for their short story animation projects. We spent some time talking about how that project was gong to work. I'm excited!

Friday was another day of service. I drove the lenoir bus and stayed at West Lenoir Elementary School. It was a good day. The kids on my bus all seemed genuinly excited at the end of the day. Some had better experiences than others, but I think they all found something good from the day.

I'm looking forward to a good week getting started with the animation projects!