So, this whole creation of a unit plan is much harder than I thought it would be. It sounds silly, but I think I'm just realizing now how nuanced lesson planning can be, especially good lesson planning. And if you have your own ideas about how stuff should be arranged and what you want students to focus on, it's that much harder. The crazy thing is that we're planning units based on a class that's already had a semester to work together and we've already observed them for a few weeks now--it seems like a daunting task to create all of these plans ahead of time without having any idea of how the class is going to look and feel like. I guess it's good to have the basic groundwork in place so that you only have to tweak instead of start from scratch. But still, you're constantly tweaking after each class period as well! I think I'm just feeling overwhelmed, not knowing if I'll ever be adept at teaching.
It's also comforting to know that good teachers have to take time out like regular people. My CT took this past Thursday off as a mental health day--she said she just needed to shake some negative stuff out of her bones and get a fresh perspective. This is probably another important aspect to think about as a teacher. You have to know yourself and recognize when you're just getting drained. Since you set the tone of the classroom, you're just creating a cycle of annoyances if you're losing patience and the students are losing patience right back at you.
The previous week, she'd been having some behavior problems with a couple of classes, so she restructured the class time and asked them to all write her letters, explaining what they thought was going on and what might help. With their input, she was going to figure out a few changes to improve the classroom climate. She shared some of their comments with me, and they actually seemed very self-aware--even as 8th graders, they mostly know what's going on. They just need to be directly asked! And I'm noticing that that's something I will definitely have to take into consideration. I'm not the boss--I'm more of the orchestrator.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Six Degrees of English
Sometimes I forget how crazily connected this old world is, but let me tell you about the craziest, weirdest, connected-est thing that happened before I taught this past Thursday.
We were starting a unit on non-fiction, and my lesson plan was about how to choose a piece of text that is appropriate to the issue that the students chose to focus on. My CT had gathered a bunch of different non-fiction articles, and she arranged them on the back wall, using manila envelopes to hold multiple copies of each article. On the front of each envelope was a copy of the article that was inside. I was glancing over them, and I happened to flip to the second page of an article about language in the classroom (I think it was about respecting students' home languages). A name at the bottom of the page caught my eye: it was the name of my 9th grade English teacher. The article quoted her on the issue. WHAAAAAT?!! Okay, maybe it's not that big of a deal, but it seemed crazy to me, since she taught me at a school in the middle of nowhere in NC, and I'm about to send my students in 8th grade in TX to possibly read an article in which she's quoted. Call it what you want, but it gave me a nice little sense of purpose on Valentine's Day morning, as my students lugged their four foot tall teddy bears and bouquets of roses into class. (I'm mentioning these things to let you know that their minds weren't exactly on the topic at hand. They were probably more interested in the non-fiction of what was going to happen at the dance after school.)
Anyway, segue to the connectedness of readings for this week: the male Bomer's chapters about writers' notebooks definitely reinforced what I've been learning about the importance of WNBs in my female Bomer's class as well as what I've been observing at school. As part of our Teaching Comp class, we are required to keep a writers' notebook, and it helps me understand why it can be so hard for students--it's really a stretch to make myself write in it on a regular basis. I definitely see how it's helping me create longer drafts and exercise my writing muscles, and I think it's really important to remember that we need to continue keeping a WNB as an example for our students and a tool for modeling. My CT actually puts up her various notebooks at the front of the class, so that when she's looking for an example, she can flip back through them for an example of a kind of entry or how she revised an entry. It also places value on writing--it's not just an assignment that you'll toss away at the end of the year, but it's a way to look back on your growth as a student and as an individual. As Bomer mentions, my CT wants students to include both writing and reflections on reading in their notebooks, so they have different sections (the first half and the second half) devoted for entries on each.
I've noticed that lots of the students go through multiple notebooks over the course of the year, and they definitely decorate them to their hearts' desires. Some girls paste pictures from magazines all over the outsides, some guys keep love notes taped there, and one girl taped a small mirror to the outside. (Her friend informed me that it's because she likes to look at herself a lot.) One student told me that she doesn't decorate her notebook on purpose--if it looks boring, then she explained that people are more likely to not want to look into it, and she writes a lot of entries for personal purposes. Also, I think her mention of "personal writing" is important; the bulk of what she writes isn't accomplished in the classroom. All of the students transport their WNBs back and forth, and this gives them the opportunity to do the kind of writing that Bomer talks about. This is a big difference from what I observed previously. During my observation last semester, I noticed that the students continually lost their notebooks, wrote for class on random sheets of paper, and never wrote about anything that wasn't an in-class assignment. I think this is largely because they weren't allowed to take their notebooks home! They always had to put them back into their assigned crates at the end of class. (I still don't understand how so many students STILL lost them.) I know that this policy was in place because the teacher was afraid that they would lose them, but they didn't seem to feel a sense of ownership or personal connection to their notebooks. There seems to be an amount of trust that you have to give to students before they can truly be involved in the real work of writers--and I don't think that merely answering in-class assignments gets to the heart of real writing.
Also, Smagorinsky's different assignments were interesting, but some of them seemed a little gimmicky. At this point, I'm still getting acclimated to what levels 8th graders are at and where they should be in reading and writing, so I think you'd really have to know where your students are at before you can begin to think about which assignments would be helpful and where to include them. (It seems like these could perhaps be included in unit-long plans, but there'd be no way you could anticipate them in a year-long plan, I think.)
We were starting a unit on non-fiction, and my lesson plan was about how to choose a piece of text that is appropriate to the issue that the students chose to focus on. My CT had gathered a bunch of different non-fiction articles, and she arranged them on the back wall, using manila envelopes to hold multiple copies of each article. On the front of each envelope was a copy of the article that was inside. I was glancing over them, and I happened to flip to the second page of an article about language in the classroom (I think it was about respecting students' home languages). A name at the bottom of the page caught my eye: it was the name of my 9th grade English teacher. The article quoted her on the issue. WHAAAAAT?!! Okay, maybe it's not that big of a deal, but it seemed crazy to me, since she taught me at a school in the middle of nowhere in NC, and I'm about to send my students in 8th grade in TX to possibly read an article in which she's quoted. Call it what you want, but it gave me a nice little sense of purpose on Valentine's Day morning, as my students lugged their four foot tall teddy bears and bouquets of roses into class. (I'm mentioning these things to let you know that their minds weren't exactly on the topic at hand. They were probably more interested in the non-fiction of what was going to happen at the dance after school.)
Anyway, segue to the connectedness of readings for this week: the male Bomer's chapters about writers' notebooks definitely reinforced what I've been learning about the importance of WNBs in my female Bomer's class as well as what I've been observing at school. As part of our Teaching Comp class, we are required to keep a writers' notebook, and it helps me understand why it can be so hard for students--it's really a stretch to make myself write in it on a regular basis. I definitely see how it's helping me create longer drafts and exercise my writing muscles, and I think it's really important to remember that we need to continue keeping a WNB as an example for our students and a tool for modeling. My CT actually puts up her various notebooks at the front of the class, so that when she's looking for an example, she can flip back through them for an example of a kind of entry or how she revised an entry. It also places value on writing--it's not just an assignment that you'll toss away at the end of the year, but it's a way to look back on your growth as a student and as an individual. As Bomer mentions, my CT wants students to include both writing and reflections on reading in their notebooks, so they have different sections (the first half and the second half) devoted for entries on each.
I've noticed that lots of the students go through multiple notebooks over the course of the year, and they definitely decorate them to their hearts' desires. Some girls paste pictures from magazines all over the outsides, some guys keep love notes taped there, and one girl taped a small mirror to the outside. (Her friend informed me that it's because she likes to look at herself a lot.) One student told me that she doesn't decorate her notebook on purpose--if it looks boring, then she explained that people are more likely to not want to look into it, and she writes a lot of entries for personal purposes. Also, I think her mention of "personal writing" is important; the bulk of what she writes isn't accomplished in the classroom. All of the students transport their WNBs back and forth, and this gives them the opportunity to do the kind of writing that Bomer talks about. This is a big difference from what I observed previously. During my observation last semester, I noticed that the students continually lost their notebooks, wrote for class on random sheets of paper, and never wrote about anything that wasn't an in-class assignment. I think this is largely because they weren't allowed to take their notebooks home! They always had to put them back into their assigned crates at the end of class. (I still don't understand how so many students STILL lost them.) I know that this policy was in place because the teacher was afraid that they would lose them, but they didn't seem to feel a sense of ownership or personal connection to their notebooks. There seems to be an amount of trust that you have to give to students before they can truly be involved in the real work of writers--and I don't think that merely answering in-class assignments gets to the heart of real writing.
Also, Smagorinsky's different assignments were interesting, but some of them seemed a little gimmicky. At this point, I'm still getting acclimated to what levels 8th graders are at and where they should be in reading and writing, so I think you'd really have to know where your students are at before you can begin to think about which assignments would be helpful and where to include them. (It seems like these could perhaps be included in unit-long plans, but there'd be no way you could anticipate them in a year-long plan, I think.)
Sunday, February 10, 2013
TESTING, TESTING
So. We looked through all the bajillion standards of the TEKS as well as the Common Core (I feel like that sounds very ominous...the COMMON COREEEE), as well as the hippy-dippy stuff of the NCTE. I'd like to say that I don't see the point in standards, but honestly, my rule-following heart-n-soul can see the good in such things. I think that they're a little outlandish on some accounts (the silly titles that the CC gives as examples for what your class should be reading are a bit outdated and blah), but I do think that we need to make sure that students are learning helpful skills in each grade. And honestly, I think test prep is part of that.
Yes, yell at me, call me a Republican (yikes), but we can't escape one simple fact: at this point, and for the foreseeable future, success in America (not necessarily real success, but what we like to measure as success) is based on test scores. They're silly anti-measures of true knowledge, but that's how the people in charge like to see that kids are learning stuff. I think we do a disservice to our students if we DON'T prepare them for this stuff. When I was in 7th grade, my mom knew that we were going to take SATs in preparation for the TIP (Talent Identification Program) thing. We didn't have money, but my mom (who is college educated and played the game herself) knew that doing well on this test would be good for me. She checked out a thick test prep volume for the SAT for me, and I did all the practice tests. And I made a 1210 on the SAT, in the 7th grade. Was I brilliant? Probably not. But I knew how to take the test.
My CT told her classes the other day that while tests aren't the end-all be-all of knowledge, "there's power in doing well on tests." She's right. Whether or not we should be giving power to standards and tests, there is certainly power in that right now. And I think that my CT is going about the test prep game in a helpful way. She and her co-teacher made up a test with just poems in it, and they reviewed how to read a poem, and how to explore a poem. Even while the students were working on the test, they talked about how to really get down to what a poem is saying. So it's not just about being able to answer the test questions in class, but it's also about the reading and analyzing process. While I think one is certainly more important than the other, we're explicitly helping our not-so-advantaged students access power. So while standards are certainly not going to facilitate standardized learning, we do need to make sure that all of our students have access to similar levels of knowledge, and, perhaps more importantly, power. Because isn't all knowledge power?
Yes, yell at me, call me a Republican (yikes), but we can't escape one simple fact: at this point, and for the foreseeable future, success in America (not necessarily real success, but what we like to measure as success) is based on test scores. They're silly anti-measures of true knowledge, but that's how the people in charge like to see that kids are learning stuff. I think we do a disservice to our students if we DON'T prepare them for this stuff. When I was in 7th grade, my mom knew that we were going to take SATs in preparation for the TIP (Talent Identification Program) thing. We didn't have money, but my mom (who is college educated and played the game herself) knew that doing well on this test would be good for me. She checked out a thick test prep volume for the SAT for me, and I did all the practice tests. And I made a 1210 on the SAT, in the 7th grade. Was I brilliant? Probably not. But I knew how to take the test.
My CT told her classes the other day that while tests aren't the end-all be-all of knowledge, "there's power in doing well on tests." She's right. Whether or not we should be giving power to standards and tests, there is certainly power in that right now. And I think that my CT is going about the test prep game in a helpful way. She and her co-teacher made up a test with just poems in it, and they reviewed how to read a poem, and how to explore a poem. Even while the students were working on the test, they talked about how to really get down to what a poem is saying. So it's not just about being able to answer the test questions in class, but it's also about the reading and analyzing process. While I think one is certainly more important than the other, we're explicitly helping our not-so-advantaged students access power. So while standards are certainly not going to facilitate standardized learning, we do need to make sure that all of our students have access to similar levels of knowledge, and, perhaps more importantly, power. Because isn't all knowledge power?
Sunday, February 3, 2013
The Best Laid Plans (what a predictable title.)
The different passages from Bomer, Christenbury, and Smagorinsky on unit planning all noted the relationship between reading and writing; students not only consume texts about a specific topic/genre during a unit, but they also create their own texts related to that unit. Now, this isn't exactly groundbreaking. I know that it makes logical sense, but in my high school experience, I don't remember a lot of reading and writing being tied together. Mostly, we read books or passages, and we responded in the form of academic essays that explored themes and symbolism. We wrote some poetry, but it was presented as following a prescribed set of rules for a certain type of poem. And I'm pretty certain that we didn't produce creative texts that were longer than poems. There was no sense of immersion within a genre in order to produce text to add to that genre. But by looking at these unit plan chapters, this makes perfect sense! If we don't give students space to produce texts during units, we're essentially telling them that they can only be consumers and we don't have enough faith in them to allow them time and space to be creators.
I think that planning a year around the "immersion in a genre" idea is really exciting. My CT does this, and they do memoir earlier in the year, then poetry, then short stories. Right now, we're beginning a unit on nonfiction (such as editorials and feature articles), so she explained to me that she'll gather lots of accessible examples, put them in various folders around the room, and spend a few days with students in groups as they explore that genre. They also have class time with more explicit instruction on the nuts and bolts of a specific genre, and the ultimate goal is to produce a piece of writing that belongs to that genre. I'm not sure that there is a specific overarching theme, but I guess I didn't actually know how to ask about that. As far as yearly planning goes, the ELAR teachers from the district get together (there are only three middle schools in the district) and plan out large units that are supposed to touch on the standards. These units are about six weeks long. For more specific planning, my CT and the teacher across the hall get together and work out what they want to do on a week to week basis. There's a lot of flexibility available as well as plenty of space for creativity. And since my CT is the head of the department, she obviously has a lot of leeway to be able to switch stuff up when she wants to. This past week, she decided that she wants to do away with a 10 minute warm-up at the beginning of class, since classes are only 50 minutes long. Apparently, the warm-up time is a school-wide policy, but my CT expressed confidence that she would be able to get away without it. (Obviously, this has a lot to do with the school climate--the principal is really involved and supportive of the teachers. But also, "mandating" a warm-up seems a little too intrusive and controlling.)
Another "duh" point that Christenbury and Smagorinsky made was that you should create lesson plans that you're interested in. I say that it's a "duh" point because again, it seems really obvious, but I guess I haven't given myself the freedom to consider that. I mean, I enjoy and am interested in when students are really connecting to material, but it makes sense to also try to include parts that you find interesting. I think that students really notice when you're into something or not into something--I know that my facial expressions make that pretty obvious. We want students to see that learning can be interesting and exciting, and we want to model that behavior for them, so why not make sure to include that in the lesson plans? My CT also keeps a book list along with her students, and she reads YA literature regularly and has conversations with them about what she's reading. She's interested in what they're reading, and when she gets really excited about a YA book, they are interested in it as well.
Anyway, all of this learning about planning has gotten me pretty excited to think about planning out my own school year! It is rather daunting, though...I feel like it's something that I should start thinking about now, but I know that in part, it's something that I'd have to tailor to specific classes of students. So I'm sure that a carefully planned year would constantly shift. Teaching is hard.
ALSO, if you ever need YA recommendations, check out my friend Kara's youtube vlog:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ReaderoftheAwesome?feature=watch
Her top ten of 2012 is a great post, and she covers a pretty diverse range of books. (She's an aspiring English major at ACC, and we'd all better get to know her vlog now before she goes all YA superstar reviewer on us.)
I think that planning a year around the "immersion in a genre" idea is really exciting. My CT does this, and they do memoir earlier in the year, then poetry, then short stories. Right now, we're beginning a unit on nonfiction (such as editorials and feature articles), so she explained to me that she'll gather lots of accessible examples, put them in various folders around the room, and spend a few days with students in groups as they explore that genre. They also have class time with more explicit instruction on the nuts and bolts of a specific genre, and the ultimate goal is to produce a piece of writing that belongs to that genre. I'm not sure that there is a specific overarching theme, but I guess I didn't actually know how to ask about that. As far as yearly planning goes, the ELAR teachers from the district get together (there are only three middle schools in the district) and plan out large units that are supposed to touch on the standards. These units are about six weeks long. For more specific planning, my CT and the teacher across the hall get together and work out what they want to do on a week to week basis. There's a lot of flexibility available as well as plenty of space for creativity. And since my CT is the head of the department, she obviously has a lot of leeway to be able to switch stuff up when she wants to. This past week, she decided that she wants to do away with a 10 minute warm-up at the beginning of class, since classes are only 50 minutes long. Apparently, the warm-up time is a school-wide policy, but my CT expressed confidence that she would be able to get away without it. (Obviously, this has a lot to do with the school climate--the principal is really involved and supportive of the teachers. But also, "mandating" a warm-up seems a little too intrusive and controlling.)
Another "duh" point that Christenbury and Smagorinsky made was that you should create lesson plans that you're interested in. I say that it's a "duh" point because again, it seems really obvious, but I guess I haven't given myself the freedom to consider that. I mean, I enjoy and am interested in when students are really connecting to material, but it makes sense to also try to include parts that you find interesting. I think that students really notice when you're into something or not into something--I know that my facial expressions make that pretty obvious. We want students to see that learning can be interesting and exciting, and we want to model that behavior for them, so why not make sure to include that in the lesson plans? My CT also keeps a book list along with her students, and she reads YA literature regularly and has conversations with them about what she's reading. She's interested in what they're reading, and when she gets really excited about a YA book, they are interested in it as well.
Anyway, all of this learning about planning has gotten me pretty excited to think about planning out my own school year! It is rather daunting, though...I feel like it's something that I should start thinking about now, but I know that in part, it's something that I'd have to tailor to specific classes of students. So I'm sure that a carefully planned year would constantly shift. Teaching is hard.
ALSO, if you ever need YA recommendations, check out my friend Kara's youtube vlog:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ReaderoftheAwesome?feature=watch
Her top ten of 2012 is a great post, and she covers a pretty diverse range of books. (She's an aspiring English major at ACC, and we'd all better get to know her vlog now before she goes all YA superstar reviewer on us.)
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