Day 115: Students Teach the Class

It seems so ironic when an AP English student misspells “illiterate.”

However, as goofy as my AP students can be, I’d like to brag about them a bit.  This week we started the second semester’s project where students lead our daily bell work. They signed up for their days throughout this semester, and they choose an article or clip for students to peruse and answer questions about, and then the student leads a 5-10 minute discussion over the article. The purpose of this mini-presentation is to get new voices into the classroom, new topics that interest the students, practice analysis on different types of text, and allow them more input into their English class.  The first week of guinea pigs was awesome; they have set the bar high for future students.  Among my four classes this week, we read and discussed:

• “Test-tube babies” in the US
• Printing gun parts on 3D printers
• Democrats’ new response to ObamaCare
• Twitch Plays Pokémon
• Modern views of alchemy
• Gender roles and Michael Sam
• Soda and childhood violence
• Defunding fine arts programs in schools
• Views of pit bulls and other dangerous breeds
• Ethics of animal testing

Discussions were lively, opinions were varied, and student engagement was high.  I’m pretty pumped about this project and can’t wait to see what else my students present.  Their only limitation was that they had to know what the source was.  It could be from TeenInk or some wacko conspiracy page, but they had to know something about the source.  Everything they read on a daily basis won’t be from a credible news organization’s page, so it’s important to me that they be able to pick out what makes a source credible and what source details tell them.