This morning I was doing a presentation on animal care for a class of fourth-graders. The teacher didn’t have all the students there at the scheduled time, so she had them sit quietly at their desks and stare at me while she graded papers at her desk, until the last students showed up and I was allowed to begin.
First rule: teachers, if you have a presenter, do not leave them dangling like a hooked fish at the front of the classroom. Introduce them, and make sure that the students have something to do until you let your presenter begin. (I could ahve gona ahead and started chatting with them, but the teacher was being weird, and I was afraid she’d stop me).
So I wandered around the room looking at the various posters while I waited. One of the posters, clearly designed and written by a teacher (it was in teacher-handwriting, done with green marker with yellow shadow effect) was about organizing your thoughts for writing. It had about five writing tips.
The last one?
USE GRAPIC AIDS.
Second rule, teachers? Proof your damn posters! Yes, I know that you can’t spellcheck your poster. That’s no excuse. Yes, I know it’s a pain in the butt if you’ve carefully letterd an entire poster and you misspell the second-to-last word on it. Tough cookies: when you misspell a word on a poster with writing tips for your students, it sends them the worst possible message about the importance of careful work.
This isn’t the first time that I’ve been in a classroom and noticed dumb errors on teacher-created posters. Use some care, folks!
Daniel