First, I think it's funny that you wrote that students "quickly take their seats." I was a little antsy at how slow they were, to be honest. Overall, I thought they were fine.
Just to make sure that we're both clear on how the lesson was to work: On Thursday, I received "notes" from students that were simply lines of "Fireflies" written down on paper with no description whatsoever. So, Friday's lesson was based on teaching them how to take notes (e.g., applying proper labels, writing necessary terms and explanations, etc.) and seeing if they could do significant work to understand "Charge of the Light Brigade" on their own. So, the idea of Monday's lesson was to clarify misunderstandings and to have them revisit their notes to see if they successfully completed the note-taking task.
I'm mostly responding to your notes here: while I'd love to teach the themes of the poem and things like that, as we discussed on the phone, I simply can't do it. The lack of comprehension by the students often prevents me from doing the more meaningful stuff. In an ideal world, the solution to this is to have lecture-type videos of the poetry lessons online so students can access them at home and receive the comprehension piece, then we can do the more meaningful aspects of poetry in class. Unfortunately, the demographics that we have at New Cumberland require teachers not to require anything that necessitates internet access. Similarly, in most cases, I can't have the students preview the poem at home and figure it out for homework because they simply won't do it. This could be an ideal situation for a reward system similar to Heather's -- if we give them something concrete to work towards, we might increase the positive pressures for students to do their homework. Again, the demographics are a bit of a problem with that idea, too, because of certain students' situations at home.
The problem that I have at the moment is our schedule from PSSAs is brutal as far as instruction. If we're lucky, we get a half hour with a class. If we're not, it's anywhere from 15-25 minutes (which is only half of a regular period). In other words, this poetry unit should have been done tomorrow, but instead it will go until Friday. The joys of scheduling for middle school <3
Regardless, I feel like the lesson went pretty well overall. I've had better and had worse, but I was happy with the way a large number of students performed on the assignment I gave them. Though I didn't want to take two days on that one poem, it was valuable experience for them.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Observation Reflection #2
I think the big thing about this day for me was that I didn't realize it was an observation day; had I read the email more carefully, I would have planned something else and saved the vocab quiz for another day. Regardless, you directly observed a couple changes that I made: the students' seating and the length of the quiz. Some of the seating changes I made allowed me to spend the quiz time more productively. Focusing less on individual students' actions gave me more time to think about other things--exactly how I wanted to ask a question, what I planned to do tomorrow, etc. The other change was the length of the quiz. Students had been taking quite a bit of time to complete vocab quizzes--up to 25 or 30 minutes for that number of questions. On the Friday prior to this quiz, I informed students that they would have only 20 minutes to complete it. While most students completed the quiz in only 10-12 minutes, the scores did not suffer.
I admittedly was surprised by the lack of understanding when I told them what their homework would be. Part of that is likely due to me calling the questions for homework "discussion questions." They're used to that term meaning something entirely different from what I was asking them to do. I should have asked for "questions for group discussion" or something similar. That probably would have eliminated nearly all confusion. At the same time, creating an example for them and showing it on the board would have helped, too. I really didn't expect them to need that help, given the work they had been doing in their RRJs.
The review questions/activity--chapter 1-8 quiz questions and apostrophes--basically went as expected. One change I made for sixth period was I put the quiz questions on the SMARTBoard as well, along with 4 options from the quiz itself. That made it a little easier to get students to answer the questions. The apostrophe activity was more lively 6th period, too. They got into a heated debate about the correct answers. It was fun. One thing I didn't like about the activity is that I ran out of time for it. Had the explanation of the questions not taken so long each period, I would've been fine. (But it did.)
The activity that I wanted you to see, involving chapter 13 and the poem "Southern Heritage" by Jason Carney actually turned out to be one of my least successful and most frustrating lessons. It seemed to me that students were given a lot of scaffolding to get them to the ideas that I wanted them to get to, but they never got there on their own. Before showing the video, I told them that the day's lesson was about connecting the messages and ideas from the poem to both chapter 13 and the novel as a whole.
The very basic idea I wanted them to grasp was that each work, TKAM and "Southern Heritage," dealt with issues of racism passed down through family lines and with a man who wanted his daughter to be a better person than all of those who came before her. Even when Dave helped me make modifications to the lesson (having them number the guiding questions and then number the lines in the lyrics where they thought the questions applied, which was really more poetry analysis than I had intended for the lesson), it just didn't work. Somehow that connection was still lacking. Having done literally hours of work to create that lesson (just getting the lyrics right, even after copying them from a source online, took nearly a half hour), it was definitely the most frustrated I've felt. I really don't know how to make that lesson more effective right off the bat unless I turn it into a poetry analysis lesson and follow up the next day with the connection to chapter 13 and the novel. My intention was to use it as a springboard for discussion of 13.
I admittedly was surprised by the lack of understanding when I told them what their homework would be. Part of that is likely due to me calling the questions for homework "discussion questions." They're used to that term meaning something entirely different from what I was asking them to do. I should have asked for "questions for group discussion" or something similar. That probably would have eliminated nearly all confusion. At the same time, creating an example for them and showing it on the board would have helped, too. I really didn't expect them to need that help, given the work they had been doing in their RRJs.
The review questions/activity--chapter 1-8 quiz questions and apostrophes--basically went as expected. One change I made for sixth period was I put the quiz questions on the SMARTBoard as well, along with 4 options from the quiz itself. That made it a little easier to get students to answer the questions. The apostrophe activity was more lively 6th period, too. They got into a heated debate about the correct answers. It was fun. One thing I didn't like about the activity is that I ran out of time for it. Had the explanation of the questions not taken so long each period, I would've been fine. (But it did.)
The activity that I wanted you to see, involving chapter 13 and the poem "Southern Heritage" by Jason Carney actually turned out to be one of my least successful and most frustrating lessons. It seemed to me that students were given a lot of scaffolding to get them to the ideas that I wanted them to get to, but they never got there on their own. Before showing the video, I told them that the day's lesson was about connecting the messages and ideas from the poem to both chapter 13 and the novel as a whole.
The very basic idea I wanted them to grasp was that each work, TKAM and "Southern Heritage," dealt with issues of racism passed down through family lines and with a man who wanted his daughter to be a better person than all of those who came before her. Even when Dave helped me make modifications to the lesson (having them number the guiding questions and then number the lines in the lyrics where they thought the questions applied, which was really more poetry analysis than I had intended for the lesson), it just didn't work. Somehow that connection was still lacking. Having done literally hours of work to create that lesson (just getting the lyrics right, even after copying them from a source online, took nearly a half hour), it was definitely the most frustrated I've felt. I really don't know how to make that lesson more effective right off the bat unless I turn it into a poetry analysis lesson and follow up the next day with the connection to chapter 13 and the novel. My intention was to use it as a springboard for discussion of 13.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Observation Reflection #1
Overall, I was pretty happy with my first day being observed. Though many students weren't quite as equipped as I had hoped for the day's discussion, I felt like it went well.
The class started off with a student from the previous period staying for an extra couple minutes, then a number of students who were absent came to me. Students are supposed to come during resource time in the morning, but they often end up not coming until class. Having multiple students come to me at the beginning of the period often throws me off slightly, because I don't expect them and I'm usually trying to get things in order to start the period.
I put students with their clock partners because I knew that asking questions like, "What are we missing from chapter 9?" when it had been read for Monday (it was Thursday at this point) would make students hesitant (or unable) to answer those questions on their own. Students' behavior tended to dictate how much time I gave them to discuss the questions I posed: the fewer groups who were actually working, the less time I gave. While you noted that a few students seemed to carry the group, I mentioned in our post-conference that a number of students who don't usually offer much participation or had been lagging recently did very well in the period. I was happy with that participation from them.
You also noted that a lot of the energy came from me instead of the class. As Dave mentioned, that's a technique that he has, in essence, challenged me to use. In 6th period, I didn't really need to use it. The class had its own energy, was participatory throughout discussion, and asked many of my questions for me. In other words, the same lesson worked very well later in the day. The only modification I made was walking around to partners to check progress on the questions that they were to discuss together.
Regarding the emphasis on points, students ask many questions regarding what assignments are worth and how they will be graded. We spend a lot of time answering questions like, "So wait, if I didn't write ________, do I still get all of the points or just half?" and "How much was that worth? Did you put the grades online yet?" The students respond to points, whether that's beneficial to them or not. I would love them to be interested in the learning itself, but some days that's simply not the case.
If I were to do this particular lesson again, the only thing I would change is the amount of time given to partners for discussion. In isolation, there was not much participation, but many students who didn't regularly offer input delivered it here. The following day, nearly every student in each period was called upon to share ideas. I do my best to get to everyone no less than every third day.
The class started off with a student from the previous period staying for an extra couple minutes, then a number of students who were absent came to me. Students are supposed to come during resource time in the morning, but they often end up not coming until class. Having multiple students come to me at the beginning of the period often throws me off slightly, because I don't expect them and I'm usually trying to get things in order to start the period.
I put students with their clock partners because I knew that asking questions like, "What are we missing from chapter 9?" when it had been read for Monday (it was Thursday at this point) would make students hesitant (or unable) to answer those questions on their own. Students' behavior tended to dictate how much time I gave them to discuss the questions I posed: the fewer groups who were actually working, the less time I gave. While you noted that a few students seemed to carry the group, I mentioned in our post-conference that a number of students who don't usually offer much participation or had been lagging recently did very well in the period. I was happy with that participation from them.
You also noted that a lot of the energy came from me instead of the class. As Dave mentioned, that's a technique that he has, in essence, challenged me to use. In 6th period, I didn't really need to use it. The class had its own energy, was participatory throughout discussion, and asked many of my questions for me. In other words, the same lesson worked very well later in the day. The only modification I made was walking around to partners to check progress on the questions that they were to discuss together.
Regarding the emphasis on points, students ask many questions regarding what assignments are worth and how they will be graded. We spend a lot of time answering questions like, "So wait, if I didn't write ________, do I still get all of the points or just half?" and "How much was that worth? Did you put the grades online yet?" The students respond to points, whether that's beneficial to them or not. I would love them to be interested in the learning itself, but some days that's simply not the case.
If I were to do this particular lesson again, the only thing I would change is the amount of time given to partners for discussion. In isolation, there was not much participation, but many students who didn't regularly offer input delivered it here. The following day, nearly every student in each period was called upon to share ideas. I do my best to get to everyone no less than every third day.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Grammartime
Grammar's hard.
But by that I mean, teaching grammar is hard. And it's not because it's actually hard, it's really just because no one cares to learn it. "It doesn't matter" whether I use the adjective or adverb form of the word, even though I sound like a fool saying I "did good." It doesn't matter what a preposition is or even which preposition I use. No one cares. It doesn't matter that my verb tense doesn't match my subject. That won't be confusing. You know what I'm trying to say. It doesn't matter if I know what an adjectival clause is. I can clearly point out what it's modifying (and therefore understand the gist of the sentence) without knowing what an adjectival clause is.
The biggest problem with teaching grammar is that no one cares, but everyone should care. Everyone should care that the second "I did good" comes out, anyone listening should be judging their intelligence. Everyone should care that using the wrong preposition makes the sentence confusing for the reader (or the translator). Everyone should care that the world is a place of credibility and reliability, and words reflect those things. Words mean things. Wrong words mean even more things. (See?)
So how do we get students to care? How do we teach them grammar and make it stick? Judging from discussions with Cumberland Valley's English Department Supervisor, they've got it right: teach traditional grammar in elementary school when students still care what their teachers think, what their parents think, and what their peers think. Allow them to learn and to make mistakes at a time in their lives when they're quick to forget mistakes and not be so self-conscious that they refuse to participate because they're afraid to get the answer wrong. Teach them while they want to learn. Enrich and review when they no longer actually care, but still remember the foundations that were laid.
Should we teach grammar in secondary schools? No. Not really, anyway. Grammar should have already been learned. Students should know nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and maybe prepositions. If they still need to learn appositives and absolutes and relative clauses, fine. We shouldn't be teaching basic skills in high school. If we're teaching what a noun is or what a verb is, we're wasting our time and every teacher before us has neglected to do his job.
Image Grammar is a book that has good ideas. It's a book that has useful practice activities. And it's a book that has fundamental flaws. How does one know what an absolute is if the book never tells what an absolute is? One or two sentences do not suffice. Showing examples of absolutes without addressing which part is the absolute in each sentence does not suffice. Most of all, expecting people who don't already know what those grammatical pieces are to understand them based on those exercises is a pipe dream. Does it teach aspects of grammar in context of writing? Sort of. Does it make students better writers? Probably. Does it actually teach what those grammatical constructions really are? No. Are there far too many rhetorical questions in this post? Probably. Will I add one more? Why not.
So, my teaching of grammar will probably look a lot like the traditional teaching does. There are plenty of opportunities throughout the year for "high interest" material. But I'm not a TV show, or a movie, or a video game. I'm not a rock star, I'm not a circus performer, I'm not an NHL player. My job is not to entertain. My job is to teach. Sure, there will be games and activities, but there will probably be some worksheets and lectures, too. And you know... if students don't care to learn it, I can always manage this. And they can always manage this.
But by that I mean, teaching grammar is hard. And it's not because it's actually hard, it's really just because no one cares to learn it. "It doesn't matter" whether I use the adjective or adverb form of the word, even though I sound like a fool saying I "did good." It doesn't matter what a preposition is or even which preposition I use. No one cares. It doesn't matter that my verb tense doesn't match my subject. That won't be confusing. You know what I'm trying to say. It doesn't matter if I know what an adjectival clause is. I can clearly point out what it's modifying (and therefore understand the gist of the sentence) without knowing what an adjectival clause is.
The biggest problem with teaching grammar is that no one cares, but everyone should care. Everyone should care that the second "I did good" comes out, anyone listening should be judging their intelligence. Everyone should care that using the wrong preposition makes the sentence confusing for the reader (or the translator). Everyone should care that the world is a place of credibility and reliability, and words reflect those things. Words mean things. Wrong words mean even more things. (See?)
So how do we get students to care? How do we teach them grammar and make it stick? Judging from discussions with Cumberland Valley's English Department Supervisor, they've got it right: teach traditional grammar in elementary school when students still care what their teachers think, what their parents think, and what their peers think. Allow them to learn and to make mistakes at a time in their lives when they're quick to forget mistakes and not be so self-conscious that they refuse to participate because they're afraid to get the answer wrong. Teach them while they want to learn. Enrich and review when they no longer actually care, but still remember the foundations that were laid.
Should we teach grammar in secondary schools? No. Not really, anyway. Grammar should have already been learned. Students should know nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and maybe prepositions. If they still need to learn appositives and absolutes and relative clauses, fine. We shouldn't be teaching basic skills in high school. If we're teaching what a noun is or what a verb is, we're wasting our time and every teacher before us has neglected to do his job.
Image Grammar is a book that has good ideas. It's a book that has useful practice activities. And it's a book that has fundamental flaws. How does one know what an absolute is if the book never tells what an absolute is? One or two sentences do not suffice. Showing examples of absolutes without addressing which part is the absolute in each sentence does not suffice. Most of all, expecting people who don't already know what those grammatical pieces are to understand them based on those exercises is a pipe dream. Does it teach aspects of grammar in context of writing? Sort of. Does it make students better writers? Probably. Does it actually teach what those grammatical constructions really are? No. Are there far too many rhetorical questions in this post? Probably. Will I add one more? Why not.
So, my teaching of grammar will probably look a lot like the traditional teaching does. There are plenty of opportunities throughout the year for "high interest" material. But I'm not a TV show, or a movie, or a video game. I'm not a rock star, I'm not a circus performer, I'm not an NHL player. My job is not to entertain. My job is to teach. Sure, there will be games and activities, but there will probably be some worksheets and lectures, too. And you know... if students don't care to learn it, I can always manage this. And they can always manage this.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Post title?
I'm not gonna lie: I'm more than a little concerned about having to teach writing. First of all, I don't follow the "writing process" that we've always been taught to follow. Second, it's very difficult in a school setting to help people revise/edit their papers without doing their paper for them. I sat down with my roommate last night and had an extremely productive revision session with him, and he did about 80% of the work. It was a great model of how revision should work. That said, we took about a half hour to work on what ended up being around eight sentences.
While we haven't had enough hands-on instruction when it comes to teaching writing, a lot of the things we've been reading have helped with ideas and practices. It's hard to tell exactly how these activities will work in practice, or how effective they'll be at teaching writing (as opposed to simply being things to write), but they should be helpful. In no particular order:
All of these activities/strategies are ones I'd like to use with my students. Looking at the list seems so daunting, though. It seems impossible to have time to do all of these things. I can only hope that I work in a school with 50-minute periods instead of 40-minute ones, or I'll have a hard time doing anything I want to on a regular basis.
While we haven't had enough hands-on instruction when it comes to teaching writing, a lot of the things we've been reading have helped with ideas and practices. It's hard to tell exactly how these activities will work in practice, or how effective they'll be at teaching writing (as opposed to simply being things to write), but they should be helpful. In no particular order:
- Providing students with models of assignments
- FCAs for rough drafts
- Revising rough drafts in groups (twice)
- Reader-response journals
- One-pagers for SSR choices
- Comics as summaries
- Free-writes
- Correcting relevant writing mistakes after assignments are completed
- Asking questions
- Personal journals
- Article of the Week
All of these activities/strategies are ones I'd like to use with my students. Looking at the list seems so daunting, though. It seems impossible to have time to do all of these things. I can only hope that I work in a school with 50-minute periods instead of 40-minute ones, or I'll have a hard time doing anything I want to on a regular basis.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
I can haz tekst?
http://prezi.com/jdpae4kw_k1_/tuck-everlasting-text-satellite/?auth_key=9b9d013c84d2bf24ce56f135d5a64e083be506ff **fixed
My text satellite is based off of the novel Tuck Everlasting and its themes of duty, greed, mortality vs. immortality, change vs. stagnation, and the natural order of things.
Speaking of the natural order, I chose simply to organize the works by their types.While many of the works I chose specifically deal with death, most deal with at least two of the themes. For example, "A White Heron" relates to greed because the hunter wants to kill the white heron, while the girl's sense of duty compels her to lie to the hunter despite being enamored by him.
My text satellite is based off of the novel Tuck Everlasting and its themes of duty, greed, mortality vs. immortality, change vs. stagnation, and the natural order of things.
Speaking of the natural order, I chose simply to organize the works by their types.While many of the works I chose specifically deal with death, most deal with at least two of the themes. For example, "A White Heron" relates to greed because the hunter wants to kill the white heron, while the girl's sense of duty compels her to lie to the hunter despite being enamored by him.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
One of the most difficult things for me about assessing students is that I tend to want to create only the assessments that would like to do as a student. In other words, I don't want to make students create drawings, posters, or anything else too artsy, because I always hated those projects. I always felt that if I wasn't in at class, I shouldn't be forced to do art projects. That said, there will be a number of students in classes that do enjoy those types of assessments, so I need to be able to create them as second or third options.
The difficulty in using an art-related project is making it equivalent to a traditional essay/assessment. A five-page paper is not the same as a poster. The time involved might be the same (for a student like me, who has no art skills whatsoever), but the level of thought is entirely different. So, what steps can be taken to make them equivalent? Adding a short write-up to the art assignment would be fair, but I still don't think that gets the student to the same level of depth with the work. That is one of the biggest problems I'm having right now, because I know there are students who do like the non-traditional assignments. Between the task and the grading, though, I'm not quite sure at this point how to create them effectively.
On the other hand, I feel pretty comfortable making the traditional assessments. My feeling is that reading quizzes should be based on the topics I want students to take away from the reading, but at the same time--if I'm truly checking to see whether students read--I need to be conscious of what's on Sparknotes. That is what makes it hard to make a "fair" reading quiz, or one that's not just based on details that are hard to pick out. In that case, I'd rather lean towards a "prove to me that you read the chapter" quiz. It would be open-ended, and students would be required to prove more than that they read Sparknotes to get full credit. It's difficult, but it's also higher-level thinking using the text. The different responses and their scores would probably need to be modeled for the students.
Rubrics for essays and other assignments are relatively easy. Make requirements for the assignment, then read down the assignment sheet and create a section for each part of the assignment. If the paper is supposed to be 2-3 pages, there should be a "length" section on the rubric. Makes sense.
Exams and assessments for middle-schoolers are also a concern, because I don't know what those are like. I know papers are capped at one or two pages, but is that a good thing? Should we actually be pushing them to write two or three pages instead? Part of the problem is the education the students have received up to middle school and high school, because many teachers have not properly equipped the students with the appropriate skills for their age. That means topics and will have to be retaught, or certainly enriched, before moving on to more difficult skills. How do we compensate for the failures of prior teachers?
The difficulty in using an art-related project is making it equivalent to a traditional essay/assessment. A five-page paper is not the same as a poster. The time involved might be the same (for a student like me, who has no art skills whatsoever), but the level of thought is entirely different. So, what steps can be taken to make them equivalent? Adding a short write-up to the art assignment would be fair, but I still don't think that gets the student to the same level of depth with the work. That is one of the biggest problems I'm having right now, because I know there are students who do like the non-traditional assignments. Between the task and the grading, though, I'm not quite sure at this point how to create them effectively.
On the other hand, I feel pretty comfortable making the traditional assessments. My feeling is that reading quizzes should be based on the topics I want students to take away from the reading, but at the same time--if I'm truly checking to see whether students read--I need to be conscious of what's on Sparknotes. That is what makes it hard to make a "fair" reading quiz, or one that's not just based on details that are hard to pick out. In that case, I'd rather lean towards a "prove to me that you read the chapter" quiz. It would be open-ended, and students would be required to prove more than that they read Sparknotes to get full credit. It's difficult, but it's also higher-level thinking using the text. The different responses and their scores would probably need to be modeled for the students.
Rubrics for essays and other assignments are relatively easy. Make requirements for the assignment, then read down the assignment sheet and create a section for each part of the assignment. If the paper is supposed to be 2-3 pages, there should be a "length" section on the rubric. Makes sense.
Exams and assessments for middle-schoolers are also a concern, because I don't know what those are like. I know papers are capped at one or two pages, but is that a good thing? Should we actually be pushing them to write two or three pages instead? Part of the problem is the education the students have received up to middle school and high school, because many teachers have not properly equipped the students with the appropriate skills for their age. That means topics and will have to be retaught, or certainly enriched, before moving on to more difficult skills. How do we compensate for the failures of prior teachers?
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