Law of Gravity

Actually, to be fully correct, this post should be titled "Connect Four for Students who are Visually Impaired", but that's just too long and unwieldy... I covered one period of the visually impaired class while the teacher was at an IEP meeting. And we managed to get through their entire assignment with twenty plus minutes left to spare. I asked what they do normally when the lesson runs short. They said they played a game the last time. The instructional aide suggested Connect Four . (There were two students in class.) In case you were wondering (I was), someone had drilled holes in all the black checkers, so one could tell by touch which checkers were which. The two girls played one game that finished very quickly. They said they were bored with it. Really? Bored? That tells me that they weren't doing it right... So, I sat down with them and went about teaching them a bit of strategy. As a child I played many strategy games with my father. (Chess. Pente .) And he w...

Seventh grade ELD (English language development, read: English language learners). The teacher was out on jury duty (first day--I don't know if she got selected for a jury as I worked elsewhere the next day). The lesson plan was a bit of a scramble. This group was to play  Scrabble . If you think about it, it's an excellent way to have them doing something in English. And due to limited boards, the students played in pairs as teams, which meant they were conferring on proper English words. Things went fairly well. I mean, they got a little loud, but that was to be expected. Then one group called me over. They were talking as I approached. "It means gender." They needed a ruling. Was it okay to play the word "sex"? Sigh. For that age... But they weren't giggling. It was an actual, reasoned debate. The team that wanted to play it rightly pointed out it had a valid definition that was classroom appropriate. Considering the tenor of the conversation, I allow...