Validation for Our Class Time Spent in SSR

It think I'll share this with my students and parents.

Verissimo Toste, an Oxford Teacher Trainer, talks about the best way to build extensive reading into your normal routine for best results:

A New Post at Last!!!

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

It's amazing and kind of sad what a few seizures and a shoulder injury can do to your productivity. I feel like I've been sort of sliding along this year, just doing, and not really reflecting or motivating myself or my students, sadly.

Well, I just watched an hour long webcast about Flipping a Classroom that has made me think and got me excited about teaching again. I think there are a lot of things I can do with this. I think it would really help my students if they were writing in the classroom with me there to help them and doing some of the more mundane things at home. So...I am giving my first flip assignment today.

Flipping a classroom is when you move direct instruction and other things that don't require student interaction into the "homework" time and move the homework into class time, so the teacher can be the expert in the room and interact with the students and see how they are doing. It reminds me of what Penny Kittle talks about in Write Beside Them.

Writing Circles

It's that time of year when my students and I participate in writing circles. I do it along with my students. Here is some of my work from this year:

Back to School Night, Take 2

Here's my new Animoto for back to school night, reflecting my new changed up curriculum for the year.


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Documentaries

Frank Baker, who is a regular on the EC Ning, just brought my attention to this wonderful collection of documentaries: http://current.com/shows/fifty-documentaries/.

He also has an amazing website, Using Documentaries in the Classroom, which is a great resource for teachers wanting to use documentaries.

Thank you, Frank!

Kelly Gallagher Workshop

The Kelly Gallagher writing and modeling workshop sponsored by CUWP this Saturday was, literally, amazing. I left feeling so energized!

I took copious notes, but for now I'll just leave you with a favorite story. Kelly sat by the CEO of a "big computer company" on a recent flight. The CEO mentioned that they strive to hire the best and the brightest--graduates of Harvard, MIT, etc., but they have a hard time finding candidates. Kelly asked why, and the CEO said, "Because it's really easy to find really smart people, but it's hard to find smart people who know how to think."

Wow. That kind of sums up my job in a nutshell. I (try my darnedest to) teach kids how to think! That's why I think my job is so rewarding.

Inquiry Based Classroom

Webinar with Jeff Wilhelm:

Holocaust Webinar

This is going on over at the EC Ning. I haven't had time to join in, but I hope to look over the available things later this summer.

Less is More?

Fellow EC Ninger Keith Schoch recently posted an interesting blog about getting students to write more precisely--quality over quantity.

His ideas range from 6 Word Memoirs, to One Word Quickwrites, to Overheard Everywhere, and stories ranging from one to six sentences. It's a great trove of tiny treasures!!

I've tried some of these ideas, and they really do get students thinking and working. Here's his post.

Teaching Nonfiction Writing - A Practical Guide

This was the latest read for the CUWP Book group. It proved to live up to its name--practical! Although it felt like it was geared towards kids from about fourth grade through junior high, I still found a lot of things in it that I put to immediate use in the classroom. I used a genre exploration (bringing in about 40 nonfiction books, biographies, magazines, etc.) before I assigned my students to do their Chaucer presentations. Because the kids had a better idea of what I was looking for (illustrations, things that could go in a sidebar, definitions, quotes, headings, etc.) I had the best Chaucer presentations I've ever had.

This book has a great little section on leads that many of us were talking about at the book group last night. I can't wait to try it out.

I've already noticed that I am more aware of pointing out the various techniques in the nonfiction pieces that we've read recently. For example, I always have the students read "The Man in the Water" in conjunction with Beowulf and our talk about heroes. This time when we read it, I made sure that the students noticed the craft Rosenblatt uses, i.e. when he uses imagery in the first paragraph: The jets from Washington National Airport that normally swoop around the presidential monuments like famished gulls are, for the moment, emblemized by the one that fell.

Speaking of book group, we had an incredible turnout last night. We are going to need a bigger room next time.

New Year Goals

I was going to list my goals here, but then I saw this little gem:

Now I guess I'll just work on them in secret. Of course, they involve writing and reading--because what else is there in life?

Slogans, Logos and Iconic Images

I'm having my students try to sell their version of the American dream as a Gatsby product. This little video is to help them understand what an icon and slogan are.

Six-Word Memoirs

While we were working on memoirs this year, I had the students write six word memoirs.



One of my CUWP colleagues, Andrea R., had previously said something about having her students write something in sidewalk chalk. I decided to try that with the six word memoirs -- I thought they turned out great. Here are some:

(This one above was written down incorrectly - it was supposed to be "Life's illuminated...")

You Are What You Read - My Bookprint

My good friend, Clix, on the EC Ning encouraged me to do this on the Scholastic Site, so I did it. It's pretty hard to narrow a lifetime of reading down to five books, but this is the list I came up with:

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."

We all have a time when we will have the choice to stand up and do the right and the hard thing. Will we do it? Can we do it? And when we do it, can we choose the right people to stand beside us?

Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl

"Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

I read this when I want to remember why I am here.

The Hiding Place
Corrie Ten Boom

"Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself."

I need these words every day of my life.

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

"Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'--I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build--why, I'll be there.

Everyone is my brother, and I am my brother's keeper.

The Giver
Lois Lowry

"For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo."

I re-read this book again immediately after I first read it, and then I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning and took a two hour walk to think about it. It disturbed me, it shook me, it made me think. Even with all the painful memories I have -- particularly the death of my infant son -- I would never want to give up my memories -- they are just too precious.

Shakespeare Zombie Haiku for Halloween

The first one is by Dr. Chris Crowe, the second by Deon Youd, the rest are my own evil creations. Enjoy!

Zombie of Venice

skulks in shadows, hungry for a

juicy pound of flesh

Henry the Fifth speaks,
calling his zombies to arms.
No guts, no glory.

A brain! A brain! My
kingdom for a brain! Richard
revealed as zombie . . .

Macbeth moans, “Is this

a brain I see before me?

Come, let me eat thee!”

“What’s in a brain?” Come 

hither, sweetest Romeo,

and let me find out.

“Alas, poor Yorick!

I ate him, a fellow of

infinite brain mass.”

Come not between King

Lear and a brain, while so young 
and yet so tender. 

Scribblish

I am always on the lookout for games that I can add to my classroom. My criteria is that they have to involve writing and interaction, support 20 to 30 students playing at once, and take about 20 minutes - the amount of time we usually have when we have an occasional party day (Halloween, the half day before Christmas and the last day of school). It's very hard to find a game that a whole classroom can participate in and have fun with.

We had recently played Scribblish with our married kids, and I thought that it might be a fun game to try in the classroom. Working in groups of 6-8 students, students each write a phrase, then the next person draws the phrase, then the next person describes the drawing, etc., until you have 4 phrases and 3 drawings. Like any telephone game (each person only sees what the person before them drew/wrote) the end result is miles away from the beginning and very entertaining to boot. There is a timer element involved, so the action is fast and furious. I obviously didn't have enough purple rollers to go around, so we used long strips of paper (11x14 cut into 4 strips) that we folded over.

We tried this game at the end of class yesterday (the first 1/2 hour was spent sharing Zombie Haiku and 55 Fiction). It went over great. Add in a little homemade root beer to the mix, and all my students were saying it was the best party ever!

Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum

There is a very interesting article in today's NY Times about a huge school with a large number of free and reduced lunch students that has dramatically improved it's test scores by focusing on teaching reading and writing (Their terminology is "reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning.") in every class -- including PE and math.

It's interesting that instead of teaching to the test, they got the best results by doing what they call "getting back to basics."

"The committee put together a rubric to help teachers understand what good writing looks like, and began devoting faculty meetings to teaching department heads how to use it. The school’s 300 teachers were then trained in small groups.

Writing exercises took many forms, but encouraged students to think methodically. A science teacher, for example, had her students write out, step by step, how to make a sandwich, starting with opening the cupboard to fetch the peanut butter, through washing the knife once the sandwich was made. Other writing exercises, of course, were much more sophisticated."

Animoto - Civil Disobedience

Okay, this is my second try at Animoto. I am going to use this as part of my unit on American Transcendentalism - Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. This is obviously what I'm going to use to introduce Thoreau.

In the past I've just had the kids listen to the song while I showed the lyrics. I'm hoping that the combination of selected lyrics, pictures, and quotes in the movie with the music will make it a more meaningful experience.

Creating my own Mentor Text

Drawing on the superb example of Penny Kittle, here is an alternate point of view piece. (This is the story of my son's piñata breaking injury episode from the point of view of the piñata.)

The Short, Brief Life of a Cub Scout Piñata
(alternate point of view)

by Denée Tyler

-->
My life began simply enough as a pile of paper pulp in a factory somewhere in Mexico. One day the craftsman took the pulp, wet it down, formed it around a mold, covered it with crepe paper, and voila, I came into being, a small blue boy with a strange-looking blue cap and a garish smile. I hung with several hundred of my brothers as I dried and contemplated my purpose in life.

Before I was able to complete my meditations, I was abruptly packed into a close, dark box with others of my kind. There wasn’t enough room to speak and scarcely air to breathe, and we really thought that this was the end.

Just when I had given up all hope, the box was opened, and several pimply young men wearing shirts that said “Macey’s Groceries” pulled all of us out and hung us crookedly from a flimsy string. I had to endure the staring, pointing, and jeering of many until a large, jovial man abruptly pulled me down from my precarious perch and said, “This would be perfect for our Blue and Gold Banquet.” Then, to complete the insult, he summarily stuffed me with tootsie rolls. Of all the candy in the world . . .

The man took me to a place called a “cultural hall.” This was obviously a cruel misuse of the name, as there was no culture in sight. Instead, a rope was tied around my neck, the rope was thrown over a basketball standard, and I was raised and lowered over a group of rather unscrupulous looking eight-, nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds in blindfolds. I could only continue to smile my vapid, painted-on smile as these same children proceeded to hit me all about the head and body with a four-foot length of PVC pipe. Oh, the cruelty of man to man!

I endured their blows for at least a half an hour while the parents and leaders of these little heathens stood around the circle and cheered them on. Despite the fact that I was only made of paper, I held firm and determined not to let them break me. Even as a piece of my foot and a part of my sweet, sugary innards fell, I remained strong.

Unfortunately, once the small torturers lost interest, the adults around the circle took over. A brawny man, who professed to be the parent of one of the yapping children, declared that he would finish me off. He took hold of the PVC pipe and gave a mighty swing.

I could feel the force of the blow coming, and although I tried to brace myself, my strength was spent at last. I could only stare and smile in amazement as my neck separated from my head, and my blue-clad body dropped on the savage crowd below. They fell on my sad remains like a flock of ravening vultures, snarling and grabbing with abandon and extreme bad manners.

But what was this? Could it be? As I gasped out my last, I felt the glory of sweet revenge. As the deathblow was struck, the PVC object of my pain broke in two, and the severed end flew forth like the arrow of justice and took out two of my tormentors. One was merely grazed, but the other, one Caleb Tyler, received the force of the pipe full on in the middle of his forehead, causing a huge ruckus, raising an enormous goose egg, and resulting in a trip to the emergency room. And thus, my glorious end is a lesson to all who would meddle with . . . Cub Scout piñatas!

Secondary Language Arts Textbook Evaluation

I've been asked to serve on the Secondary Language Arts Textbook Evaluation board for the next session. I will be up in Salt Lake on October 19th and possibly 20th doing this. I'm hoping it will be a good networking opportunity for me, and since it's something that I've never done before--I'm also hoping that it will be fun and educational at the same time. Has anyone ever done this before? What can I expect from the experience?