There is a podcast tonight over at Ed Tech Talk with Teachers Teaching Teachers. The topic tonight is Elgg. They’ll be discussing the personal learning space and YouthVoices, as they’ve been used in the classroom. I won’t be listening to the podcast (for obvious reasons) but there is a live chat, as well, running concurrently. The podcast begins at 9, and I’m assuming the chat does, also.
As for blogging with my students, right now I’m in the process of trying to get a key to the computer vault, since the classes I want to blog with are during zero and first periods. I’m in the building before any of the administrators (sad but true…), so I need access to the vault. My students are in the drafting stage of their personal essays, which are due October 6th. After that, we will begin our research papers, which are due before Thanksgiving. My idea is to use blogging as a way of tracking their online research. I wonder if they can do research papers with sources based entirely on the web. There’s wikipedia, which for the most part, is pretty reliable and would be a good tool in teaching my students how to look for credible sources. They can use online periodicals, other blogs, and Google’s book feature, maybe? I have some more thinking to do about this. My goal over the next few weeks is to develop a plan for the research paper unit that outlines which Web 2.0 tools I want to introduce to my students, the structure of the blogging and which blogging client I want to use for this purpose.
I’ve been tagged for a A Teacher Meme, courtesy of Laura. Fun! Ok, here goes:
- I am a good teacher because . . . I relate to the kids one to one and I love to share my knowledge.
- If I weren’t a teacher, I would be . . . an office manager! I’m super detail-oriented.
- My teaching style is . . . laid-back, with high expectations.
- My classroom is . . . welcoming and a place to learn.
- My lesson plans are . . . flexible, adaptable and thought-out.
- One of my teaching goals is . . . to help my kids be part of “the conversation.”
- The toughest part of teaching is . . . the emotional drainage.
- The thing I love most about teaching is . . . the rapport with the kids. They make me laugh!
- A common misconception about teaching is . . . that we only wear one hat.
- The most important thing I’ve learned since I started teaching is . . . nothing is personal.
Tagged: Tamara, Tim and Nicole.
Regarding my previous post on writing thesis statements, I thought it would be helpful to share the thesis statements that we used as a model in class.
From How It Feels to be Colored Me, by Zora Neale Hurtson:
I remember the day I became colored.
From At The Island’s End, by John Edgar Wideman:
Obviously, a good way for a 65 year old writer to stay fit, but also a project to teach myself a different, quieter intimacy, step by step, inch by inch, with a city whose terror and trauma were thrust in my face the Septemeber I arrived from Massachusetts to settle here.”
From The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch, by Richard Wright:
My first lesson in how to live as a Negro came when I was quite small.
I pointed out to the kids that none of these thesis statements specifically named the social issue being addressed but that everything that followed from these statements related directly back to it. I tend to shy away from giving formulas, or telling them that certain words should be used–that’s why I like models. The kids can see for themselves how different writers use thesis statements and that there’s no one formula to follow, though they do have elements in common.
I’ve officially begun my guest blogger stint, with two posts today over at
English Language Arts – Methods and Madness. Check it out and certaintly weigh in with your thoughts, for the teachers-to-be!
One of the things I often have trouble teaching is the thesis statement. But today, I think I hit on something. I thought I saw flickers of understanding in the kids. Maybe it’s because they are seniors and not freshmen. Maybe I explained it better. Who knows? But here’s what I did:
I quickly reminded them that a thesis statement is like the main idea and is usually found somewhere around the first paragraph of an essay. Then, I broke them into groups of three or four, and assigned each group one of the three essays we’ve read since the first day of school. I asked each group to find the one, single sentence they thought was the thesis statement. Most of them got it on the first try. The thesis statement in the Hurston essay was a bit more elusive since she opens with a satirical statement, then launches into her essay with the next paragraph.
I put the thesis statements up on the board and pointed out to them that none of the writers actually, specifically, mentioned their social issue (I’ve been teaching the kids that their personal essays are about bring their personal experience to some social issue). I also pointed out that each thesis statement included some personal connection. Then, I gave them this equation: social issue+personal connection=one sentence. I told them that they didn’t need to explain or elaborate; plenty of time for that later! I challenged them to craft one single sentence that conveyed their main idea. I reminded them that it was possible it might change later but for now, they needed one sentence to drive the rest of the essay. I’m excited to see what they come up with.
Tonight, I had the pleasure of visiting Tim’s student teaching seminar. His students are participating in a class blog, as part of another graduate student’s dissertation project. I was asked to be their first guest blogger and spoke to the class about my experience as a blogging teacher. At the end of the session, they wrote down their questions for me. I’ll pick some of them and answer them on their blog. The blog is public and you can see it here. Given that I need to stay up tonight to make cupcakes for a work friend, don’t be surprised to see a post later tonight, from me.
In other news, I found out today that my school is paying my convention fee for the NCTE convention in November. Ask and ye shall recieve!
I’m teaching AP English Language and Composition this year. I never took AP English in high school and I haven’t taught it, so when I found out I was teaching the class, I hunted around online for information about the course and the reading list. I came up with some good stuff, enough to make me feel confident that I could start the class on the first day, able to lay out expectations for the course. In a sense, though, I was really winging it since I didn’t go to any of the workshops that were available this summer (I didn’t find out I was teaching AP English until the week before school started!). This Saturday, I went to a meeting for AP teachers at the Hilton on 53rd Street. It was at 9:30 am and I hated that I had to get up to go into the city, after an exhausting first week of school but I went and I’m glad I did. I had told my students on the first day that this AP course was basically a class in rhetoric and I explained it by telling them that when a writer writers, he or she makes a lot of choices. Every word is purposefully chosen. So, I was mightily relieved to hear the AP representative at the meeting use that exact same word in describing what the course is all about. After going to this meeting, I have a much better idea of what I need to teach this year (rhetoric, synthesis and argument). It’s a place to start and I downloaded the teacher’s guide for the course, which includes sample syllabi. I’m still putting together the reading list so those syllabi will be a great help. It’s 166 pages, so I sent it off to Staples for printing and hole-punching so I can put it into a binder.
PS Did you know that you can e-mail files to Staples for copy jobs? Did you also know that copy and print jobs at Staples count towards your Teacher Rewards? Now you know!
This week, we’ll look at the Hurston essay one more time before moving on. Quite a few of them have picked up on her sarcastic tone, which makes me really happy. I don’t want to beat them over the head, though, with the essay. Today’s Sunday Times Magazine has an essay by John Edgar Wideman about Downtown NY, post-9/11. I’ll share that with my students. It works on three counts: 1) Wideman is a great writer. 2) It’s a great example of a personal essay that addresses some social issue and 3) tomorrow is 9/11, so it is timely.
In field trip news, I went to Wave Hill this morning. I’ve never been there before, even though I’ve been hanging around the Riverdale area since last year and I’ve lived here since June. I was pleased to find that it is free for NYC teachers. I think it would be a neat place to bring my students, as a place to inspire some writing. Imagine a nice, crisp Fall afternoon wandering around the grounds of this beautiful garden on the Hudson River, with lots of places to just sit and look at the Palisades, or explore the wooded area. I feel confident about my students’ maturity to take them there…one of the perks of teaching seniors and AP English! I have to go to a teacher orientation in October before I can take them, so I’m shooting for the end of October. Transportation is the trickiest part since we have to go from the east side of the Bronx to the west side of the Bronx. The free transportation passes from the DOE only allow you to take the subway and not the busses. Our best option is probably the school bus. Good lord. Nothing brings me back to high school like having to ride the cheese.
I spend a lot of money on professional texts. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s necessary, a worthwhile expense. I mean, many of my colleagues think I’m an idiot for buying all these books. But the thing is… I use them.
Take tonight for example. I am re-working my lesson plan for tomorrow, based on homework assignments that I got back today from my students. Yesterday, we read Hurston’s How It Feels To Be Colored Me. For homework, I asked them to write a letter to Hurston, telling her what they thought of the essay, what they thought of her position and what their own position was. It was a great assignment to give them because when I read the letters, I could tell that they didn’t really get it. Some of them were closer to the mark than others, but overall, there was a lack of comprehension. I expected that. The text is full of allusions and the tone of the piece is central to it’s meaning–a tone that is hard to grasp if you have weak reading skills to begin with.
I knew right away, while reading the letters, that I wanted to do more with this text and take this opportunity to introduce a strategy for accessing difficult texts. They will be reading many more essays like this one, in terms of difficulty.
On each of the letters that the students wrote, I wrote some question or comment that addressed the student’s misunderstanding or confusion. Tomorrow, when they come in, I’ll ask them to try and answer my questions and/or respond to the comment I left. My hope is that by doing this, I can steer them in the general direction of where I want to go in terms of accessing the meaning behind the text.
Next, I want to introduce a strategy they can use. This is where my books come in handy! I pulled a few off my shelves, starting with Tovani’s I Read It but I Don’t Get It. I thought about using her post-it note strategy, but somehow, I felt it wasn’t appropriate for this task. So, next, I turned to Beers’ When Kids Can’t Read. Lots of good ideas in that one, but again, not quite what I was looking for. The third text I consulted was Burke’s English Teacher’s Companion. Ah-ha! He had a little section on annotating. Perfect, I think. Still, I can’t help but consult my old, dog-eared standby–Bridging English by Milner and Milner. Nothing I want to use tomorrow but I take note of some other things that will come in handy later, when my students’ understanding of Hurston’s text gets a little deeper. So, annotation it is.
Here’s how Burke uses annotation (p 47):
He asks the students to mark up the text, noting any:
- questions
- quotes
- ideas
- statements
- patterns
- essential information
- textual connections to other books or poems we have read
“[...] We use them as the basis for comparison. I ask them to explain what they underlined and commented on and why.”
For my purposes, I’ll probably shorten the list to just questions, ideas and connections. I’ll also add vocabulary to the list. From this annotation exercise, I think we’ll be able to construct some meaning and fill in the blanks together, for each other.
PS Major bonus points to anyone who gets the reference in the title of this post.
NYCWP’s Tech Thursdays are starting up again. When I participated last Spring, I was just starting to use laptops in my classroom and attempting to do some blogging with my students. I wasn’t having much success but I learned a lot from my colleagues in the Tech Thursday group. My goal this year is to take my inquiry further and make blogging a regular part of my classroom learning activities.
I don’t know that I will start right away but for my seniors, I would like to help them start an inquiry blog for their research papers. I think it would be a great way for them to collect and track their resources, keep a record of their citations and sources, and get input from a public audience on their topic. For my students who are going to college in Fall ’07, I think this will be extremely valuable and give them a leg up on their non-tech-savvy college peers, or at least keep them on par.
I was glad to find these two posts today from Wordgirl on Classroom Management. She mentions Wong, the creator of the online classroom management class I took earlier this summer.
Classroom Management Part 1
Classroom Management Part 2
