Dots and Have Nots, as well as Bullying Prevention.

I continue to strive for connection for all students who pass through my classroom, although it is indeed a tough goal for which to strive, as we all know that some students / teachers / people are not meant to co-mingle / enjoy one another's company. I still strive to make sure that my learning environment is conducive to learning and conversation, however, and I feel as if I'm still getting better at establishing this through demonstration and practice every week. 

Relationship Reflective Practice:

While I couldn't find a (legal) version of it, this clip is from the new movie "Man of Steel." In this scene, a high-school-aged Clark Kent is bullied by other, bigger "athlete types" in letter jackets, but doesn't retaliate physically against them. After they leave, his father emphasizes that, even though even he wished that Clark would've hit those kids, that he made the right choice in the struggle of deciding who he wants to be, and that, because of who he is, the person that he becomes will change the world, and that his example matters more than anyone else's. This is a great scene to help illustrate that another of Man of Steele's theses is true and relevant - that every person has the power to be a force for good in the world. 

As far as bullying goes, our school, honestly, doesn't do a good job. We pay it a bit of lip service in the form of having a 9th grade "Respect Retreat" where we call in a guest speaker for an all-day inservice with Junior- and Senior-level mentors, but the mentors receive only an hour of training, don't have an avenue for follow-up or continuing to monitor the things for which they are working to prevent. That is not getting the job done, and is contributing to what I think is an apathetic environment for the high school when it comes to supporting one another, school spirit, etc. I personally try to eliminate the problem (which is futile, on a wider scale, I think) by being good to everyone, reminding students to be good and accepting to everyone, celebrating the things that make students unique, and hanging up a sign in my room that says "Be Nice or Leave." 

Stage 2 and 3 - both done!

Here is the document for stage 1-3, in its most updated form.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8ZCkazrvXtgal8wMzZ3ekFzcDg/edit?usp=sharing

1. Action Research running blog entry

I'd say that, so far, my research is telling me that even though the theories say that students find helpful commentary on their writing more useful in the long run,  the "needs improvement" feedback is the one that they are saying is most helpful at this point. This tells me two things: 1. I'm still not giving enough positive feedback regarding their writing (due in part to context of material and the fact that we're re-doing the curriculum and it isn't as well-defined as it will be in its final form); 2. Students may lack the foresight and perspective necessary to see what benefits them in the long run vs. what benefits them in the short run. This isn't surprising to many high school teachers, I'd presume, but it still reveals to me that a blend of both styles of commentary is necessary for the teaching of writing. More analysis to come when more research is in, from 2 more classes on 2 more essays.

Stage 1,2, and 3 of the New Lesson - January 2014

So; I shall now post the document for this sucker, as of last update, right here (rather, it's a link to the document on googledrive, which should make it easier to view):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8ZCkazrvXtgTUVLSENucXh3QzQ/edit?usp=sharing

The skill that I just taught at the beginning of the assignment cycle was about avoiding misplaced and dangling modifiers. This is one of the 2 specific grammatical focuses of this next writing assignment, and will be marked on their assignment sheets / essays.
The dangling modifier / misplaced modifier is one of my favorite grammatical quandaries, as it creates, in the words of one crafty student, "pictures based on literal interpretations of ridiculous sentences!!" It does indeed. It's slawesome.
The strategy employed was:
1. students draw 3 slips of paper out of the "Satch" (an old satchel that I use to distribute mysteriously grammatical things to students), on which are written sentences that have problems with misplaced / dangling modifiers.
2. Students type the sentence onto a document in their Notability app on their ipads, leaving myriad space between the sentences.
3. They figure out the problem with the sentence, and in the process discover the hilarity of the incorrectly-written sentence.
4. They depict, in visual form, the literal interpretation of the wacky sentence.
5. Underneath, they fix the sentence, so that it is correctly-written.
6. They post pictures of their artwork to a discussion board on Schoology to share with the entire grade!
7. Following the artwork, they then have to write their own sentences that have dangling / misplaced modifiers. My theory is that if they can create something themselves, they will have a more intimate understanding and competency with the concept. If they struggle with this, they can use sentence modeling techniques to insert their own concepts into the structure of a previously-written sentence-- either on the slips, or on the previously-done worksheets we did while initially learning the concept.

The results were, quite frankly, spectacular, for a couple of reasons: 1. Students love to see their work on a screen; 2. students love to see their work on the interwebs; 3. Students love to draw weird stuff on their ipads; 4. Students love to work with misplaced modifiers...partially because I say the sentences while laughingly playing air-guitar, committing to the moment in the most serious and epic of ways.
Here are a couple of examples of the students' work (permission granted!)

I would do this again (this isn't my first time doing the assignment - it's a classic), and plan to! Booyaa.

Dots and Have-nots.

Emphasis on have-nots. The trimester changed, and the student is gone. So, I will now select a new one! Prepare for a life to be changed--you all will know when a normally-wingless animal shows up on the news due to a major life-change.

Mission Statement

I'm having mainstream and Pre-AP English students do a multigenre writing project that has them write creatively across multiple genres about a common topic / theme. They have to create! Write things! Come up with stuff! So, I'm making them, as a class, follow this quotation, taken from the novel that Pre-AP studnets are currently reading, the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. In it, two cousins write comic books as an act of escape from their lives during WWII-era America. The novel encompasses many different genres and eras, themes and motifs, but the characters create! here is the quotation, edited down from a big ol' paragraph:
"The shaping of a golem, to him, was a gesture of hope, offered against hope, in a time of desperation. It was the expression of a yearning that a few magic words and an artful hand might produce something-- one poor, dumb, powerful thing-- exempt from the crushing strictures, from the ills, cruelties, and inevitable failures of the greater Creation. It was the voicing of a vain wish, when you got down to it, to escape...[some] cite "escapism" among the litany of injurious consequences of their reading, and dwelled on the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life" (Chabon 591-592).
Now, this is a big ol' quote, but I think that it sums up the desire to create, the necessity of it in our current age, and a target for them in the creation in their own origins. It's highminded, slightly pretentious, and grandiose, and that's just the way I like it.

-It was easy to come up with this, as it was in our reading, and I was making them adopt it! Also, it was in the great novel that we're reading, so it was naturally occurring and organic.
-I learned, well, not much from this process, other than the fact that I really like this novel, the ideas behind it, and attempt to get students to adopt pretentiousness and creativity with a vigorous sense of excitement.
-I learned that students are closeminded about certain things, but if you show them what it can be like when done well, you can convince them of the virtue of your mission.
- No missed opportunities yet.
- I would think about giving the students a voice in the process, but sometimes a teacher must guide a students to knowledge that they are initially unwilling to adopt, and may miss upon initial inspection.

Action research running blog

"A-HA!"
I think that I finally had a good moment with the research process results that I'm trying to implement. 1st trimester, I didn't feel as if I got a good shot at effectively implementing all of the things that wanted to, due to a couple of factors--especially the fact that we re-worked the curriculum to make it more accessible and meaningful to students. In doing so, however, we took more time in implementing our writing process and getting the kind of results that I was hoping for. Now, however, we are doing, with the 10B stuff, what I thought we'd be doing in 10A - which is making the writing process clearly-defined and in line with the research plan I had developed earlier. I had one student literally say "I like the way that we did that essay, with the feedback. We should do that every time." And that is, indeed, the plan. I'm grading the essays currently, so my next entry will be speaking on the results. It may be close to the F2F for the January meeting, though, so heads up.