Shakespeare Ponderings

Ever since I began teaching at this school, English II (10th grade) has studied Julius Caesar. When I was first assigned English II, I hated the play. I'm not a "words for the sake of words" person (Mercutio's Queen Mab speech feels like a tiresome detour) so a lot of the pontificating seems overlong to me. Plus it's another bunch of dudes; Portia and Calpurnia get some words that end up not making any difference to the story. And I could go on for pages and pages about how insulting Portia's characterization is - the way she attests to how much better she is than other women, and part of her justification for that is based on who the men in her life are. And then a few scenes later she's so nervous and upset that she can't think straight.

This year we got parallel-text copies of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Part of me wants to teach that instead of Julius Caesar (given that it is expected that we WILL study a Shakespearean play in English II - I would not be allowed to use Antigone or a novel instead). The main reason is that we don't teach ANY of Shakespeare's comedies. The closest we get is the first half of Romeo and Juliet in English I. So students finish our program and graduate having been /told/ that Shakespeare also wrote comedies, but not really having been exposed to them. And I feel like they end up thinking that Shakespeare is all intrigue and murder and angst and forgetting that there's more.


However.

Julius Caesar looks at the ideas of leadership and power and the responsibility of citizens when government starts going wrong. (Or when you think it does.) And I tend to think that those concepts are of greater significance than romantic love and mistaken identities and whimsical magic. Nor are you going to get me to believe that romance is more relevant to teens than "what do you do when the people in charge are becoming bad leaders?"

Additionally, the play makes a fantastic follow-up to Animal Farm (which we also study), where the 'lower' animals let the pigs assert more and more control until they end up getting fed less and having to work harder than they did when they were owned by humans.

I guess I'm wondering about the relative value of the thematic messages in Midsummer and Caesar. I feel like the latter is much stronger, but that may only be because I haven't taught the former! So, to those of you who've taught A Midsummer Night's Dream, what do you see as its enduring messages, and why are they so important?

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Zero Sum

In his post "How the American education system doesn't fail," David Brin responds to a Washington Post article by Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria's article warns of problems that may arise from focusing too heavily - or even exclusively - on excellence in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines.

Brin says that Zakaria takes too pessimistic an outlook. He suggests that the breadth requirements of a four-year bachelor's degree are fairly well embedded into American culture, and aren't likely to be done away with any time soon. But the repeated pushback against "zero sum thinking" got me thinking.

In one sense, Brin is right. Spending more time studying math and science doesn't necessarily mean completely abandoning art and literature. However, the time that we spend on any one thing (such as studying math or science) is time that we are, by deduction, not spending on something else (such as studying art or literature). So in that sense, constrained as we are by the laws of thermodynamics, it IS a zero-sum game!

These are choices I have to make in my classroom as well. Choosing to teach these stories, essays, poems, etc. means that I will not have the opportunity to teach others. The time I spend to have students practice speaking in front of the class is time we are not spending on having them practice finding information in the text that supports their analysis. These decisions would be easier if I was choosing between "good instruction" and "poor instruction," but that's rarely the case. When I have to choose between two good opportunities, knowing I can't do both... that's hard. It's really, really hard.

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Leadership / Citizenship texts - POSITIVE examples?

The major texts we use for English II happen to have leadership as a common theme. It wasn't planned, but it works out nicely. We use Animal Farm, Julius Caesar, Lord of the Flies, The Prince, and Antigone.

The thing is, those are all kind of... well... dismal. And I've been trying to think of a work (ideally not one by yet another dead white guy!) that focuses on what it takes to be a good citizen and/or a good leader but carries a positive overall tone. The best one I've come up with is To Kill a Mockingbird, but (a) that's one of our texts for English I, and (b) it's still kind of discouraging!

Any suggestions?

Image thanks to demotivators.com

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Companion texts

We'll be starting to read Animal Farm in just a few days. I think the overarching question I want to push students to examine is "What is the citizen's responsibility to society – and why?"

See, I've taught it before, and the students often come to the conclusion that the pigs just should have been nicer. I don't know if it's because they're that naive, or because they're slacking off and not bothering to look below the surface. Because, honestly, at the end of the novel, the pigs have it pretty good, at least in comparison to the rest of the animals.

The pigs aren't going to be any nicer unless the other animals make them be nicer. But by the end of the story, the pigs not only have the dogs as enforcers, they have the guns and other weapons as well. It would be very difficult for the other animals to take a stand against the pigs. The key is that the other animals didn't make the most of their opportunity to be involved in the new government after the Rebellion. They weren't lazy – they worked hard – but they were willing to go along with what someone else wanted. If you do that often enough, you're going to get stepped on, and that's exactly what happened.

For potential companion texts, I've used "Initiation" and "The Fan Club" as a pair, to encourage students to examine the desire to belong. I also have access to "The Lottery" and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," but I'm less happy with those. They seem to oversimplify the situation. Both of them look at established societies, sort of as a "oh my isn't this terrible," but they don't look at how those societies and their practices developed. For example, you can definitely make the case that a capitalist society is predicated upon the suffering of those at the bottom for the well-being of those at the top. In "Omelas," we are just flat-out told that the suffering one is innocent. How do we know this? Only because the narrator says so. However, in our society (for example) we make other excuses for why those at the bottom are there. They aren't willing to work hard. They're selfish. They're criminals. We tell ourselves that our suffering ones are not innocent.

Trying to change society is a HUGE task that really can't be completely accomplished by one person, Hunger Games notwithstanding. So I want to get students to think about what it would take to change society, to make the world better, and what they can do to help make it happen.

Any suggestions for other possible texts to work along with Animal Farm?

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Wednesday, August 27 - Lesson: "Beginnings"

Every story starts with the promise that reading it is worth your time & effort, and gives clues about what to expect. In the first sentence, the author establishes this promise, enticing the reader to continue, and hints about what the reader can expect from the rest of the book. Consider these famous beginnings:

• Call me Ishmael.
• It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
• Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
• They shoot the white girl first.
• 124 was spiteful.
• Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
• You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

As a class, we discuss a few of these openers - I generally start with Moby Dick and ask students what they notice. They either mention "he has a weird name" or "he's introducing himself." Each of those leads into a significant point - Ishamel is an allusion to the story of God's promise to Abraham in the book of Genesis, and there's an important distinction between call me and my name is, which allows me to touch on the concept of an unreliable narrator.

I always finish with the beginning of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, because I love the way it builds from a dull start to an exciting finish:

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

"There was" is about the most boring start to a sentence you can write! Then we move to "a hand" so there's at least an object, but it's ordinary and there's no description. But then we get "in the darkness," which adds description and some mood - kind of suspenseful. Then "and it held" provides some action, and we finish with "A KNIFE." Cue the dramatic music!

Then I take out my copy of the book and ask them what the first thing they notice about the page is, and I very briefly open the book to that first page:

I need to get out of the habit of asking them what they notice first, because they always pick the knife! Then I have to go back and ask them "how is this first page different from the first page of just about every other book? How is it different from the book you're reading?" Then they point out that most books have black text on a plain page, but here, the typeface is reversed on a black background.

So in the same way that the author's words are designed to grab the reader's attention, here we have the book's design working together with those words!

Then I ask them to look closer. What is right there by the end of the sentence? The knife! they say - by this point they're always getting a little excited, because they see how it's all connected. What part of the knife? I ask, and they say the blade or the point.

Okay, so where does your eye go, after you see the knife? Of course they say they want to know who's holding it, and what's going to happen. I trace my finger along the knife, past the hand and up the arm, saying okay, so this is where you look, and - uhoh! What happens here? I ask, pointing to where the drawing cuts off. What is the book itself encouraging you to do? What is supposed to happen when your eye gets to the bottom right corner of the page?

And it's just delightful to watch their eyes light up as they say you're supposed to turn the page and keep reading!

Exactly.

That's what every author wants the reader to do - keep reading! And this book does a particularly good job of getting you to do just that.

Then we start our classwork. Because each student has a different book, there's really no way they can cheat; I let them help each other out and discuss the work together.

Turn back to the beginning of the book you chose, and re-read the first sentence. Based on that sentence alone, what clues can you gather about the rest of the story? Images thanks to theguardian.com and tygertale.wordpress.com

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Summer Feathers

Goals for the summer:

• Change the address on my driver's license √
• Register to vote (waiting on card to arrive)
• Create Antigone unit
• Check the used bookstore for The Hunger Games (√), Catchphrase, and Taboo (didn't have the latter)
• Read Things Fall Apart
• Practice doing voice work √
• Write sample video game quest trees
• Continue learning to code √
• Continue tap lessons and practice √
• Daily cardio/weights/yoga √
• Develop clicker games and review practice
• Create other review games

I've been doing pretty well, I think - I haven't done any of my planning-type stuff yet but I want to wait until I actually have my classes for next term. That way I can create plans and materials I can actually use!

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Reading Goals

Sometimes as I'm reading blog posts I see in someone's sidebar that they have a reading goal that they're tracking through Goodreads or Shelfari or something. And I've been thinking about that. I mean, I read a fair amount. And I certainly want to promote and encourage reading, not just with my students, but in general.

But the thing is, there are a lot of crappy -- okay, mediocre -- books out there. And I feel a little bad about putting them down after I start or even just passing them by completely, because I know that someone worked really hard on them. Usually quite a few someones, I'd guess. However, I don't feel bad enough about it to force myself to slog through them. I'm sorry, hardworking writers and publishing folks of the world. I really, really am. But I'm just not gonna do it. Life is too short for that.

Instead, I'd rather set a different sort of reading goal for myself. My goal is to find and read as many four and five-star books as I possibly can. I'm thinking three per month, starting in September? I have no idea how easy or difficult it's going to be to meet that goal, but three sounds like a nice number. It's sort of magical.

The tricky part, of course, is going to be finding them. Because once I find a book I really-and-truly love, I find that I look up to catch my breath and holy heck how did it get to be so late? That's the feeling I get with a fantastic book, that feeling like when you're swimming and you take a big breath and then let it out as you sink underneath the water and you can still hear but the sounds from above are muted and muffled and instead you hear the swushies of everyone else splashing and kicking and the gentle schlub-schlub-schlub of the waves.

So I think I will also commit to going to the library each week to look for new possibilities and return the previous ones. It'd probably be a good idea to have it be the same day every week. That way I won't have overdue fees (yikes!) because I've lost track of time and gotten caught up in things and holy heck the summer's gone and I owe fifteen bucks!

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

And finally, I will commit to reading at least ten pages of each possible fantastic book and logging each one with my Goodreads account, even if my review is simply: "Ten pages. Didn't grab me. Oh well!"

I guess the next step is to take a look at our schedule and see which day of the week would best suit! It will be interesting to see if I actually end up reading any more than I otherwise would, or not.

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Canon or Choice?

Pre-planning begins one week from today. I'm feeling that sort of nebulous anxiety that comes from knowing I have the basics in place but not being sure about the particulars. I'm going to have seniors this year in addition to sophomores, and I have no materials for the seniors.

But one of the biggest changes will be if I get pushed to drop my choice reading at the beginning of each period. I made the apparent mistake of mentioning in an email to one of our assistant principals that I was excited about all the books I'd picked up at the ALA convention and using them for SSR books in my classroom library, and she was like "wait, you mean reading them at home, right? because the Common Core is really getting away from free reading in the classroom."

I kind of wussed out and just didn't reply, because I'm secretly petrified that she's going to say I can't do it anymore. And that was one of the procedures that I specifically brought up in my end-of-year evaluation for things I've done that I'm proud of. In reflecting on how they feel they improved over the course of the term, students consistently mentioned becoming better readers, specifically detailing improvements in retention, stamina, and comprehension. I'm afraid that I'm going to be told it's not an effective use of classroom time, when the truth is, it seems to be the most effective thing we do.

That's not to say that I want to throw out everything else we work on and focus solely on reading all day, every day. There's obviously a need to work together as a group to tackle more challenging texts -- ones that students might not be able to understand on their own. Class time gives us a unique opportunity to collaborate and share ideas and encourage each other. But I don't want to give up SSR, either. That's why I picked this gif.

Both IS good.

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Scaffolding

I think I already do a pretty good job of offering support for our study of Julius Caesar. It's a challenging text, and one of the things I hate most about it is that there's not a lot of GOOD supplemental material. The Shakespeare Set Free series from the Folger Institute is awesome, but there's nothing in it for Caesar.

Additionally, the feature films are WAY out of date and somewhat painful to watch. I'm sure that film buffs may be able to appreciate the way that the costuming, lighting, camera work, use of color, etc. fits that particular era of film, but... that's not the audience I'm working with.

I've contacted a local Shakespeare group; they did a series of readings a year or two ago that I went to & it was pretty neat. You could tell that they were there simply because they enjoyed it. Thing is, their website hasn't been updated since last February, and I don't know if that's because they haven't had anything to add, or because the webmaster quit & hasn't been replaced, or because the entire group is kaput.

My next step will be to see if I can dig up a literature or drama class at a local college, contact the professor, and see if any of the students would be willing to come and present to my classes.

I'm not sure what else I can do. The workshop at the beginning helps generate interest, but the text is just HARD, and it doesn't take long for things to degenerate into absolute torture. I'm not sure what I can do to maintain engagement and focus. I can't say I blame the students for their frustration - it's mentally exhausting!

I feel like I'm hamstrung. A play is meant to be SEEN as a PERFORMANCE, and I've got zero access to top-notch performances. HEY RSC. WTF? WHY CAN'T YOU SELL DVDS OF YOUR PERFORMANCES? I WOULD TOTES BUY ONE. OR LIKE BUNCHES, ACTUALLY.

I would love to have some help/suggestions.

Image thanks to http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/

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...just to make it today

So we had an unexpected mid-year retirement in the department. Fortunately the teacher who retired is going to be all right, but he's having some health problems and between being in the hospital for testing and for treatment, he used up all of his sick days. So he chose to retire rather than take unpaid leave.

That means that the search is on for a new language arts teacher. The thing is, none of the other teachers in the department are close to retiring. (We have one who's eligible, but hasn't seemed the least bit interested.) This is likely to be our only new hire until/unless someone leaves, and I don't see that happening this year.

I did remind the principal that I do not want to be in charge of the yearbook OR the newspaper next year. He seemed fairly receptive to the idea, so I've definitely got my fingers crossed.

And overall, I guess it's good that I'll at least have SOME idea about whether or not they're going to try to foist Journalism off on me again before it's time for us to sign contracts.

But if you're the praying sort? I wouldn't mind in the least having a few more voices on my side...

Image thanks to http://kellysinging.files.wordpress.com

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Not Ning

One of the things I'm pretty proud of is that I actually have a functioning class website this semester. Two, actually; one for my English II classes, and one for Journalism.

For next semester, I want to do a bit more planning-ahead of how I can use those sites more effectively. It's especially important for English II, where the class is large enough that I need to sign out a laptop cart if everyone is to have a computer to use. I really don't know what I'm going to do next year when I don't have daily access to the Journalism computers as well. It's sheer idiocy that the school bought laptop carts that are significantly smaller than the classes are.

I can't rely on students having internet access from home. So I need to make sure that I plan to use computers in class for the work that we do. I can, however, offer extra credit for work done outside of class time.

Pages

Pages allow students to add short examples with explanation that fit the page's topic.

* Class Log - This page keeps track of what we do in class, including notes, descriptions of assignments, due dates, etc.
* Word Sleuths - Earn extra credit by providing connections to words that are intriguing and challenging! Describe where you came across the word and include a link to its definition.
* Celebrations - What's going well? What are you thankful for? What makes you happy? This will be a single page where students add entries onto the page.
* Phenomenal Phrases - Song lyrics, poetry, or a mesmerizing sentence, sometimes a group of words fits together just right. What word combinations have you noticed lately? What made them stand out?
* News & Views - When you pay attention to the news, you understand what's happening in the world around you. Use this space to have your say about it! Include a link to an interesting news article and describe what's significant about it.
* Link List - Here's where you can list websites with helpful resources. Be sure to explain why they're useful.
* I Thought Of English - Making connections strengthens what we already know and helps us learn new ideas and information. When something outside of class reminds you of something from inside class, write about it here!

Hubs

Hubs are central pages that include a list of links to pages that focus on a subsection of that topic.

* SSR Book Talks - This is a place to discuss stories you love and stories you love to hate! A central page will provide links to pages that discuss different books.
* Lights, Camera, Action! - Movies, TV series, individual episodes - film provides an incredibly diverse medium. Discuss what works and what doesn't. Central page provides links to a page for each title for discussion.
* FAQs - If you have questions about navigating or using this ning, why not post your questions here in case others are wondering the same thing? Rules & grade guidelines are listed here. Questions posted in comments; page itself will (hopefully) not be able to be edited by students. Students can submit requests for pages to discuss school policies; links will be added to hub.
* Journals - This will provide a place for students to craft more personal writing. Students will create their own pages and write their own entries, but can comment on others' pages.

Assignments

(1) Weekly blog post - Students will share original writing in a semi-public space. 150-250 words. Topic and content must be school-appropriate. Main page will include links to lists of topic ideas.

(2) Weekly comments - Students will respond in an appropriate and thoughtful way to three discussions. This may be challenging to keep up with; I haven't decided how I'm going to be able to track it.

(3) Extra credit - For up to 5 points per week, students may contribute a useful new example to the Word Sleuth, Link List, or Phenomenal Phrase groups, or a new discussion to the SSR, LCA, or News&Views groups. Posts should be at least 50 words, including explanation and supporting information. For up to 2 points per week, students may respond to any current posts in a way that adds new ideas and encourages further discussion. This may be challenging to keep up with; I haven't decided how I'm going to be able to track it.

Guidelines

1. Work hard: It's okay to have fun in this space, but if others are having a learning conversation either add to it positively or make your comments in a new post. Anything you post here should be somehow related to the course. The connection can be direct or indirect. If you're asked to explain the relevance of what you have contributed, you should have an answer. The level of usage here is "informal standard English"--which is what is used in business, government and education for everyday work. No texting abbreviations. Use complete sentences and standard spelling. Remember, the whole world is watching.

2. Be kind: We are helpful, polite, and appropriate at all times. Remember that many students, teachers, and others will view your comments.
Anyone is welcome to comment or join a discussion as long as he or she is respectful. If I could disable the Friend feature of this ning, I would, but I can't. So, let's have no "Friend-ing" dramas. If another student requests to be your ning friend, you must accept that request before you do anything else on here.

3. Follow directions: Keep the school's internet use policy in mind. Be reserved about revealing private details on web sites. You don't need to use your full name, but use enough of it so that everyone in your class will know who you are. Though this is a password-protected site, it is digital information that anyone could copy, forward, save to hard drive etc. Anything you type into a digital forum may last forever, so respect your own and others' privacy. Arrange your personal site to your taste, but keep it school-appropriate. Please, no gross, disgusting, immoral or irreverent photographs. Avoid designs that makes your text hard to read. Communication is a primary purpose of this site, and style should enhance rather than obstruct communication.

I'm a little bit nervous, because I don't know that I'll be able to rely on having access to a lab or laptop cart every week. We only have two labs for the entire school, so it feels like I'm being a little greedy.

On the other hand, my journalism classes are smaller, so I've been able to have them on the computers in my room every day, and the amount of improvement I'm seeing in their writing is fantastic. I feel confident that part of that, at least, is because they know that others are reading what they write. We do daily writing in English II as well, but it just goes in their writer's notebooks... I wonder if I need to do more sharing from there. Dunno.

(Many thanks to Mr. Michael Umphrey, author of The Power of Community-Centered Education: Teaching as a Craft of Place, and Mr. Gary Anderson for their help with this work.)

Image thanks to http://videoproductiontips.com/

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Idea? I don't know.

It's entirely possible that I'm still logy from whatever was pumped into me for today's surgery - I got my port taken out. It feel SO GOOD to have it gone, though it didn't really trouble me that much. There's just this loosening of tension that I hadn't noticed. Though that may also be the drugs...

Anyway, so my copy of The Results Fieldbook came today - well, yesterday, I guess, since we got it out of the mailbox this morning. And in poring over it I got an idea. I think it's a good idea, but I'm just not sure. Rather, I'm sure there've gotta be problems with it, because it seems simple and effective and helpful but I haven't heard of anyone doing it.

In reading through, so far a lot of it has been about using data to find what you need to work on. And that gave me the idea. What if we used the most recent end-of-course test scores in English to identify each student's strongest and weakest skills? Then we could put students into groups based on those skill areas. It'd create the streamlined effectiveness of tracking without the stigma, because EVERY student would have a strength and a struggle.

And then on - I think of them as Challenge Days - you could set up modules or learning areas, and students would work together either to help each other with their struggles or to push each other to further excellence in their strengths.

So. What I want is help finding the problems. Does this seem too babyish?

Image thanks to http://oneanswer.tv/

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Feathers on the Fly

It's times like this when I am just horribly sure that someone's going to realize that I don't really know exactly what I'm doing. AURGH!

I have a love-hate relationship with change. I love the idea of doing new things. I mean, change is good, right? Isn't it?

Except when it isn't, of course. *Sigh*

ANYWAY. My next unit is coming up in a matter of DAYS and I am not DONE with it. AURGH. So frustrating. So I'm dedicating this weekend to hammering out the details.

At least, that's the plan. Of course, there's piles of dishes and laundry to do, plus I left the Atwell stuff at the school and maybe I need to go get that to help and if I'm heading that way I probably should take the drill and put the table together while I'm there so that it doesn't get destroyed on Monday because it's still in pieces and ... everything else.

Oo, I wonder if the library has my books in...

Yeah, I pretty much suck.

So after some time off I'm returning :)

First of all, unit goals:

• Students will read out loud fluently and with appropriate inflection. Most students' presentation skills SUCK. I want to minimize my suffering during our Julius Caesar unit.
• Students will correctly identify literary elements and poetic techniques. Hopefully these will be review. We've looked at some of them before, but fairly briefly.
• Students will demonstrate understanding of script format. One of the challenges (opportunities?) in studying Shakespeare is that his scripts rely almost entirely on dialogue. This allows producers a great deal of freedom in set design, staging, and stage direction, but it also means more work for the student reading the play, since those details aren't provided for you. A strong understanding of how scripts work will help students make sense of the play.

Formative assessments: (These will be entered as quiz grades)

• Book talks - Each student will describe an SSR book in front of the class. These should be fairly short; hopefully we can do three per day.
• Technique quizzes - Given a list of techniques and a set of short passages, students will identify and explain examples of each technique.
• Sonnet reading - This will have to be later in the unit. Students will have a weekend to look over the sonnets if they choose to and time in class to practice.

Summative assessments: (These will be entered as test grades)

• Monologue - Each student will perform an individual dramatic reading in front of the class. I need to find passages to offer; students may also choose passages of their own as long as they're approved by me.
• Script - Each student will choose a scene from an SSR book and put it into script format.
• Persuasive essay - This will actually be the first test grade of the unit because it'll build on the 1984 unit. Students will propose and defend a major change to national policy based on the idea 'the way the world SHOULD be.'

What they can do on their own:

• Read their SSR books. I need to make sure I leave time for this at the end of every class period.
• Quickwrites. This is how we start every class period. I'm going to use some instrumental "Story Music" to look at tone; might also use the Harris Burdick pieces as prompts.
• Grammar homework for each class period, using their SSR books as example texts for sentence combining exercises.
• Blog commenting, once I get them started. Not quite sure what I want to do with this. I'll also need to make sure that I make some kind of arrangement with students who don't have an internet connection at home.

What instruction they'll need: This is the part I need to finish working on. I know I'm going to be doing some choral reading, and I'll need to walk them through commenting on the blog. We'll read some short stories and create at least one script together.

We'll be finishing up the 1984 unit this week, so I've got a little bit more time to work the kinks and create or edit the handouts I plan to use. I need to look through the files on my laptop to see what I've already got.

Image thanks to kennymasenda.blogspot.com/

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Further Resolutions

Okay, I am not taking ANY student work home anymore. AT ALL EVER. I'm going to have to do ALL my grading here at school. Period. That means I'm going to have to be VERY careful about scheduling when I collect writers' notebooks - I need to make sure that for the next TWO DAYS there will be no interruptions to my planning period.

Also resolved: I am going to input assignments into the gradebook when I create my lesson plans. Which I need to do TODAY for the next two weeks. Uhoh. And I only have ten more minutes of planning. DANGIT! And I didn't even get my field trip form. DANGIT DANGIT DANGIT!

AURGH!

And I need to make a quiz for my J1s on the photo-uploading thingy. Which will be next block.

WHY AM I SO FULL OF FAIL?! AURGH!

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Further Feathers

I am beginning to realize that the only reading that's going to take place outside of school is assigned SSR. So I'm thinking about going into grammar and writing when we begin our performance & poetry unit next. We'll do personal writing and independent grammar study for homework. The texts we study as a class will be read IN-CLASS. Because they don't read the class stories outside of class (for the most part).

I need to re-introduce the glossary. We've already defined a bunch of their terms, but we don't go back to it very often. There is just SO MUCH to remember! *sigh* And remembering is something I'm not very good at. :(

I also need to remember to send the name list to the plate people. I need to look for one student notebook that's missing. WTF is it with me and student work? AURGH. I need... shoot, there was something else I thought of like three minutes ago and now it's gone. Eff.

Oh, I need to make sure that the Hunk fills out his insurance stuffs. Annnd I need to call the pharmacy AGAIN to see if they have that prescription filled, and if they don't I need to call the dr to see what's up. V frustrating. And I need to set up an eye exam so I can get this year's ... contacts, I guess. And I need to call my PCP to see about a referral to a podiatrist since we've met our out-of-pocket this year.

I'll want to do quizzes every so often to touch back on the ELA terms we're reviewing with the poetry unit. I have the rubrics for the monologue or poem performances finished and the one for the scriptwriting.

I would like to do more finishing of what we write. Right now most of the writing is thinking-as-we-write writing. We aren't following up on any of it. So... as we do use the SSR books as example texts, I'm going to want to create assignments that allow for completion and publication. I'd like it to be meaningful publication, too, and I'm not sure how I want to structure that.

I have one of my students who just loooves getting attention from me. Rather than working, he'll stretch. He'll sit there and practice crossing his eyes. He'll poke at other students. He'll stare at me and wait for me to look at him so that he can accuse me of staring at him. He'll read any book except for the one that's assigned to the class. He'll doodle on the desk. He'll bonk his head on the desk - quietly, though, which is nice because that way it doesn't disrupt others, which of course would get him called out for it.

Any idea who I've been watching for the last few minutes as I type this? :P (Yay peripheral vision!)

Oo, I remembered the other thing: I need to figure out my google password because I can't get to the results from the form I created. :(

And I also need to make sure to bring the ad book back.

And I somehow forgot about booktalks and poetry reading after fall break. SIGH!!!

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Feathers for 1984

Sooo, my 1984 unit is winding down.

[Side note: I just gasped so hard I almost puked. I put my head down to think and as I opened my eyes I saw this HUGE SPIDER right by my eye. As I yanked myself upright, I noticed that it flew away... along my arm? Spiders don't do that... Turns out it was a big ol' ball of lint on the sleeve of my sweater that had picked up a hair or two... maybe coming out of the dryer, I dunno. Ugh. Heart rate is beginning to return to normal now, so back to the unit reflection.]

Crap. My concentration is shot. Vitamins and breakfast first, then I'll come back.

So, yeah. The scaffolding is throwing me off. I'm not entirely sure how to set things up so that the students know what is going on during the story. The opening lesson worked REALLY well, but I didn't have any additional supports set up.

1984 is NOT an easy book. I'm wondering if I'm asking too much of sophomores.

I think next term I'm going to do the first lesson, then have them go read, and in the very next lesson introduce SparkNotes. And then have the literature circle jobs set up so that they have to quote, cite, and explain a passage for each example they create. That way SparkNotes kind of sets a foundation for them, but there's no way they can JUST use the SparkNotes.

As we go along, I'll have a set of comprehension questions that they can answer using the chapter summaries. We'll do those in class, and then hopefully that will prepare them for doing the literature circle work on their own.

Then again, I should probably check with these classes at the end of the unit to see how they felt about it. Maybe I'm selling them short.

I just don't know. And that frustrates me. *sigh*

You can find my earlier 1984 post here and my earlier planning posts below:

I. Continuing: Ideas that worked well
II: Repeating: Ideas I didn't implement effectively
III: Discarding: Ideas I implemented that weren't effective
IV: Tweaking: Ideas that worked but might be improved
V: Exploring: New ideas for next year!

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Book Talks

So, every day I am going to transition from our writing time into our lesson time with a read-aloud. And I'm going to switch back and forth between books and poetry. After the reading, I'll give some details about the book and briefly (that's the tough part!) explain why I like it so much. I'm going to try to keep these under five minutes.

Behind the cut I've got books listed. This is based on books I've read and given 5-star ratings on goodreads... I think the latter part of the list might get into the 4-star ones, too. I think I'd also like to try to get students to do some of the book talks after the first month or so.

Bloody Jack
Hunger Games
Princess Bride
Graveyard Book
Unwind
Graceling
Thirteenth Child
Saving Francesca
Master of Murder
Magic Under Glass
Mousetraps
Candor
Serendipity Market
Anne of Green Gables
Jeremy Thatcher
Schooled
Epic
Beauty
Coraline
Squire/Knight/Lady
Dragon's Bait
Skullduggery Pleasant
Charles and Emma
Return to Sender
Tangerine
Peeps
Uglies
Rash
Feed
Homeless Bird
Chosen One
Devouring
Other Side of the Island
Gregor the Overlander
Rising Star of Rusty Nail
First Daughter
Ruins of Gorlan
Little Brother
Come Like Shadows
Stolen Voices
I Am Not Esther
Treasure Island

Are there others I should consider? I'll want to make sure that I read them first.

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Poetry = Huh?

So yeah. After sketching a unit outline for 1984, I glanced at the next unit (poetry & presentation). And I realized that I hadn't thought much about poetry except as a vehicle for presentation. But I think there's gotta be more to it than that. That's how I came up with my essential question for the poetry part of the unit:

Why do people create poems instead of just saying what they actually mean? What is UP with that?

The only problem is I don't have an answer. Like, ANY answer. And what if we go through the unit and the answer we come up with is "We have no clue"?!

Help please?!

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Scaffolding

One thing I'm REALLY struggling with, particularly with 1984, is the scaffolding. How much should I do? What should I do? For example, our page 1 includes the first two paragraphs of the novel. The words that I expect my students will not know (lift, varicose ulcer) are easily defined through context. But... it's more than that.

I guess... I guess I expect that students will start my class with no idea how to read a work that challenges them. Not that they won't know how to study it... how to find out what happened and who did it. But when you read at or below your level, you can easily get pulled into the story and swept along. Immersed, as it were.

Reading above your level, there's more of a push-pull. You have to be able to recognize when you don't get the significance of a phrase or sentence, even if you know all the words. And you have to be able to pull away from the work just enough to figure it out while not losing your connection so that when you go back in you've still got that "flow," or at least return to it without having to re-read the entire chapter.

First lesson of the unit plan behind the cut.

Day 1 - Begin with a quickwrite, as always: Which is more important - freedom, or friends & family? Yes, obviously, both of them ARE important. But if you had to rank them, which one matters more, and why?

The essential question is also already on the board: How do you read a challenging book?

Students who get done ahead of everyone else should read their SSR books while others finish writing.

Once about half the class is reading, or when we're ten minutes into the period or so, I'll begin the day's read-aloud. Now usually I flip-flop between poetry and YA (something I can rec for SSR) but today I'm going to read chapter two from How to Read Novels Like a Professor. This is the chapter about beginnings, and how in good books, the beginning of the book tells us what to expect, and what's important, and how to read the rest of the book.

Next, I'll go over the day's objectives and which standards they relate to:

1. Students will use details from the beginning of 1984 to create hypotheses about theme, purpose, character development, and later events in the plot. [GA10RL1, RL2, and RC3]
2. The silent objective - I'm not actually going to SAY this to them - By putting effort into analysis and interpretation and experiencing success as a result of their effort, students will be aware of the work required but also invested in the novel, and thus more motivated to persevere through difficulty. This doesn't connect with any standards, but eff that. It's important, so there.

Hopefully we're about twenty minutes into the period at this point.

Now we start the "lesson" segment. I'll have several first sentences that I'll put up on my SMARTBoard - choosing, let's say, from Pride and Prejudice, Huck Finn, Great Expectations, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Count of Monte Cristo, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter, Little Women, Anna Karenina, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Paradise, Moby Dick, The Call of the Wild, Mrs. Dalloway, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird... oh dear. I'll have to narrow that down. But they're all such good openers! It'll be tough.

Innyhoo, I'll have the students select one of the titles, and then I'll click through to the first line. And I'll read it out loud, and think it through (also out loud), saying what my predictions are, and explaining the reasons behind them.

Next I'll have them pick another title, and click through to the first line of that one. This time, I'll mention details that stick out to me, and ask the students what might be interesting/unusual/possibly significant about that. [I'm a little uncertain about how to do this - what I have here feels a little too much like playing "Guess What the Teacher Is Thinking!" and I don't like that.]

Then they'll pick a title, I'll click through, and I'll ask them to pick out the details AND make predictions.

Then I'll have them pick partners (with the possibility of one group of 3 if there's an odd number of students in the class) and I'll hand out a list of questions - Where will this take place? When? What is it like in that place and time? What can you tell about the narrator? What kind of story will this be? What sort of problems might the main character(s) face? What ideals/objects/people might be important to the main character(s)? (etc) - for which they might be able to hypothesize an answer based on the first line. This time *I* will choose the titles - three of them - and each pair will discuss the first lines and try to make predictions. So I'll really only use six titles. Thirty-five minutes in as a full class; another fifteen in pairs puts us at fifty minutes.

We'll reconvene to discuss our observations and analysis for five minutes. Based on what they come up with I'll have to decide how much more instruction and support will be needed.

At this point (55/90) I'm going to depart from our typical schedule and have them read their SSR books (usually that's our closer). Thinking this hard is tough, and we're not done for the day, so we need a breather. While they're reading, I'm going to BREAK THE LAW and walk around passing out copies of 1984 and marking down who has which book number. Fortunately that'll only take a few minutes & then I get to read too. Yey!

Seventy minutes in: I'll give them a printout of the first three pages' worth of 1984. I'll read the first line; we'll analyze it. I'll read the first paragraph - ditto. I'll read the second paragraph - ditto. Seven paragraphs, through the three slogans of the Party (they appear on page 6 but the first chapter starts on page 3).

For homework, they should read through page 12, stopping at the beginning of the flashback, and do a lexicographer chart (three-column chart: column 1, copy out a sentence w/an unfamiliar word, underline the word, include parenthetical citation; column 2, your guess at what the word means; column 3, your rationale. Ten words.)

I'll be updating this from day to day as I work on it. I haven't decided if I'm going to add my edits to this post or make new posts for the revisions. Actually I think I like that idea better; it'll be nice for when I look back on it, so that I can see the progression of my ideas.

Image thanks to http://www.quadlock.com/

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In a Nutshell...

Right now I'm feeling REALLY overwhelmed. I just cleared off my desktops on our two home computers, and there are just SO MANY files that I've saved as possibilities for the upcoming year or professional materials to read... I guess it's a good problem to have, but it's a little frustrating. I hardly know where to begin.

The first step was sorting out the teaching stuff from the other cool stuff - silly videos, neat pictures, cartoons, articles that resonated with me - and putting all of that where it goes. The next step - going through the teaching stuff and actually opening files and looking through them - that's got me a bit intimidated. I've got 90 files on this computer alone. And I haven't even started looking at my laptop. You know, the one that's actually my work computer. Hoo boy.

Anyway, what I really had planned for this post was listing out my sequence of units and going over my rationale for why each unit goes where it goes. It'll be a nice way to put off the inevitable.

Okay, backstory. This year there will be two major changes. First of all, due to the financial crisis, the state lopped eleven days off the student calendar - from 180 to 169. Naturally, there should be no resulting drop in student achievement. Okay, snark over, not really the point. And everything got cut from the beginning of the school year. So instead of starting at the end of this month, we're starting halfway through next month. That actually works out pretty well for me since I've got surgery on Friday....

Holy s*t. Next week is our last full week off. DAMN. I can feel my blood pressure rising steadily now. AURGH!

De-tangent-ing, that was kind of a doozy for us since we were on semester blocks: four classes before winter break, four more afterward. Obviously, going from 90 class days to 79 is nuts. We opted to keep the block but go to an alternating (A/B) schedule. Our classes will be 93ish minutes long and meet every other day. Courses will run the whole year. We have a week off at the beginning of October for fall break, a full week for Thanksgiving (plus I hope to get permission to go to the NCTE conference, which is the week before), winter break the last two-ish weeks of December into January, and then spring break is the first full week in April.

Unit 1 - "Baby Steps." Here I'm getting to know my students and their capabilities. We'll use shorter works to practice some of the strategies we'll use with longer texts later in the term. I don't know that I have a big idea for the students, but the idea that's shaping how I plan the unit is "tough stuff in little doses." I have nine days planned, which (given our schedule) takes us through August.

Unit 2 - "Breaking Free" (1984). I think what I really want to do is push against cultural walls. This community is so, SO insular, and so a book like 1984 seems irrelevant because not only is "the world" (as they understand it, anyway) not like that, so many of them seem incapable of envisioning a world that is significantly different than what they're used to. The reaction seems to be "Wow, what a sucky world they live in. Glad we live in AMERICA! Yay us." 1984 just seems silly. Two Million Minutes might work well here... another really good one would be A State of Mind as it presents a thoroughly foreign culture in a mostly-not-negative light. Plus I own it. I plan to use How to Read Novels Like a Professor to introduce it, talking about how the way an author begins a story gives us clues about the rest of the story. They'll have a set of pretty basic questions (mostly fact-based) to guide their reading. And we'll also be meeting in literature circles. We'll have practiced the literature circle jobs back in unit 1. Twelve days for this takes it past fall break through most of October.

Unit 3 - "Competence Creates Confidence" (poetry & short drama). The reason people hate public speaking is that they don't have enough experience to be comfortable with it. I want to focus on presentation (volume, elocution, eye contact) and interpretation (body language, blocking, general acting). They'll get a break partway through when I'm at the NCTE conference (I think I'm going to have them catalog my classroom library); except for that, it goes all the way to winter break.

Unit 4 - "The Price of Freedom" (Julius Caesar). Can freedom come at too high a cost? I wanted to make sure I put this unit after the previous one - I'm not happy about having winter break between them but that's just kind of how it fell. In the previous unit students will have had some exposure to Shakespeare through his sonnets, so hopefully the language will be less of a problem. I have loved doing the one-day workshop as an intro, and I'll be contacting some of my previous students to act as group leaders. This is a 12-day unit that will go through the first week of February.

Unit 5 - "Honoring Our Voices" (Nonfiction / writers' workshop). Although we'll have been doing a good bit of writing the whole way through, this is where we'll really start looking at literature as writers. We'll start by looking back at works we're familiar with so that hopefully we can move past comprehension issues and look at techniques. We'll also look at our own writing, what we've already done, looking for patterns in topics or themes or style. I want students to recognize that in order to be respected by others, they need to show that they respect themselves first, and they can do that by shaping and polishing their work. 10 days; goes into the second week of March.

Unit 6 - Research project. Okay, this unit? Sucks. I don't have much freedom with it. I wish I could make it about exploration - about taking the seed of an idea and running with it, pursuing it as it leads to new information and new ideas. But we just don't have the resources. I have it near the end of the year because they're required to write a four-page paper and I think it's only fair to give them the time & training to develop the "writing stamina" they'll need to do a good job (that's also why it's after the writers' workshop unit). But I don't want it at the very end because (a) there are always those who slip behind for one reason or another; this gives them some meager chance to catch up, and (b) goodness knows I don't want to be stuck grinding away at a bajillion research papers over a single weekend. 12 days - they'll turn their roughs in a few days before spring break so that I can give some pointers, and then we'll have a few days to conference again after break before heading to the computer lab to type, finishing mid-April.

Unit 7 - "Show & Share" (Portfolio compilation & book clubs). Lots of choice and student-driven learning here to make the end of the term fun while staying rigorous. They'll go through and pick out writing samples - not just ones that demonstrate their best work; what I really want to see in their portfolio is change over time in the samples, and analysis of their development as a writer in a reflective piece (or series of reflections). Maybe I'll have them pick a piece or two to polish. For the book clubs I've got a number of YA dystopias, so they'll pick their discussion group based on the book they want to read, and it'll reflect back to 1984 as well. For the final exam I plan to invite parents and community members, and the students will present and discuss their writing portfolios.

I would really, really like to know what others think of this. Sometimes it concerns me that I teach so few major works. But I hate feeling rushed, and I haven't felt that any of this dragged. Then again, the units went by a lot quicker when we were meeting every day, so I don't know.

Image thanks to http://www.topnews.in/

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