President Obama's Back-To-School Speech

This week I am planning to use Jack's Mannequin music video for the song "Swim" in conjunction with the President's back-to-school speech as writing prompts for a perseverance and goal-setting learning activity for my middle school students.

I just uploaded the video to the media section of this site and text of President's speech will be posted on the web tomorrow.

Anyone else planning to incorporate the President's speech this week, or is this issue "too hot to handle" in your school?

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Permalink Reply by Janet Toto on September 6, 2009 at 5:23pm

Thanks for the "heads-up" on "Swim." I think its perfect for the middle schoolers and high school set. Actually I'm going to make it my mantra for the new school year. Our 3-5 school will probably do a poster of goals and a three step process of how to get there. I plan to have those posters up all year and refer to them when the students are having a bad day. I'm going to make my own poster (swim will be the underlying theme for sure)!!!!

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Permalink Reply by Johnathan Chase on September 6, 2009 at 9:16pm

Used the song last week during a teacher conference day. Our team had to create a poster for the Ideal Middle School Classroom and we chose the slogan/theme...."The Ideal Middle School Classroom encourages students to swim!"

We then used the letters of the word to list characteristics and attitudes of the classroom...

S ocial network/ student support system

W hatever it takes...

I can / I will

M oving mountains

Will ask my students to make their own motivational posters this week.