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TheMrDShow: Episode Five
TheMrDShow - Episode Five: Quiz Numero Uno
Hello! Welcome back to the Mr. D show - I am your host, Mr. D. Last week, my students took the first summative quiz of the year - right on day seventeen of school. After seeing their scores, some of my students may decide to go ahead and cash in their one retake of this first grading period. Just a reminder - our school’s retake policy allows students ONE retake of a summative grade per grading period per class. Because of the short nature of our first grading period, students will only take THREE quizzes this opening grading window. Therefore, students can still elect to do a retake after they see what they score on quiz two - currently scheduled for Friday, September 27th.
Now, let’s talk about a couple of things before we dive into this week’s preview - first, the positive: this group, after just seventeen days of school, seems like a fun-loving group. I feel closer to them in four and a half weeks than I did my previous two groups of students by a longshot. This past Thursday’s pep rally was a microcosm of that - students were into it, they were having a good time, and I am proud to be their teacher. I don’t want anybody else other than the students I currently have.
With that said, this group has been a little slow going out of the gate. To be fair, I have pushed them the first four weeks of school to see how they would respond. It’s been a bit of a slough thus far in that department. Part of it is that I need to slow things up a little - the other end of that is the students need to pick up the pace a bit. So, in other words - if I start walking their way and they start walking mine, we’ll gain a lot of ground if we both give a little - and meet in the middle.
Also - if a student misses school OR they fall a bit behind, they need to make up that work outside of class. I RARELY ever assign homework and when I do, it’s only because the students cannot accomplish what I am asking them to do inside of the boundaries of the physical school building. Yet, if they are behind, that’s exactly what our normal classwork becomes - homework.
Speaking of homework, students will be bringing home their first homework of the year: picturing heroes. I am asking students to bring in a PICTURE of the person they consider to be their hero. Please know - this picture will be a part of a large collage in my classroom and either a STAPLE or a THUMBTACK will go through the pic. Therefore, antique, heirloom photos are not appropriate for this assignment. Also, nothing larger than 4X6”, please - we are anticipating over 100 photos, so the smaller, the better. This will be due on Friday, September 20th.
Now, a look ahead to this week: on Monday and Tuesday, we continue with Homer’s “The Odyssey - Book Nine” with a comic strip action AND an analysis of a filmed version of a text. On Wednesday, we will introduce Unit One Vocab - PART TWO and our final lesson on symbolism using “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman (sorry, Luke Combs) and the short story, “Red Roses” from our myPerspectives textbook.
We end with a lesson on TONE / DICTION / DENOTATION and CONNOTATION on Thursday and Friday. I spent some of my Sunday cutting out words for a group word sort in the afternoon while watching the Bengals fall to 0-2. So what I am telling you is that the TONE of my scissor cutting was not exactly positive during that late-game defensive pass interference on the Bengal secondary that put Butker into field goal range.
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6. TheMrDShow: Episode Six
04:15||Season 2, Ep. 6
4. TheMrDShow: Episode Four
04:59||Season 2, Ep. 4Episode Four: Labor Days and Library WaysHello! Welcome back to the Mr. D show - I am your host, Mr. D. Last week, we did in fact wrap up our initial introduction to the Hero’s Journey using the Lion King for inspiration. We also read our first in-depth texts of the year: the poem “Ithaka” by CP Cavafy and a short story - “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” by Ray Bradbury. We weren’t quite ready for the outdoor class of stations on Friday but we caught ourselves up by finishing out the week strong and preparing for this week.On Monday, we will hold class outside, with rotating group stations doing certain tasks, including the filming of a imagery-based video inspired by “Ithaka!” I cannot wait to share that with everyone after post-production is complete!We will also take a more focused look at “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” as it relates to characterization - how authors show us what a character is like through their words, actions, thoughts, looks, and relationships with others. Students will be asked to create a prototype of an action figure based on the character of Joby the Drummer Boy. On Tuesday, we will introduce our second set of vocabulary words for Unit One and give out our second big reading of the year - Book Nine of Homer’s “The Odyssey.” This will serve as the basis for a ton of activity next week, including student-created digital comics based on the text. I will also release the study guide for quiz one on Tuesday as well.On Wednesday, we will check out a special bellringer that matches with our current unit theme - We Can be Heroes - and that also honors 09/11. The bellringer will focus on a short documentary by ESPN entitled “The Man in the Red Bandanna” about the heroic actions of Welles Crowther on 09/11.Thursday will be our first visit to the RCMS library! We make routine visits to the library every two weeks, beginning with our trip there on Thursday. Mrs. Sarah Stapp is a phenomenal librarian and a former English teacher. She always incorporates spot-on lessons to supplement what we are doing in the classroom. On Friday, we will have our first SUMMATIVE quiz grade of the year with Quiz one, as well as their first round of Reader’s Response based on what they checked out from the library the day before. That will do it for this episode - thanks for listening and being involved in what your child is doing in class. We are a partnership and I am here to work with and for you on behalf of our community. Here’s to a phenomenal school year - peace be the journey.
3. TheMrDShow: Episode Three
03:49||Season 2, Ep. 3Episode Three: Eight Days a WeekHello! Welcome back to the Mr. D show - I am your host, Mr. D. After our first full week of school last week, I hope everyone had a restful weekend because if you are anything like me, you needed it! It’s not as if working in a school is akin to working in the logging industry, but trust me when I say, there’s a special kind of tired reserved for these opening days of school.I have started the process of sifting through the opening days paperwork, checking out the initial scores of my students, reading through their vision boards and opening writing pieces, and getting data from our first round of MAP testing - but most importantly, through of that, I have been getting to know the students. I feel like, after just eight days of school, I know this group out of the gate better than any group of students I have had before. Just before recording this podcast, I was creating the new seating charts for each class and as I typed each student’s name, I felt like I knew at least something about them. A big part of that is a testament to you - the parents and guardians of my students, many of whom have sent back your parent essays and shared invaluable information about your kiddos. Once again, thank you so much for providing me with the most important reading I will do all year long. This past week, we introduced our first unit of the year - We Can Be Heroes. With that, we also started to outline the Hero’s Journey, a story pattern of archetypal heroes discovered by Joseph Campbell. We will finish that outline on Tuesday. We tracked that outline with the help of Simba in “The Lion King,” but according to Campbell, regardless of the heroic story, any story would do. I challenge you to ask your student about some of the stages and steps of the Hero’s Journey and how stories they may be familiar with fit within that framework. On Wednesday, we will dive into our first poem of the year, “Ithaka” by CP Cavafy. If you are of a certain age, you may remember that this poem was read during the memorial service for Mrs. Jackie Kennedy Onassis back in the mid-90s. It is inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey in which Odysseus faces quite the journey back home to Ithaka after the Trojan War, outlined in “The Iliad.” This allows us to enter into our first figurative language practice of the year, while also connecting to the Hero’s Journey. On Thursday, students will be reading “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” and creating a character-based action figure based on the main character, Joby. On Friday, weather-pending, class will be held outdoors as we do some stations, including the creation of a group video based on the imagery provided in Ithaka and I cannot wait to share that with you all via social media.That will do it for this episode - thanks for listening and being involved in what your child is doing in class. We are a partnership and I am here to work with and for you on behalf of our community. Here’s to a phenomenal school year - peace be the journey.
2. TheMrDShow: Episode Two
03:52||Season 2, Ep. 2Episode Two: Opening DaysHello and welcome back to the Mr. D show! I am your host, Mr. D. Last week’s start of school marked the beginning of my 22nd year in education. It was an excellent three-day start and I am looking forward to our first full week together with this year’s crop of Mambas.After meeting the students on Wednesday, I passed out a couple of items that I would like returned to the classroom. One is a parent letter that outlines some generic information about myself and the class - the other is a parent essay where I am asking a parent or guardian to give me the 411 about the students in my classroom. Trust me when I say that this is the MOST important reading I will do the entire school year and I greatly appreciate your input and involvement on this one. On Thursday and Friday, we got into our Google Classrooms, did a little bit of assessment to see if students could manipulate Google Docs, Slides, Forms, and Drawings, completed the Reading Plus Insight Assessment, and even created some symbolic representations of what was important to us using PlayDoh. Looking back on it, we got a ton accomplished and I am really proud of our progress after only three class periods.We also played a couple of games in class and I want to give a S/O to our winners of our Tower of Teamwork game - table two in Third Period, consisting of Bristol Chism, Bianca Coffey, Will Coffey, and Atticus Dickerson. Well done, guys!This coming week begins with MAP testing, which means our regularly scheduled programming will be delayed until this Wednesday. Tomorrow, students will report to their first period classes as normal. However, once they return back to Mambaland, we will go to our homerooms where we will test Reading before lunch and Language afterwards. On Tuesday, we will have a similar setup but we will test Math before lunch and Social Studies afterwards. After MAP testing wraps up, we jump into class head first with our initial unit of study of the year, We Can Be Heroes. Now, as I told the class last week, ELA is a skill-based class, not primarily a subject-based one. To be clear, we use subjects for common thematic purposes - but we are grading students on their ELA-related skills: their reading, writing, vocabulary acquisition, and such. With our first unit on heroes, we will not read a full-length novel - the time frame prior to Fall Break doesn’t really allow that. Therefore, we will rely heavily on quotes, poems, short stories, and textual excerpts. We will start the unit with a little vocab - four words to be exact: archetype, concise, imagery, and nuance. We will be breaking down quotes on Thursday and analyzing them through art. Finally, we will introduce students to the story pattern known as the Hero’s Journey on Thursday using a fairly familiar story to serve as our initial example: the Lion King! Shoutout to Simba!That will do it for this episode - thanks for listening and being involved in what your child is doing in class. We are a partnership and I am here to work with and for you on behalf of our community. Here’s to a phenomenal school year - peace be the journey.
1. TRAILER: TheMrDShow
01:48||Season 1, Ep. 1Episode One: Trailer / IntroductionHello!This is Jason Davidson, or, as I’ve been known for the past twenty-one years on the campus of Russell County Middle School, Mr. D!I am privileged to have your child as a student in my 8th grade English/Language Arts classroom for the Mambas.For the past several years, I have co-hosted a school-specific podcast with my friend and colleague, Mr. Eric Bennett, called the Anchor Down Low podcast - we plan to continue with that podcast this school year.However, whereas that podcast focuses on our school, this show is a brand new endeavor to shed light on what is happening in my classroom. The purpose is to increase parental engagement through a medium that has become increasingly popular over the years. Furthermore, this allows me to directly connect with parents by uploading episodes and allowing folks to download and listen to them at their leisure. Each episode will be released weekly and my hope is that the length of each show will be consumable in the time of one leg of your daily commute.Thanks for listening and I will be speaking to you again shortly. Here’s to a phenomenal school year - peace be the journey!