Thanks for Chris for For School of the Future’s leader, ‘an educator’s dream’.
I wonder what it would be like to be an English teacher in this school? One of the frustrating things in my work life now is that while I’m part of the Technology Advisory Committee at NYCWP, I can’t really use any of the tools we’ve learned about and discussed at our retreats because my department hasn’t gotten its mobile laptop lab yet. (The warehouse shipping the computers is in Texas and they closed down after the hurricane–no word on whether they’ve re-opened yet.)
The mini-lesson I planned for today was fairly successful in the sense that they seemed to get it and they responded to the renewed structure of actually having to take notes, as opposed to just working on their stories for an hour. I think, at this point, I will tell them to finish the stories for homework because we are spending waaaaay too much classtime on this stuff.
As for my other classes, I talked to another teacher today about how much my kids talk. She said it’s because I have freshmen. I have no doubt this is part of the reason but it’s not the only reason! Apparently, I need to be MEAN. I think I’m pretty strict but it seems that’s not enough…I have to be MEAN. I don’t know how to be MEAN. I hate those teachers that give out zeroes like candy as a classroom management tool. I’ve started to make more phone calls and I’m playing with the idea of giving a daily grade based on participation, behavior and productiveness. Mostly, I just want them to SHUT UP and listen. LOL.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce to the miracle that is Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs. After a mere day and four swabs later, I’m feeling more than passably normal. If you know me, you know my colds drag on and on and on, and I frequently exchange one cold strain for another. With these swabs, I haven’t even reached for my dayquil since this morning! It works, I tell ya!
Okay, I have a mini-lesson:
Before class starts tomorrow morning, I’ll comb through a few notebooks and pull out some examples of non-descriptive sentences from their children’s book story drafts, say three or four of them.
I’ll put them on chart paper and work with students to *plump* the sentences up.
I’ll ask them: can we add color? sound? taste? smell?
With their help, I’ll re-write the sentences.
Then, I’ll turn them back to their own stories and ask them to find two or three sentences to *plump* up.
Hopefully, this will give them some focus in editing their stories.
This post from Tim Fredrick’s ELA Teaching Blog is reassuring. But, teaching writing is something I struggle something awful with. I think I’m a pretty good writer. I’m a pretty good teacher. But those two qualities don’t seem to come together in the classroom! Just the idea of teaching writing to 30 kids all at once is daunting and I haven’t figured out how to do it without falling back on the old 5-paragraph-formula model.
I think this is what I have to do:
1. Model model model: Assign short pieces of writing and examine what makes those pieces well-written.
2. Define: What is “well-written”? Come up with a class list of traits common to good writing.
3. Practice, Practice, Practice: This is the daunting part–having to read 30 times 4 pieces of just plain bad writing and figure out how to make it better without doing it for them!
My ramp-up class is working on children’s books and it is not going well at all. I think my expectations are not clear enough and I give them too much classtime to write. I need to break up the writing time with some mini-lessons on narrative writing. That’s what I need to do tonight: figure out a mini-lesson that addresses the issues my kids are having with their writing. Mostly, they seem to have trouble with plumping their stories up with rich detail. When I do one-on-one conferences with them or write comments in their writing notebooks, I offer suggestions on how to embellish phrases to make them more vivid but how do I know they are taking this to heart, that they will carry this with them the next time they have to do creative writing?
UPDATE: Ah-ha. Here’s the problem! I just searched my bookcases for texts on teaching writing. I have tons of books on reading comprehension but none on writing! Any suggestions?
What I did today (a la Frizz):
1. Slept
2. Ate chicken soup
3. Graded spelling tests and spelling HW
4. Slept
5. Watched TV
6. Did some research on stuff we can do for our PD on Election Day
7. Touched based with an old high school compadre (Hi, SUE!)
What I didn’t do today:
1. Get better
PS I’m annoyed because in the process of grading HW, I found not one, but three papers without names on them, so in the trash they go! Like I tell the kids, if it’s not important enough to remember to put your name on it, it’s not important enough for me to grade.
The dreams I had while sick:
1. A rat in my bedroom. EEEEK.
2. Borrowing my sister’s car, parking it in a nice neighborhood and having it stolen.
WIERD. I woke up this morning, undecided if I was going to call in sick. All it took was a step out of bed and realizing how woozy I was (without medicine!), to make the decision to call in sick. Walking to Duane Reade to get medicine and other things (like trashy magazines!) reaffirmed my decision…my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. I could just imagine myself trying to teach like that…not a pretty sight.
To assuage my guilt (a little), I’m catching up on the papers I should have graded this weekend and doing some planning for this (short) week. We have P-T conferences on Thursday and Friday. One of my classes was acting all nuts and not at all student-minded, so I sent home a letter to each and every parent in that class, some good and some not so good, and I included a little note with each letter reminding them of P-T conferences this week. We’ll see how many can make it.
Their website is not very attractive and the sign-up process for the listserv is a pain but it’s good to know that NYSEC even exists. I found about the the NYS English Council over at Tim Fredrick, who attended and presented at the NYSEC conference this past weekend.
