Journey Through the First Year

and grasp raw emotions.

The freshmen class is currently wrapping up their Living Histories project by presenting their final projects to their classmates.  During the presentation they reflect upon their learning experiences and the challenges they encountered.  This project as helped them move beyond literal interpretation and helped them to recognize the human aspect of writing.

When asked the questions, “Describe your favorite part of the project” and “What was the most challenging aspect of your project,”  the vast majority of the students answered the interview for both.  They recognized their own faults and weaknesses during the interview: they were nervous, they missed opportunities to get more in-depth answers from their interviewee or they didn’t think they had enough questions.  However, they also admitted that this was their favorite part because it made the event real to them.  They described interviews where their interviewee broke down crying, showed them pictures and medals, and in general helped them understand what it was really like to live during any specific time in history.

The students then successfully portrayed those sentiments into their own fictional writing pieces. They meshed the factual with the emotional.

Project Examples

Vietnam Riots in Madison, Wisconsin

The Great Depression

September 11th Disaster

As the school year rapidly comes to a close, I can’t help but reflect upon this past academic year.  Although I have seen my students take great strides in their academic careers, there are some areas that need development.

Some thoughts on improvement:

• Conventions:  All my students have room for improvement when it comes to grammar and punctuation.  This summer I plan on creating a set of minilessons to reinforce these writing skills and techniques.  These skills will be practiced through various writing tasks as well as visual supports.  They will be highlighted, stressed and practiced repeatedly throughout the school year, which will ultimately culminate in the form of a test.  I think this test should be similar to what we used in class this year, which included multiply choice, sentence correction and a writing task.  I would also include a section on copy-editing.  In this section the students would be presented with a paragraph full of popular student errors.  The students will be assigned the task of highlighting these errors and successfully correcting them.  While the sentence corrections primarily focused on comma splices, fused and fragmented sentences, the paragraph would include errors made in their blog writing.  This includes proper citation of quotes.
• Inferences: Students often became confused this year when I asked them what the meaning of the text, passage or quote was.  They had a hard time making predictions.  Generally speaking, this is because they are extremely literal thinks.  At the beginning of the year, the class as a whole annotated The Scarlet Ibis; however, we did not do much past open discussion and online writing with the other texts in the class.  For next year, I think it will be important to breakdown specific texts, passages and quotes both verbally and in writing with the students.  In other words, I think it will be important to move beyond just telling them why something is important and diagram the importance.  I think this will help them understand things beyond a literal interpretation.  One text I think this will be particularly important with is To Kill a Mockingbird and more specifically, the section where Mr. Ewell attacks Scout and Jem.
• Open-ended questions: I want my students to rely less on finding specific answers to specific questions.  I want them to gain an understanding for developing their own opinions based on text rather than looking for the correct answer.  This is a difficult task to accomplish especially in our society where testing is often times a driving force of education.

Was there too much freedom within the unit?

• Having the students get their chosen books approved was key.  I had a couple of students who tried to pick books that lacked plot.  In other words, they were books written by comedians who were merely stating their political opinions or views on life.
• Each day the students were given a minilesson, a small writing assignment and time for silent reading.  The minilessons discussed aspects of literature including audience, point of view, conflict/resolution and theme.  The restraints of the writing assignments worked out nicely.  In order to receive credit for them, they had to complete the writing by the end of class.  This was easily done by all the students since the assignments really only called for a paragraph or two.  These assignments could also be used at the end of the unit as the foundation of their project.  The students respected the silent reading time for two reason: they liked their books and they didn’t want to worry about homework.  Success.
• I think that the students had too much freedom when it came to working on their projects.  During the creation of their projects they were simply allotted class time to work.  There were not any mini-deadlines that they had to meet.  They just had to have their project completed by a certain date.  In the end, this was a big mistake.  Most of the students’ projects required computers, so I booked computer labs.  Problem most of the students then used that time to socialize or attempted to secretly play video games.  There was some pretty cool projects submitted; however, those were from the students who took lab time seriously.  To help motivate and regulate all of the students as a whole, I would incorporate mini-deadlines into the project process.

How can I guide my students to high quality literature and thoughtful projects while still allowing them to make their own decisions?

• This question is still tricky to answer.    Each project involved writing two separate paragraphs.  For the first paragraph, I developed a set of questions that the students had to choose from.  They answered one of these questions, which asked about the human experiences and affects on society within the text, and then had to support their answers with the text.  For the second paragraph the students had to respond to a passage from the text.  The students did an excellent job with the questions.  I thought they had insightful responses and did a nice job of selecting passages from their text to support their statements.  The respond to a passage section was about 50 percent successful.  About half the students were able to pick passages that were significant to the text as whole.  The other half of the students merely picked passages that they enjoyed.  This would have worked if they were able to describe why that passage was important, explored a literary device or considered the audience.  Instead, most responses came in the form of “I choose this passage because it was really fun/sad/scary.”
• I am not sure I could have done much more to help the students create thoughtful projects.  Those that really enjoyed their book and cared about their project, created amazing visual portrayals of their text.  Those who just wanted to get it over with, didn’t.  Ultimately, I believe this portion of the project is up to the individual student: their own motivation, responsibility and dedication.

Are the short story/poetry minilessons about literary devices, the human experience and issues in society being carried over into their own unit projects?

• I think this question again comes down to the responses to the questions versus the responses to a passage.  The vast majority of students referenced the literary devices we studied during the unit in their response to the questions.  I think this could have been even more prevalent if I would have asked specifically about conflict, plot, characterization, theme, symbolism, etc.  The passage responses, in which they had to incorporate those things on their own, were not nearly as successful.  I want my students to be able to determine significant passages in a text on their own; however, I think that simply asking them to pick a passage was to open for them.  Next time, I think I would clarify that they needed to pick passages that represent a turning point in the text, a change in character, embodies the theme or symbolism in the text, etc.

In order to develop a deeper understanding of poetry, my students needed to first understand the terms associated with poetry and be able to recognize them in context.   I am a strong believer in the “a little healthy competition never hurt anybody” mentality.  So in honor of Jeopardy, I created a game that quizzed my students on their poetry terms and definitions.   Poetry Game

What I found was that although this helped my students memorize the terms and definitions, they still lacked skills in recognizing them in context.  The solution I came up with is to keep a portion of the game that consists only of terms and definitions; however, next time I change the majority of the questions into lines and stanzas straight from poems that represent the various poetry terms I want my students to understand.

Today a student in one of my classes asked if our school could clone CyberEnglish9.  He wants all of his English classes to have Web2.0 in them.  He recommended that the teachers should simply change the topics and readings of the class.  Another student piggy-backed off of his suggestion and took it one step further: colleges should do the same she suggested.

Continuing the students’ individual blogs allows them a forum to write about what they have read in class.  Why is this important?  Because students become stronger readers as they become stronger writers.  Through Web2.0 students can respond to text, increasing their comprehension of the text.  Guided journal entries allow them to consider their personal reactions to the reading through open-ended questions.  Through essays and research projects students can practice their analyzing and interpretation skills.

Yesterday I spent the day in our school’s English 10 classrooms.  I taught the students how to use PBWorks, which is where they will be posting their research projects that the English department modified a few months back.  Overall I think the day was highly successful.  Even though these students haven’t had CyberEnglish during the past year, most seemed to catch on right away.  Hyperlinks seemed to be a breeze for them, same with creating pages.  Creating files and folders tripped a couple of students up.  I think because they weren’t always clear on what they were supposed to upload as files or what they put in their folders.  Usually after further explanation, by myself or by my mentor, they seemed to grasp it.

As always, there was a few individuals you ventured off course.  I thought maybe some of them did because they understood how to create their wikis.  They were bored.  Others seemed to just not care.  Every time I caught one off course, I asked them to please shut whatever website they were reading down and pay attention.  This brought them right back to the lesson for the remainder of the period, which I thought was impressive for students who have never had me as a teacher.  I thought they showed great respect.

In the end, I think the students are excited about displaying their work online rather than producing a paper copy.  This give them a  chance to show off a little more, which is even more prevalent since they were able to pick their own topics.  The hope being they picked something they were passionate about.  I begin my wikilesson with my students next week.  I think it will be event easier for them since they are currently in CyberEnglish.  Now I can’t wait to see the work they produce inside these collaborative forums.

My mentor Dawn recently introduced me to a grammar unit she created prior to me coming to SFHS.  In this unit the students self-instruct using the website Grammar Bytes.  The students are presented with a variety of questions asking them to fix the grammar and punctuation mistakes in a sentence.  If they get the answer correct they win a variety of prizes: money tree, Ferrari, trips to cool cities (although no one really seemed impressed with the Chicago win).  If they get the answer wrong they get a variety of not-so-cool prizes: a cow, a donkey or a rabbit.

The students seem to dig the quizzes.  They keep comparing prizes and thus far, getting the not-so-cool prizes seem to be just that, not-so-cool.  I have also heard a couple of students comment on the sentences as quite entertaining.  But are the students actually absorbing the information presented to them in the quizzes?  Based on my observations, the students are getting more questions right than wrong.  Good sign.  However, I think the true test will come in the form of the test they will take at the end of the unit.

The only problem I have encountered today with the unit, is keeping on top of the students’ responsible web use.  I have caught a couple of students trying to cruise the net, but that can happen on any given day.  I have also caught a couple of students just clicking random answers to see what prize they received.  After threatening to take away their computer use for the day, which means taking away their participation, they seem to be back on task.

Senioritis.  Senior burnout.  The seniors have officially checked out.  Put it anyway you wish, the bottom line was something in my English 12 classroom was simply NOT working.  The students were not completing the required reading, they were handing in less than mediocre work (if they handed it in at all), and they were constantly treating my class as one big social hour.  All this led to me losing it.  I yelled, I snapped, I grew frustrated to the point of tears.  Then I took a couple of deep breaths and thought about how to fix the situation.

First move: I asked the students what their frustrations were with the class.  I believe that teachers too often create beautiful, inspiring, thought provoking lesson plans and curriculums that simply fall short of the students’ needs.  I felt that by asking them what they were upset with and what they wanted, I could better understand and then meet those needs.  Their answers:

1. We are sick of being forced to read literature that we don’t relate to.  We want to pick out our own reading.  We are not sick of reading just sick of reading things we don’t like.
2. We are all interested in different projects: art, technology, music.  We want to do something that will let us choose how we talk about literature instead of being forced to write a paper or give a speech.
3. We are sick of doing things over and over.  We feel like we are talking and writing about the same things just with different teachers and different books.

Second move: I asked permission to reconsider the curriculum.  Granted.  I started to look for ways to meet my students’ requests while still maintaining high learning standards.  In my CyberEnglish9 class, my mentor and I created an Independent Reading unit in the curriculum that I absolutely love.  I decided to begin with that, reconsider it to meet the needs of my seniors (not CyberEnglish students) and develop a unit from there.  It’s not perfect and it definitely is a work in progress but my seniors are at least willing to complete the requirements.  Important aspects of the unit:

1. The students pick their own texts (although the book has to be approved by me).  This allows even my most reluctant readers to find a book they are interested in: a true story about a disabled wrestler, a group of card counting MIT students run Vegas, a young high school student journals her way through her drug addiction.
2. The students develop a project (also approved by me) that portrays the important themes presented through the text.  Thus far, the project requests have included a PowerPoint, a Prezi presentation, a song and a drawing/painting.
3. The students have to complete two detailed pieces of writing that has them consider the human experiences and general societal issues discussed in the text.
4. Throughout the students’ journey to completing their text and project, I will bring in short stories and poetry to teach them more about literary devices and help them develop skills in discussing the human experience/societal issues.

Third move: I wait for the unit to come to an end and reconsider the pros/cons of this student constructed unit.  Questions I am looking to answer:

1. Was there too much freedom within the unit?  
2. How can I guide my students to high quality literature and thoughtful project while still allowing them to make their own decisions?
3. Are the short story/poetry minilessons about literary devices, the human experience and issues in society being carried over into their own unit projects?

The Guardian by Julius Lester is a very quick read but very griping.  I would recommend this book to students who either love historical fiction or have a hard time completing a novel in the required time frame.  Although this is fiction, the story itself embodies authentic historic details making this story of loss and hope even more powerful.  It is fairly short but is extremely insightful and thought provoking.

The story is about a young boy whose life is both completely altered and paved out in one defining moment.  It is a coming of age story filled with compelling social issues like racism, justice and community.  I liken it to To Kill a Mockingbird in the sense that it is a wonderful book for students to consider the difference between morals and ethics; for them to consider their own moral beliefs and what they are willing to stand up for in life.

This week I was observed by my principal and vice-principal.  Before the observation I had to submit a guide detailing my lesson plan.  This guide included information about what I was teaching, why I was teaching the lesson, and the standards supported by the lesson.

When developing the lesson for the day I was determined to produce a lesson plan true to my class.  This particular class is full of seniors who are energetic, rebellious, and argumentative.  Ultimately, the lesson I developed stayed true to teaching these seniors based on these qualities; however, when the administration appeared within our classroom walls, the students completely clammed up.  Suddenly they were very accepting of what I had to say.  No, they went beyond that, what I had to say was the truth and the only truth.  Not prevalent was their typical questioning, alternative opinions and overall debate.

This was frustrating on many levels, but I think what concerned me the most was the fact that the students felt they had to sit quietly and not question my views in order to be seen as “well-behaved”.  My administration is very supportive and would have relished in witnessing a lively debate.  So why were the students so afraid?  I think too often teachers believe a quiet classroom is a well maintained, productive and disciplined classroom.  I would agree in part but just as often a loud, animated class is just as maintained, productive and disciplined.

I need to get my students to understand that there is no right or wrong response to literature as long as you supply evidence from the text.  Therefore, my views of a particular book are not necessarily the right or only answer.  We all have different life experiences and different beliefs that help shape how we view a text: the characters, plot, theme, etc.  That’s what makes literature so much fun; no two people will view it exactly the same way.

Now if only I could get my students to realize that.