The Teacher's Almanac

One of our goals this year for our dialectic grades (7th-9th) is to incorporate the "art of argument" into the classroom. While the students take a logic class during this time, we want them to articulate, defend, and persuade outside of that course as well. So what does this look like outside of a formal logic course?   In personal finance this week, the class is learning about interviewing and resume writing. The essential question for the day is: " What is the purpose of an interview?" As I initially thought about how to biblically integrate this lesson, I did a google search of "interviews and the Bible". As you can imagine, I didn't' come up with much. Mostly, there were links to Bible verses that might encourage you before heading into an interview...not exactly what I was going for.   But then I thought about how often God "hired" a particular individual for an important job. What is that, if not an interview? That got me thin...

Today I tried a new thing in 8th grade English... Annotating With a Purpose . We are currently working through John Steinbeck's The Pearl  and they were tasked with reading one of the chapters as homework last night. Before class I copied a five page section from what they were assigned to read last night. They had already read this material once so it was fresh in their mind. I chose to copy the pages so that they could highlight the actual text, rather than take notes on a separate sheet of paper. Later they mentioned that they really enjoyed that aspect of it. I handed them the copied pages and told them that they were going to focus on three things, which I wrote on the board: When they came across a phrase or idea that caught their eye, either because they thought it was well written, or because it made an excellent point, they were told to highlight the phrase and put a (!) next to it.  When they came across a phrase or idea that brought a question to their min...

We recently began reading The Pearl , by John Steinbeck in 8th grade English. For those who haven't read it (I hadn't before last week), The Pearl is a a short story (novella) that is also a parable. As the gospels are full of parables, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity for deeper biblical integration. While biblical integration is something I try to do to some extent in every class, the kind of biblical integration that encompasses an entire class period can only be done ever so often. Today was one of those days. I began by breaking the students into groups of three and then had each group select one of the following three parables from Matthew: Parable of the Sower - Matthew 13:1-9 Parable of the Weeds - Matthew 13: 24-30 Parable of the Talents - Matthew 25: 14-30 Yesterday in class, we discussed the definition of a parable as well as some of the key characteristics that all parables have. Today, with that information fresh in their minds, eac...

Despite what my blog has revealed up to this point, I do teach a few classes besides 8th grade English! One of those classes is rhetoric speech. Last week we were looking at how Cicero had his students organize their speeches. He divided them into six main parts: exordium, narratio, partitio, confirmatio, refutatio and peroratio (these are the original Latin terms). Once we defined each section, I read them the following text from Acts 22. Acts 22   English Standard Version (ESV) 22  “Brothers and fathers, hear the defense that I now make before you.” 2  And when they heard that he was addressing them in  the Hebrew language, [ a ]  they became even more quiet. And he said: 3  “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated  at the feet of  Gamaliel [ b ]   according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers,  being zealous for God  as all of you are this day.   4  I persec...