#sub plans

Sub Plans:

Introduce students to We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

Present them with the lyrics. Students wish individually or in small groups to sort each person/thing into one of the categories below.

If they know who or what the listed person/thing is, they should mark it with their level of familiarity (i.e ♥= vaguely familiar ♥♥♥= very familiar)

**Use of Al is NOT PERMITTED for this activity, which means no Google either!**

**Wikipedia is allowed AND ENCOURAGED, especially if they are unfamiliar with something**

Person (alive)

Person (dead)

Event

Place

Media/Culture

Nonliving Object

Once they are done, students are encouraged to compare their work with their peers to see what differences they have.

Extension Activity:

Students rewrite the lyrics by swapping out what they see as outdated cultural references for contemporary, more relevant ones. Fall Out Boy did this somewhat recently, but you probably have students who can do a better job than they did!

Complete lyrics (verses only, no chorus) below:

Listen to: It was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history: Have we forgotten Katrina's lessons? - https://one.npr.org/i/nx-s1-5469888:nx-s1-9424305

Social Studies / STEM / ELA,

middle school / high school

Sub plans:

Listen to the 11 minute need program from NPR, then do the following.

Submit the transcript of this episode to the generative AI model of your choice along with some version of the following prompt:

The year is 2003. You are the civil engineer who has discovered that New Orleans is vulnerable to hurricanes. Write a speech or written proposal that will convince a federal agency to implement preparations to prevent this catastrophe.

Do not read the LLM's output.

Open a new tab and begin writing a speech or written proposal on your own. Once you are satisfied that you have done the best you can, THEN you should read the AI generated version and compare it against your own.

Write a quick review in your honest opinion of which version is more likely to succeed at convincing a federal agency to act upon this potential threat, and why.

Erin Beers is a 7th grade ELA teacher from Cincinnati, Ohio.  Her blog at MrsBeers.com is designed to inspire ELA middle school teachers with ideas and resources for their classrom.

Here teachers will find novel units, reader's theater toolkits, and writing resources.

Erin has taught for 21 years as an upper elementary reading and language arts teacher. She is a National Board Certified Teacher in Early Adolescent English Language Arts.

Erin Beers is a 7th grade ELA teacher from Cincinnati, Ohio.  

Her blog at MrsBeers.com is designed to inspire ELA middle school teachers with ideas and resources for their classrom. Here teachers will find novel units, reader's theater toolkits, and writing resources.

Erin has taught for 21 years as an upper elementary reading and language arts teacher. She is a National Board Certified Teacher in Early Adolescent English Language Arts.

I was out for training today.

[When this was announced, I asked for help rearranging my plans because we were supposed to write an essay. My administrator/department chair and the oldest member of our department both told me to leave it and have them write the essay- "it is what it is; they'll have to do it." Today, when I showed them the email I got during second period (see below), they said you should never leave important work while there's a sub and acted like I was supid for having my kids write an essay while I'm out. But, really that's a different rant for a different post.]

1st period: *one remind message asking about a different assignment, a handful of Google classroom notifications about students submitting assignments late*

2nd period: *one email from one of my most honest and trustworthy students telling me that they had been given no work at all and were sitting in the auditorium doing NOTHING.* [her emphasis, not mine.]

3rd & 4th periods: *nothing from the kids* *some texting with another teacher in the building seems to imply that another teacher's students are in the auditorium with my students and my sub*

5th period: *one remind message from another honest, trustworthy student saying he couldn't find his writing folder, followed by a "nevermind"* writing folders stay in crates in my classroom, so they must have been in there doing their work???

6th period: different prep, could have theoretically done their assignment anywhere, as instructions were in Google classroom and everything was online. I did receive several Google classroom notifications from kids submitting today's warm up and a few notifications about submissions of late assignments. Haven't checked to see how many did the actual assignment.

What do I do with this??