Teacher spends two days as a student

This article is a nice reminder of what a day is like for our students. I like how this is also connected to block scheduling. Check it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/24/teacher-spends-two-days-as-a-student-and-is-shocked-at-what-she-learned/

Vertical Gardening in Schools

(Scroll down to the TED Talk link to get to the point of this post.)

Today in my 9th grade class, we were reflecting on the missionaries' effects in Igboland in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. We compared the different missionary groups and their approaches. After, we listened to this audio clip from NPR: Missionaries In Africa Doing More Harm Than Good?, which is a reflection on current missionary work.

Following the audio clip, we analyzed how missionaries can help, what methods they should go about to be most effective, and the possible negative consequences of missionaries. The students followed this discussion by imagining what steps a "missionary" should go through if he/she came to Frontier and wanted to help the Frontier community.

Their suggestions included:
-Observing classrooms, writing down their conclusions, and then showing their conclusions to the students and faculty to gain feedback
-Talk to the students and faculty to understand the culture of the school
-Consider what could be integrated into the school to help the community, rather than replacing existing models
-Conduct surveys
-Learning about the history of the school
-Hearing from students and faculty about what the school prides itself on

After this list was made, we discussed what the "missionary" might find the school wants to improve. In an overwhelmingly, unanimous response, all of the students said "the food."

Well, after breaking down the specific problems with the food and the causes of these problems, the students came up with some pretty awesome solutions. I know I just arrived here, but I also remember the food being the number one issue with students two years ago as well. I couldn't help but think about this amazing TED Talk I saw last summer. Here it is: A Teacher Growing Green in the South Bronx

What do you think? Do you think that vertical gardening is something that could be right for Frontier to supplement the cafeteria food?

How to Foster a Safe Class Environment?

Alright, so currently I have a great 9th grade class. They are actively engaged, do the reading, and participate in class discussion... unless it turns personal?

Has anyone else had this problem or know any strategies I can use to help the students feel more comfortable and supportive enough to talk about themselves?

I'm wondering if they just don't think what they have to say is important enough or if they are scared to share how they feel?

Each person will share their personal thoughts and reflections in partners, but won't do it with the group?

10-21-14 Follow Up: Yesterday I had a new approach towards the journal entry. After each student shared their views in pairs, I expressed how glad I was to see that everyone had so much to say about the topic and that it would truly benefit all of us to hear everyone's point of view.

I then continued on to reiterate my expectations for classroom discussion. Our mantra: "Be curious, not judgemental," was echoed and we investigated what that looks like in practice. I modeled the behavior and gave concrete examples of how you can respond when you disagree with someone.

From there, the discussion boomed! Everyone waited for each other to speak, and instead of expressing disagreements, the students posed probing questions, that really took our discussion to the next level.

Does anyone else have an activity you like to do to stimulate productive class discussions in your rooms?

Student Run Writing Center

Most of us has writing centers in college. We all knew them as the place you went to when you got stuck on a paper or wanted to get a really good grade on an essay. However, writing centers have begun to take place within secondary school as well. Might this be a good idea for Frontier or do we already consider Faytell’s room the writer center?

Here is an excerpt from an article from The National Writing Project. I have also provided a link, which has additional sources that evaluate writing centers and how to create an effective one within a school.

There's nothing particularly new about the concept of a writing center. For years these facilities have served as emergency rooms where struggling college writers have gone to get their writing "fixed." But that's not the way it is anymore.

For one thing, writing centers are no longer only a post-secondary phenomena. Increasingly they have become a part of school culture in high schools, middle schools, and even some elementary schools.

Also, they are not now considered primarily places where triage is performed on ailing compositions. Instead, staffed by enthusiastic and well-trained peer tutors, writing centers have become hubs of literacy, spotlighting the importance of quality writing across the curriculum.

Writing Project sites and teacher-consultants have been in the forefront of the writing center movement, with some sites forming partnerships with schools to provide support, training, and personnel to advance this burgeoning movement.

The NWP has collected resources that demonstrate how writing centers are one effective way to advance the teaching of writing in schools.

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3584

Student Declamations

Texts have developed from the oral tradition in order to better share our important stories with others. We practice this idea in our classrooms by sharing important stories with students and discussing the implications of these stories and why we find them significant to our development as a human being, but how often do we actually orate our texts?

Some schools have a Declamation Day, where students orate a meaningful piece of writing, either original or not.

I know that we often call on our students to give oral presentation, read poetry, write and present oral speeches, and perform plays. However, I got to thinking what students could gain from orating other pieces of literature and what the process of memorizing and performing a piece of writing entails.

For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus delivers a moving speech in order to convince the judge and jury of Tom Robinson’s innocence. For a student to effectively perform that speech (or write and perform their own version of that speech), he/she would have to:

1. Have a working knowledge of the text.
2. Gain a thorough understanding of the character of Atticus, his personality, history, and motives.
3. Understand the complexity of the situation that Atticus is in (facing an all white court when trying to defend a black man accused of rape).
4. *Consider logic and reasoning that has worked in the past.
5. *Developed an understanding of useful and effective rhetorical devices to enhance tone.

* If writing their own versions of the speech.

Whether a project for declamation is done within the class, or short oral readings are performed, I'm thinking that there is, indeed, great value in breathing performative life into our texts, just as our ancestors did.

All Day HS Department Throwdown 10/10/14

The high school English teachers carved out PD time to complete rubrics and plan for online portfolio keeping.  We have three goals for today according to Sarah Mitchell:

"1. Complete rubrics for grades 9 - 12 in argument, narrative and information. The Calkins rubrics will be uploaded into Turnitin by the end of the day and shared with the entire faculty. One of you can bring up the incomplete rubric on the Smartboard (in your turnitin account) and you can fill in the missing columns. After the rubric is complete you can export it and send it to me and I will upload it and share the completed rubrics with the entire faculty.

2. Calkins Writing kits - Grades K - 6 are now using the Calkins Writing Program. The middle school English teachers have examined the kits and are using some components with additional adoption planed after they receive additional training. There is a grade 7 kit and a grade 8 kit. There are more than enough units to include grade 9 in the Calkins program and possibly grade 10. I am asking you to look through the grade 8 kit and tell me what you think. Can these resources be used for grade 9 and possibly grade 10 too?

3. Turn it in - Some of you have had a chance to experiment with Turnitin. Nancy Stenberg has agreed to assist you further with this website. You will have an opportunity to upload a few papers and then grade them using a rubric. I would recommend using the grade 8 rubric since your rubrics will not be uploaded into the system at this point." 

9:11am: Viewing a PARCC PowerPoint that is helping to direct our Argument and Informative rubrics.  We are now understanding our already completed Narrative rubric to include fiction and non-fiction subject matter.

11:30am-ish: Took a lunch break after trying to save the work we had done on the Argument rubric.  Had to back track a bit.

12:40pm: Starting again on the Argument rubric.  We have decided on a 9-12 format for all rubrics.  Our main strategy has been translating the language of the LC rubrics to create almost "bullet point style" elements for each rubric component.

1:20pm: Finished the "Proficient" category of the Argument rubric and are moving on to the Informational rubric.  We concentrated on the "Proficient" category because it is directly connected to our department goals.  We will have to expand to write the language of the other categories later.

2:15pm: Finished the "Proficient" category of the Informational rubric.  We now have a completed 9-12 Narrative rubric and the essential elements of our other rubrics to be completed later.

We still have a lot of questions about the direction of these rubrics, especially for struggling writers.  We are also not fully clear on the connectivity with what students use in the middle school.  During the process it was a nice reminder to consider how a student would interpret the language we were using.  These rubrics should be used as a tool of transparency.