AIM on Wednesday
Know & Go
Who is to blame for the 10 year war?
We had a fantastic day in AIM today. As a teacher every year we have to be observed by our principal and this year I selected this clever group of students as my observation lesson... and while Mrs. Deleon was in the room to observe me... she was SO impressed with the class. We started our lesson by finally reading the Readers Theater I had written about the Helen of Troy and the Trojan Horse. During our reading each student was given the task of deciding who was guilty of starting the war and why. They had to think of a defense for themselves in case someone blamed them. Prior to our debate we reviewed the tools of persuasion (ethos, pathos and logos) and how voting was done in Ancient Greece. We also discussed three important elements of a successful debate; 1) Reasoning and evidence: turning facts and statistics into a strong argument. 2) Expression and delivery: being able to speak with the right pace, tone, language and body language to convey your argument. 3) Listening and responding: listening critically to the other side's argument and using what you hear to develop a well-reasoned response. Once the planning was done we conducted our debate with great success. Everyone participated and at times it got very spirited! Most voted that Zeus was to blame because he did not make an important decision but instead gave that job to a mortal (Prince Paris). I am going to attach the file of the play in a separate email because you will enjoy checking it out (I used our class for the pictures - I added all of the hats on digitally). They did awesome and certainly enjoyed expressing themselves!