Preventing Skin Cancer, Courtesy of 6th Grade!

We’re working on procedural speeches right now to finish up the year, which are speeches on how to do something. They can do theirs on whatever they want, as long as it’s school appropriate (one little delight proposed doing one on kissing girls, and assured me he was indeed an expert – I assured him I didn’t want to know or have him share his expertise with the class – instead he’s going to do how to do a backflip).

Yesterday I modeled for them how to plan their speech as we’re using a new planning format. It’s pretty straightforward, but they still need practice with it. I did mine on how to grow tomatoes, as I enjoy gardening and am pretty good at it.

While I modeled, I let the kids contribute ideas. Keeps the buy-in higher and off-task behavior down. In three different classes, under the list of materials needed to be a successful gardener, students said necessary materials included sunscreen and/or a hat. And in each class, they then clarified with, “You know, for YOU.”

Hee.