Spring fever has sprung! I am struggling with keeping my students focused on school. I have to admit that I am also struggling with keeping my focus. I am excited though to be starting Romeo and Juliet with my 9th graders. This always sparks interest. I'm also looking forward to using some of our new strategies with this unit.
One of the best parts of the day was when a group of three students came up to me and said, “John Dillinger is not in this book.” The book is an anthology of notorious individuals; I knew he was definitely in the book. I told them to look in the index and search his name. A few minutes later they came back to me and said he was not in the index either. I asked them to hand over the book so we could look together. I flipped to the D’s and immediately found “Dillinger, John.” The only boy in the group who was extremely adamant that John Dillinger was not in the book looked extremely sheepish and I had to smile. I told them when they search in the index they should often start with the last name of the person they are looking for because very rarely will an index list people by their first names. The entire exchange was very fun and the students didn’t feel unintelligent but excited that they now knew how to look up people in the index.
This week we ended the memoir "Night." It is a very poignant ending and the students were speechless as we all contemplated the ending of his ordeal and the dying of his father. I gave them a choice to write about their own experience of grieving over something or someone. Many of them remained quiet for the remainder of the class period quietly writing in their journals. I look forward to picking up their papers and reading what they thought about the novel and how it made them feel and think.
This week, we changed our seating arrangement. This is my first time moving students around but the change needed to ensue. As Traci said, spring has sprung and students are having a difficult time quelling their side conversations. Naturally, I was met with a lot of resentment, but after a few short minutes of grumbling, everything was back to business as usual and the side conversations lessened immensely during instruction. Behavior aside, I think a change of scenery is healthy in the classroom. Students can get restless staying in the same place for too long.
This week I had the opportunity to sit in on some professional development meetings and learn new strategies to use in the classroom. On Friday, someone from the MAX Teaching group came and taught a 6th grade ELA class and we sat in to observe. The activities were actually pretty engaging and I was happily surprised. This week our students wrapped up their unit on the Harlem Renaissance so for the demonstration class the students read an informational piece on the Harlem Renaissance and did a paired reading. The reading was broken down into four different sections and once the students read one section they would turn their paper over and wait for their partner to finish reading. Once they were both ready, the students took turns speaking first; the first student would summarize everything important they could remember from the reading and the second student would add anything the first missed. For the next section of reading, they would switch who would speak first. After the pairs were done reading, they played “Idea Survivor”. I loved this activity just as much as the kids. The students, now in groups of four, came up with their top five most important ideas from the reading. The instructor looked at what each group had and wrote 10-12 of them on the board. Students could then add any that were missed that they found particularly important. Once the main ideas were on the board, students then had to narrow down all the ideas to just their top five most important. The ideas could be combined together or voted off completely but students had to not only state what they wanted to do with each fact but they had to make an argument for what they suggested. I loved this activity because I have noticed that my students have been struggling with finding good supportive evidence in their reading for their papers. This activity would help them better locate the important information and allow them to use it as evidence in their work. I have seen a lot of improvement with my kids; they are able to use the text to backup what they say, but often times the quote or information they use is a little random and they are quoting just to be quoting. I definitely want to try this activity one day! I also had a mini win this week with my host teacher. She normally uses these daily grammar practice guides as bellwork where the students read a small paragraph and then have to identify particular parts of speech or have to correct the writing. While these are good practice, I know that you need to teach grammar within the context of what you’re reading/doing in class. I talked to her about this and all this week we used some of the poems we have been reading for this HR unit to frame the bellwork. The students would read a stanza or a few lines from one of the poems and they would identify the verbs and talk about why the poet chose to use those verbs (they were very descriptive action verbs that created more of an image than using boring, overused verbs). This worked out so much better! More students actually completed their work than usual and it was an opportunity for them to go even deeper into the texts we have been reading.
Spring fever has sprung! I am struggling with keeping my students focused on school. I have to admit that I am also struggling with keeping my focus. I am excited though to be starting Romeo and Juliet with my 9th graders. This always sparks interest. I'm also looking forward to using some of our new strategies with this unit.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best parts of the day was when a group of three students came up to me and said, “John Dillinger is not in this book.” The book is an anthology of notorious individuals; I knew he was definitely in the book. I told them to look in the index and search his name. A few minutes later they came back to me and said he was not in the index either. I asked them to hand over the book so we could look together. I flipped to the D’s and immediately found “Dillinger, John.” The only boy in the group who was extremely adamant that John Dillinger was not in the book looked extremely sheepish and I had to smile. I told them when they search in the index they should often start with the last name of the person they are looking for because very rarely will an index list people by their first names. The entire exchange was very fun and the students didn’t feel unintelligent but excited that they now knew how to look up people in the index.
ReplyDeleteThis week we ended the memoir "Night." It is a very poignant ending and the students were speechless as we all contemplated the ending of his ordeal and the dying of his father. I gave them a choice to write about their own experience of grieving over something or someone. Many of them remained quiet for the remainder of the class period quietly writing in their journals. I look forward to picking up their papers and reading what they thought about the novel and how it made them feel and think.
ReplyDeleteThis week, we changed our seating arrangement. This is my first time moving students around but the change needed to ensue. As Traci said, spring has sprung and students are having a difficult time quelling their side conversations. Naturally, I was met with a lot of resentment, but after a few short minutes of grumbling, everything was back to business as usual and the side conversations lessened immensely during instruction. Behavior aside, I think a change of scenery is healthy in the classroom. Students can get restless staying in the same place for too long.
ReplyDeleteThis week I had the opportunity to sit in on some professional development meetings and learn new strategies to use in the classroom. On Friday, someone from the MAX Teaching group came and taught a 6th grade ELA class and we sat in to observe. The activities were actually pretty engaging and I was happily surprised. This week our students wrapped up their unit on the Harlem Renaissance so for the demonstration class the students read an informational piece on the Harlem Renaissance and did a paired reading. The reading was broken down into four different sections and once the students read one section they would turn their paper over and wait for their partner to finish reading. Once they were both ready, the students took turns speaking first; the first student would summarize everything important they could remember from the reading and the second student would add anything the first missed. For the next section of reading, they would switch who would speak first.
ReplyDeleteAfter the pairs were done reading, they played “Idea Survivor”. I loved this activity just as much as the kids. The students, now in groups of four, came up with their top five most important ideas from the reading. The instructor looked at what each group had and wrote 10-12 of them on the board. Students could then add any that were missed that they found particularly important. Once the main ideas were on the board, students then had to narrow down all the ideas to just their top five most important. The ideas could be combined together or voted off completely but students had to not only state what they wanted to do with each fact but they had to make an argument for what they suggested. I loved this activity because I have noticed that my students have been struggling with finding good supportive evidence in their reading for their papers. This activity would help them better locate the important information and allow them to use it as evidence in their work. I have seen a lot of improvement with my kids; they are able to use the text to backup what they say, but often times the quote or information they use is a little random and they are quoting just to be quoting. I definitely want to try this activity one day!
I also had a mini win this week with my host teacher. She normally uses these daily grammar practice guides as bellwork where the students read a small paragraph and then have to identify particular parts of speech or have to correct the writing. While these are good practice, I know that you need to teach grammar within the context of what you’re reading/doing in class. I talked to her about this and all this week we used some of the poems we have been reading for this HR unit to frame the bellwork. The students would read a stanza or a few lines from one of the poems and they would identify the verbs and talk about why the poet chose to use those verbs (they were very descriptive action verbs that created more of an image than using boring, overused verbs). This worked out so much better! More students actually completed their work than usual and it was an opportunity for them to go even deeper into the texts we have been reading.