We're knee deep in metaphors around here. The personification trips my students on their way to their seats. It's poetry unit time in English 2. To say I love poetry would be a grave understatement. At 18 I was memorizing "When You Are Old" by Yeats, by 21 my bookshelf bowed with collections of Dickinson and Rossetti and Browning, and at 24 my soon-to-be-husband was proposing with poems laced together with dancing ribbon. He knew the literal path to my heart. My stacks of journals overflow with favorite lines from Collins and Stafford juxtaposed with my own lame odes to Mountain Dew written during college science lectures. When my students directly and repetitively complain about poetry, I feel as if I've failed them. "Who ruined it for you?" I ask, but they can give no answer. It's like they were born with a visceral hatred. My zealous enthusiasm mostly meets exaggerated eye rolls. Through poem and activity selection, I work hard to engage students with poems. And I celebrate BIG TIME when they have an a-ha moment of understanding. Today we took a break from the reading and annotating and discussing and instead picked up some butcher paper and markers. We illustrated poems describing specific memories. This was a simple small group activity that took one class period. Students read a simple assigned poem, discussed the descriptive memory, and then worked together to create an accurate illustration based on the images of the poem. At the end of class, each group presented their illustration and read their poem to the class. We briefly discussed the images conveyed and the emotions wrapped up in the memories. Finally, each student turned in an exit card listing one thing they learned through this activity. Their responses proved the effectiveness of visualizing these memory-based poems.
"What I learned is that seeing a visual helps a lot instead of thinking about it." -B.J. (I don't think he realized that the visual WAS thinking. MY little secret...) "It is a lot easier to understand a poem if you draw out what it says." -J.C. "I learned that if you visualize it, it is easier to understand." -E.D. What are some of your favorite ways to engage students with poetry? I would love to learn new strategies!
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I'm ashamed to admit that it strokes my ego when my students laugh at my lame jokes. (And I'm sure most of the time the giggles and chuckles are polite and obligatory. After all, I do assign grades.) So over the weekend when I read this article about a teacher, Alexis Wiggins, who a shadowed students for two days, I began to think about my own classroom. One of the author's big takeaways was that students spend most of their days sitting and listening. I've discussed this with my College Comp students before when we watch and discuss Sir Ken Robinson's RSA Animate lecture on "Changing Education Paradigms." At that time I asked them how much of their day was spent listening to a teacher talk, and they estimated more than 90%. That matches Wiggins's findings as well. Of course I couldn't be part of the problem, could I? Except I am. Whether it's explaining an assignment, leading a discussion, or going over a mini-lesson, the reflective part of me has discovered that I LOVE to hear my own voice. Laugh at my lame jokes? I'll blather on even more. Nod and smile like you're actually paying attention? I'll gladly go on until the bell rings. I have a captive audience, albeit forcefully captive, but still... This is something I want to change. I want to be a true student-centered teacher, not a me-centered teacher who drones on like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons. I'm trying recycled small changes that are implementable to get my students up and talking more. This isn't new, but it is a conscious choice to reorient my teaching consistently to my students. Today it was a simple Post-it activity in English 2. Before we read Emily Dickinson's "I dwell in Possibility," I had students create a Post-it collage of what they would do it failure wasn't a possibility. They got out of their seats briefly to add to our collage, and they talked while I listened. (I'm going to leave their Post-its up for awhile so we can be inspired by their dreams to become famous singers and live in California and break World Records.) Tomorrow for #WWWW, I'm not even talking at all. Well, okay, I'll say, "Good morning! So glad you're here. It's Write Whatcha Want Wednesday, so get writing!" But that's it. Then I will be quiet and let the writers take over. And I know more changes can be made. Instead of orally reading through an assignment sheet, I can share it on Google Classroom and then ask for discussion after students have read it themselves. I can coach students to lead their own mini-lessons. And I can check my ego at the door and remember that really, my jokes aren't that funny anyway. Reflect: (intransitive verb) to think quietly and calmly; to express a thought or opinion resulting from reflection It's Friday afternoon, and Sam Smith sings to me from Pandora, the current soundtrack for my quiet thinking. It's time to reflect. Progress come from reflection as we consider strengths and weaknesses and make changes for moving forward. The end of a quarter seems like a natural point for pause. What I have learned about myself as a teacher this quarter? 1. After several years, I still don't have a consistent method for assessing student writing. My poor College Comp students can attest to this. At the beginning of the quarter I had them turn in their writing for feedback on Google Classroom. I used the suggesting and commenting features to provide feedback, and then I would check the revision history for changes made. That became cumbersome as I switched from their document to Classroom to the gradebook, and I felt like my feedback wasn't valuable. So a few weeks ago we transitioned back to printing drafts for my written comments. Now I'm killing more trees, and I know this isn't probably the most efficient way to respond to student writing in a 2014 1:1 environment. Suggestions are welcome. 2. Teaching writing as a full-time mom is hard work. (Can I get an "amen!?") I never provide feedback as timely as I would like. I feel like we're all juggling multiple deadlines as we work on first, second, and third drafts of various papers at one time. Next quarter (and especially next semester when I have new courses) I want to include additional shorter writing assignments. It's less daunting to provide really thorough, helpful feedback to a few paragraphs versus a few pages. And of course I also need to remember that not every piece of writing is for assessment. Maybe I need to incorporate more low stakes practice to go along with our freewriting and blogs in College Comp. 3. #WWWW is worth it. This is an addition to my writing classes that I will continue to tweak in the coming months and semesters. Students deserve time to discover their own passions in writing. Yes, that means sacrificing time for other endeavors in the classroom as the clock is always ticking. I will make it happen, though. 4. Building relationships is still essential. This is an area of my teaching that has been unfortunately neglected for the last two years as I tried to figure out the balance of teacher and mom. Starting at the beginning of the year, though, I started with a simple postcard. Every week I would send a few postcards for specific students. "I really enjoy your insight when we discuss literature." "Thanks for sharing your love with reading in our class." "I look forward to knowing you more this semester." It doesn't take much time, and the reaction is worth it. I truly believe I am a stronger instruction when I know and invest in my students. That is something I need to work on more next quarter. 5. Teaching vocabulary (without the workbooks) is fun! My students have been owning more words this quarter than we have in years past. I'm still focusing on vocabulary strategies for the rest of the year, so this is an area I will continue to reflect on. Right now I think my biggest takeaway is just the simple understanding that I need to craft engaging activities that get students using new words. Looking back, I realize that I haven't been as successful at cumulative vocabulary understanding. How can I continually reference our growing list of words as we add new concepts? 6. I am in the right profession, but growth is continual. I don't think I'll ever fully arrive at my destination as a teacher. This is my ninth year in the classroom, and it's the ninth year of adding new units and trying new things. That makes this job incredibly challenging and time-consuming, and it's always why I love coming to work (most days). What have you been learning in this first quarter of a new school year? I came here today to tell you that #WWWW has been a smashing success and because of my brilliant idea, I have now been inducted into every imaginable Teachers Hall of Fame. The new addition at our high school is actually going to be named after me. Except it's not. We're four weeks into Write Whatcha Want Wednesday. Really, I love it, but as is true with all great teaching ideas, I have encountered a few downfalls. Want to take a guess at the #1 disadvantage? Here's a hint: It's pretty much always the #1 reason we avoid trying new things in our classroom. Drumroll please....... TIME. It is hard to give my students enough time to engage completely with their blogs. Our Wednesday class periods are shortened already, and then by the time we do our usual freewriting, word work, mini-lessons, and announcements, I can usually give them approximately 19 minutes for Write Whatcha Want Wednesday. So I guess it's turned into Write Whatcha Want Wednesday (ataveryhurriedpace). I plan to address that next week. Because this is important to me, I need to give time for them to process as well as produce. Still, they are creating some masterpieces, rushed or not. I can't wait to share a few with you. I'll start by sharing our Symbaloo. Here you can find links for all of their blogs together. They haven't all selected an image to represent their blog yet, but the links are all stored in one location at least. And it's prettier than a list in a Google Doc. And now for a few week #4 highlights. I've mentioned her before, but over at Mallory's Musings she writes about the "lasts" experienced as a senior in high school. I think we all can relate. "As my All-State Honor Band auditions are rapidly approaching, it is becoming more apparent to me that this is my last year to do a lot of things that I love. Being a senior in high school is really fun and exciting, but soon I will have to leave every thing I know. Sports, speech, music, friends. It's all becoming very real, very fast." You also want to check out Finding Cynthia Vance. This student is sharing her personal journey of searching for a biological aunt who was placed for adoption as an infant. Each week she adds a new chapter. As an adoptive mom, I'm fascinated to watch this story unfold. Sprinkles McTurnip uses a random word generator each week to find a subject for a short short story. Last week's "Fleas" was clever as is this week's "Cheque," written entirely as dialogue. "Good afternoon. Your total is $354.43. Will you be paying with cash, card, or cheque?" "I'm sorry, what was the last one?" Over at Cory's Corner, she shares her experience giving back at a homeless shelter in Sioux City. I love how candid she is in describing her awakening process. "All my life I've just kinda went along with the stereotypical reason that people are homeless because they have an addiction which has taken over their lives. After serving and working alongside some of the homeless people my thoughts have changed. Each one of us can become homeless in the blink of an eye. We never know when disaster or tragedy will strike leaving us without the necessary amount of money to provide for ourselves." Finally, check out Kaycee's Kadence. Each week she shares a recent obsession (this week: skinny jeans) and a musical pick. She also gives some good publicity for our fall musical, Bye Bye Birdie. "I absolutely love musicals... I have for years now.... Not only being in them, but watching and singing along. Well I think that everyone should watch at least a few musicals in their lifetime." So maybe our hashtag isn't trending yet. Maybe their blog stats aren't through the roof. Maybe that's not what it's about. My students are writing about their passions and with voice. And that, my friends, is what #WWWW is all about. Today was the National Day on Writing. For those of you unfamiliar, NDOW is sponsored by NCTE, the National Writing Project, and The New York Times Learning Network as a day to celebrate all forms of writing. In years past I have used mini writing marathons in my classroom, created various low stakes writing experiences, and shared writing with my students. Every day is a day for writing in my classroom, but I never want to miss the opportunity to celebrate that with my students. And this got me to thinking about my own writing process and experience, just exactly WHY I write. Why do I freewrite with my students multiple times a week? Why do I keep a blog even though I have approximately six readers? I write to connect. During our first months as a family of four, the jubilation was matched by moments of serious fear. As I experienced my own personal Dark Night of the Soul, I found solace and comfort in a community of other adoptive bloggers. Through our writing, we became family, and our words are the glue that holds us together years later, even after many of us have given up our blogs. Saying goodbye to my previous blog, Like the Love, was a necessary sacrifice. While my readership here is much lower than it was at the former blog, my goal is still the same: to connect. I write to think. Joan Didion says here, "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." When I'm stuck on a certain teaching unit, I freewrite for a few minutes as I search for a new direction. Clarity comes. It might take time, but writing serves as the catalyst. When I'm struggling with a certain parenting problem, I reach out to my other adoptive mom friends in writing. As I process and produce the words to explain the situation, I oftentimes reach a revelation even before they have a chance to give advice. I write to model. I want to show my students what my personal writing process looks like, even when it's messy. And by sharing my writing with them, they can hear my voice. Even now as I sit with my laptop watching The Voice, my oldest son asks, "What are you doing?" I can honestly answer, "I'm writing a blog because I really enjoy writing." I write to represent. Many of the marginalized in our world are without a voice. I must use mine to stand for them. Whether it's speaking out against the systematic racism that still takes place in our country or sharing my own personal experience with adoption ethics, writing creates a platform. I write to stand there. I write to remember. Hidden in a drawer I keep a dusty collection of journals that chronicle the heartaches and hoorays and everything in between from the past fifteen years. Oh, they are an embarrassing treasure. In Paris during college it was a cracked orange notebook. In the margins I doodled the name "Damien," the object of my unrequited 19-year-old affection. During my early years of teaching it was a spiral journal that I decorated with magazine cut-outs. The lined pages contain early freewriting with students where I thought through lesson plans, grumbled about assessing student writing, and planned my nightly menu. I recently finished reading Still Alice by Lisa Genova, the story of a 50-year-old woman faced with early onset Alzheimer's. Now writing to remember takes on a whole new meaning, for one day these words may serve as my only memory. I write. Because I can't imagine life without words. Why do YOU write? I would love for you to share your thoughts in the comments. As I mentioned last week, I've lucky enough to work at a school that gives teachers ownership of professional development. This year as I focus on my vocabulary instruction and teaching strategies, I will be sharing the journey here at Teach Happy. Sometimes in my class we use technology and make crazy fun videos. Sometimes we do something simple, like the List Three strategy I used last week. This strategy is found in the Appendix of Bringing Words to Life by Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, the book I'm using for some of my vocabulary instruction ideas. I haven't crawled through much of the theory at the beginning of the book, but so far I've found a few helpful activities to use with our word lists. Because my ultimate goal is word ownership, not just test regurgitation, I want students to hear and see how these words are applied, especially in their daily lives. This List Three activity asks students to "generate appropriate contexts or situations for statements or questions about their words." It took me about 15 minutes to create the activity based on pre-selected word lists. For each of the words we are working with, students are asked to generate a list of three examples according to a specific task. For example, last week in College Composition, one of our SAT words was "reconciliation," so I asked students to list three actions they might see during a reconciliation. Answers included hugs, hand shakes, and even crying. Another word was "ostentatious," so they had to list three behaviors they consider to be ostentatious. One answer that gave us a few laughs was driving a limo to school every day. I had students work independently first, and then we came together as a group to discuss our lists. I encouraged students to add what they deemed the best ideas from their classmates to their own lists. (I figure more exposure means more ownership.) Next time I will probably have them work in small groups to discuss their way through the list. This activity builds brain bridges as students create connections with words. They are saying these words, using them, and applying them to contexts within their own worlds. And best yet, it was successful. A few students asked for this strategy again because it they really felt like they were learning the words. I'm seeing them in more of their writing, too. Yippee! You can see the handout I gave students here. Feel free to steal and modify as you would like. This week I will use this handout with my English 2 students as we use the same strategy to own our Unit 2 Words in Context. This activity doesn't take much prep time, and I feel like it was time well spent as my students begin to own more complex words. What do you think? Is the List Three activity something you will use in your classroom? How can you modify it to work for you? As a high school student, homecoming meant a busy week in my too-short cheerleading skirt and bouncy ponytail. I was never the homecoming queen, but I thoroughly enjoyed the week with the grand finale of a dance on the weathered wood floor of the old gym where Midwestern girls tried to shake it to songs like "Lovefool" and "Wannabe." In my first year of teaching, homecoming turned tragic when a senior cheerleader was killed in a car accident between school and the football game. Homecoming was a canceled football game coupled with feeble attempts to comfort a swarm of sobbing teenagers huddled together in the center of the football field, each yard line a memorial marked with grief. These are the lessons you never learn in a teacher education program. Still today a homecoming doesn't pass that I don't think of breathtaking Aayla with her life laid out before her like a blank sheet of paper, a canvas. Now as a teacher homecoming means flexibility and sometimes fun. I deal with the disruptions of homecoming week as students miss class for skit rehearsal and Powderpuff football. I try not to grumble too much as I see students in a different light -- a more carefree light. This year I participated in all of the dress-up days, danced like a fool (still) in the faculty skit, and wiped tears as our school crowned a homecoming king with special needs. Homecoming means realizing that some days we fashion floats instead of conquer the Common Core. Homecoming can mean tragedy, and it can mean triumph. What does Homecoming mean to you as an educator?
I love spending my valuable time at professional development. And I'm not even being facetious. For the past few years, my school has implemented a form of professional development that allows teachers to work on our own Individual Learning Plan (ILP). (We need more acronyms in education, don't we?) I've spent time working on concept-based units, integrating curriculum to the Common Core, and now this year strengthening my vocabulary instruction. I'll be sharing instructional strategies that work for me here at Teach Happy and look forward to the feedback that follows. The Iowa Core states, “Without prompting, they [college and career-ready students] demonstrate command of standard English and acquire and use a wide-ranging vocabulary.” However, other than a brief stint with vocabulary workbooks, I have never been very intentional with my vocabulary instruction. I knew I need to, though, and I am privileged to work at a school that allows me the time and resources to work on that weakness. This past week I used one of my favorite vocabulary activities in two of my classes, English 2 and College Composition. (I also work in a 1:1 school, so when possible, I try to use technology to enhance my instructional strategies.) English 2 students worked with words in context from our current unit on characterization, and College Comp students worked with some popular SAT words. I want students' knowledge to go beyond just studying for a vocabulary test, so for this activity they worked on owning the words by creating an animated dialogue using GoAnimate.com. GoAnimate is a great choice for this project because we can log in for free with our Google Apps accounts. (We also laugh a lot during this activity because of the monotone voices and computerized accents, and as the title of this blog states, happiness is welcome in my classroom. I'm always amazed at how engaged students are when creating these short little videos.) Tips:
What do you think? Would you like to use dialogue animation for vocabulary instruction in your classroom? What other vocab activities have been successful with your students? I have a confession to make: I would have hated #WWWW as a student. When I was a 10th grade Biology student, Mr. Freed accused me of being an "academic prostitute." In other words, I would do whatever it took to get an A. And he was right. For me at that time, it was less about learning and more about my GPA. Write Whatcha Want Wednesday would have paralyzed me. "Just tell me what to do!" I would have whined. That grade-infatuated girl is long behind me, but I do empathize with the students who fear the freedom that #WWWW gives them. I completely understand that this type of writing assignment will not be everyone's favorite, so for those students I do provide a list of suggested prompts. Several of them use those prompts and still produce strong, voice-filled writing. Mallory's Musings, for example, provides a beautifully simple list of happiness.
Other students are taking the freedom and running with it. Over at Just Josiah, a blog dedicated to travels, we learn about the beauty of Hawaii. "Though the sights are magnificent, it's the culture and way of life of Kauai's people that truly captures my heart and makes it impossible to let go." Jake the Snake provides a weekly recap of football here in Northwest Iowa. "We got on the board when I kicked a 16 yard field goal to put us up 3-0, then I caught a touchdown pass thrown by Matt Eckard. And after that right before halftime I kicked a 50 yrd field goal, a personal best in a game." One of the most unique blogs comes in the creative characters at "Are You Going To Finish That Croissant?" "Hello my name is Sylvester Black, the perfect combination of both Sylvester Stallone and Jack Black. While not being an expendable pawn for my military superiors, I am a music teacher at a very nice school." Finally, That One Blog offers some (ironic?) advice about writer's block. "Have you ever not known what to write about? Don't lie, we all have. Today is one of those days for me. I cannot, for the life of me, think of a single topic to write about. It's even hard for me to write about how I have nothing to write about." I have another confession to make: I am so very proud of the writing that we're producing through #WWWW. |
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September 2020
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