Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Field Trip Tips for Safe, Fun Learning Success

Field Trip Tips for Safe, Fun Learning Success New teachers might naively think that field trips are easier and more fun than a typical day in the classroom. But throw in crises like a lost group of children or wasp stings, and field trips can go from fun to frantic in no time. But if you adjust your expectations you can come up with a new, more practical way to approach field trips and minimize the chances of drama and mayhem. Tips for a Successful Field Trip Follow these field trip tips and youll likely create fun learning adventures for your students: Explicitly discuss field trip behavior rules with your students beforehand. Teach, model, and review appropriate field trip behavior with your students for at least a week before the big event. Drill into their heads that field trips are not the time or place to mess around and that any aberrant behavior will result in non-participation in any future field trips that school year. Sound serious and back it up with consequences as needed. Its good to have your students scared of testing the boundaries on field trips. Emphasize that they are representing our schools reputation when they are off-campus and that we want to present our best behavior to the outside world. Make it a point of pride and reward them afterward for a job well done.Give your students a learning task ahead of time. Your students should show up for the field trip with a base of knowledge on the subject at hand, as well as questions to answer before returning to the classroom. Spend some time in the weeks before the field trip discussing the subject matter. Review a list of questions they will be looking to answer during the field trip. This will keep them informed, engaged, and focused on learning all day long. Choose parent chaperones wisely. Field trips require as many adult eyes and ears as you can get, but unfortunately, you cant be everywhere at once. From the first day of school, observe the parents of your students closely, looking for signs of responsibility, firmness, and maturity. A lax or careless parent can be your worst nightmare on a field trip, so choose your parental allies wisely. That way, youll reap the benefits of having adult partners in the field trip process.Make sure you have all the necessary medications. Talk to the school nurse and procure any and all medications that your students usually take during the day. While on the field trip, make sure you administer the medications accordingly. If you have students will allergies, you may need to get trained on how to use an EpiPen. If so, the student involved will need to stay with you at all times.Arrive at school early on field trip day. The students will be excited and antsy, ready to go. Youll want to greet the chap erones and give them instructions for the day. It takes some time to organize the sack lunches and ensure that everyone has what they need for the day. And one last pep talk on appropriate behavior never hurt anybody. Give your chaperones the tools they need to succeed. Make nametags for all chaperones and students. Create a cheat sheet of the days itinerary, special rules, your cell phone number, and the names of all kids in each chaperones group; distribute these sheets to each adult on the field trip. Procure and label grocery bags that each chaperone can use to carry the groups sack lunches. Consider getting a little thank-you gift for each chaperone, or treat them to lunch that day.Be proactive with regards to challenging students. If you have a student who causes trouble regularly in the classroom, its safe to assume he or she will cause at least five times more trouble in public. If possible, ask his or her parent to be a chaperone. That will usually limit any potential problems. Also, when you are making groups, split any problem pairs into separate groups. This is a good policy for troublemakers, chatty kids, or bickering frenemies. And its probably best to keep the most challenging stude nts in your own group, rather than pawning them off on an unsuspecting parent chaperone. Count all day. As the teacher, you will likely spend most of your day counting heads and making sure everyone is accounted for. Obviously, the worst thing that can occur on a field trip is losing a student. So count accurately and often. Enlist the help of chaperones in this task, but do it yourself too, for your own peace of mind. Keeping track of each and every student is the number one priority of field trip day.Do a debriefing when you return to the classroom. If you have a few extra minutes after the field trip and before dismissal from school, put on some soothing classical music and have the students draw about what they saw and learned that day. It gives them a chance to decompress and review what they experienced. The next day, its a good idea to do a more active and in-depth review of the field trip material, extending the learning further and connecting it to what youre working on in the classroom.Write thank-you notes after the field trip. Lead a class language arts lesso n the day after your field trip, formally thanking the people who hosted your group. This serves as an etiquette lesson for your students and helps form your schools good reputation at the field trip destination. In future years, this goodwill could translate into prime perks for your school. With proper planning and a positive attitude, field trips can be unique ways to explore the outside world with your students. Stay flexible and always have a Plan B, and you should do just fine.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

How Reading Comic Books Improved My Writing

How Reading Comic Books Improved My Writing How Reading Comic Books Improved My Writing Dr. Franklin Warsh is an Investigating Coroner and retired family doctor who lives  in London, Ontario. While writing his first full-length book, The Flame Broiled Doctor (a memoir of his experiences working in the health care system), Frank Warsh realized that his many years of reading comic books had not just been an enjoyable pastime, but a lesson in writing. Read on to learn more about the storytelling tips comic books provided him - including stories within stories, and archetype inspiration.Nowadays, comic books are a perfectly respected, even revered form of art. And at three to five bucks a pop, they’re clearly no longer just a product for children. But even the cheap newsprint comic books I read voraciously in the 1980s weren’t as silly a past-time as my elders would have had me believe. Depending on what kind of writer you’re striving to be, you owe it to yourself to give comic books another go-around. While writing my recently published memoir, The Flame Broiled Doctor, I drew upon the following comic book storytelling tips. My largest writing block isn’t a lack of ideas, or a lack of skill, but a lack of motivation. Even my own memoir, full of funny and intensely personal stories I’ve been collecting for nearly twenty years, was a chore to write at times. If I’m not in the mood to write, I’m probably not going to feel like reading something meaty either. We all need an escape, but when the kids are asleep and people have been barking at me all day, the last thing I want is the noise of the TV. Give me ten minutes with Deadpool or Suicide Squad or Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and the creative juices are churning once more.There are a myriad of reasons I read comic books even to this day that have made me a better writer, beyond those I’ve described. One of the great tools in your kit as a humorist is over-writing. Poking fun at your characters with liberal dashes of purple prose works as well in the pages of Deadpool as it did in Cervantes’  Don Quixote. Writing a s an over-the-top narrator can get your reader in the mood for a joyride, like an episode of the campy 60s Batman  TV show - that’s now in circulation as a comic book. Have a terrific villain in your novel, but can’t quite get their villain speech right? Give comics a try†¦ Cersei Lannister and Iago have nothing on  Lex Luthor from Superman or Dr. Doom from Fantastic Four. Head to a library or local shop to give comic books a second look. They’re a great escape from the daily news, and you’re sure to find something to help your writing as well.The Flame Broiled Doctor is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle! Find out more on Frank's website.Are you a comic book reader? What nuggets of writing wisdom have you discovered through reading comics?  Leave your thoughts, experiences, or any questions for Frank  in the comments below.