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One of the most important tasks for a teacher is learning how to correctly pronounce a student’s name. Every teacher should see the following clip
It took us many years to reach this level. One of the most traumatic experiences for student is to have a teacher constantly mispronounce his or her name. After teaching for decades teach you sometimes have siblings. Some teachers defense mechanisms to remember, remembering the first name is simply to refer to the student with their last name. It took us 30 years to come up with this lesson, but we feel it has been worth the wait.
Introduction:
This activity was used at a high school with a teacher who had three freshman classes and two senior classes.
As the students enter the room, a teacher can greet them with:
“Welcome back. Grab a blank piece of paper at the front of the room and take a seat anywhere.”
On the first day of school present your name on the board how you would present phonetically and have the students fold a white blank piece of paper in half and on the half that will be displayed to you on their desk have them spell out their name phonetically. You also could have the students list their pronouns if you so choose. On the second half have the students for four minutes in 44 seconds draw a picture of their favorite hobby or activity. This is a great activity for the first day of school. This allows for a little activity at the start of class. It also allows you to make a connection between the name and the FACE. And once you know, all the students names you’ll be able to teach more comfortably. This activity we started. 2027.
We find it useful to present most lessons using powerpoint. In the slides you can ask
For each person you will have 3 parts:
- Position / Title
- Who is the athletic director?
- Assistant Principal?
- Principal?
- School Officer?
- Superintendent?
- Name
- Mr. Toomey
- Ms. Collins
- Mr. Jones
- Mr. Connolloy
- Mr. Garcea
- Phonetic spelling (A teacher could have students come to the board to attempt.)
- Miss ter Two Me
- Miss Call ins
- Miss ter Joenz
- Miss ter Con o Lee
- Miss ter Gar She A
- Picture: Whenever there is an appropriate picture add this to the slide show.
We like this because it introduces the freshman to the school leadership team. It puts a face to the name and position. It also provides some examples of the spelling.
A variation of people could be for a US History class to identify the politicians.
Local: Mayor, school committee
County: Maybe skip this level.
State: Representative, State Senator, Governor.
Federal: US Representative, two Senators, President, Vice President, Secretary of State
Student Work:
Steps
- Students should fold the paper the hamburger way.
- On the bottom half, the students will phone et ick lee spell both the 1st and last name.
- Students will place the name tag on the front of the desk.
Assign Seats: Many high school teachers assign seats to students. There are a variety of ways to do this. When placing students, it is important to consider IEPs and 504 plans.