Chalk Talk

Chalk Talk is probably my favorite classroom thing these days. The link details it, but for my teacher friends from MC, we used this in a seminar once, but I got the idea from a wonderful fellow teacher.

I used it today to ask the question "How do people adapt to different environments?" I posted some "thinking questions" on the board, like "How do people work and travel? What do they eat? What do they wear? What do they do for fun?" Let it just be said that this was an activity done before any teaching, so I was assessing their prior knowledge.

My favorite response comes from the table that chalk talked about life in the desert. They really could not fathom people in the desert working or eating anything but scorpions. I kid you not, one kid who was serious as a heart attack wrote, "They eat camels and drink cacti juice." I think I need to spend a good bit of time on this. Most of their schema comes from Aladdin, for real.