My friend Sue, who is a gossip reporter for Star Magazine and has been on VH1 a whole bunch of times, visited two of my classes today to talk to my kids about writing, being a writer, the writing process and about all the famous people she has met. She also brought lots of schwag from Star Magazine, which, unfortunately, for my boy-heavy classes, carried a pink motif. We gave away the free stuff during a trivia game that Sue had prepared, with questions about celebrity gossip. The kids weren’t exactly well-behaved but they were engaged (most of them anyway), which is something to be happy about!
My teaching journal is contained within a moleskine (my favorite kind of notebook). I mostly write about my teaching ideas, and think aloud on paper on what direction I’m going in but I also write about the frustrations that I feel when working with my kids. A lot of times, it becomes my version of “count to ten and breathe”. I’ll write in it while the kids are working (or not working) to let off some steam so that I don’t spend too much time yelling at them. Of course, they get curious when they see me writing and get suspicious that I’m writing about them. I purposely ignore them and it drives them nuts! LOL. I also keep notes on the various teacher texts that I’m reading, writing down ideas that I want to use or adapt. I have notes from PD workshops, as well, in the notebook. I’ve found, since I started keeping the journal a few months ago, that I’m much calmer and more level-headed with my kids, since I’m working out my issues on paper, instead of in the classroom. I think every teacher should keep one…a blog is great but some things are just not for a public audience, I don’t think.
**Blatant Plug**
Tomorrow, I’m working on visualization as a comphrension tool with my classes, using The Black Cat by Poe. I’m trying out a “comprension constructor” from Cris Tovani’s book, I Read It but I Don’t Get It. I’ll read the story with them, modelling visualization as I read and ask them use Tovani’s “Coding fo Visualization” worksheet (Download here). For homework, I’m giving the kids three options. They can either:
1. Draw a comic book/strip to represent the story.
2. Illustrate the story with drawings only, representing different events.
3. Make a collage or picture book using magazine cut-outs.
We’ll see how it goes!
Graycie tried out one of the activities that I posted to my wiki and I love the change she made to it:
After shaking out their hands, they re-read what they had written, and circled a word or phrase or sentence that they wanted to focus on. They drew a line from the circle to the place where you would write the second sub-topic, and they wrote again.
And this is what I love about the interweb: being able to put your ideas out there, have people try them out and come back with a different, sometimes more effective/better way of doing it. Really good lessons and activities take awhile to develop and hone on your own…putting it out to the community definintely speeds it up! Thanks, Graycie!
During my vacation, I managed a few hours of actual work on Thursday. Click the photo to see the notes.
I tried out Rubistar but found it somewhat lacking, so I downloaded The Rubricator. It has a few faults but overall, I’m pleased with it. This is what I came up with: Download Personal_Essay.html
Because I only have 15 laptops for my class to use at any given time, half my class needs to be preoccupied with something while the other half is using the computers. Last Friday, I tried a skill-building worksheet, and also gave them maintenance things they needed to get done, for their notebook assessment. Did they do it? Nope. They were too distracted. I need to figure this out! This is what I’m thinking about doing:
1. Placing a time limit on computer use (20 minutes at a time). I’m hoping this will curb slacking and speed up the writing, as well as giving the non-users a concrete frame of waiting time.
2. Giving conditional work to non-users, as in they can’t get their turn at the computer unless they complete all their work. I’ll have to rotate first-user turns, so that no one complains that one half of the class always gets to use the computer without having to do work first.
I also need to figure exactly what kind of work they should be doing. My hope is that the novelty of the laptops will wear off and they will settle into a routine. Big hope!
Link: RubiStar Home.
Thanks to Formidable Flea for turning me on to this great resource!
