What's Going on in 205 - End of First Quarter edition

That was a quick 45 days.  A fourth of the year is already over.  Hard to believe.

Here is a look back at where I ended with each class.

Lit & Lang 9

We finished our Sticky-Note book report and blogs devoted to those books.  This assignment is simple: go to the media center and select one book that you can read within two weeks.  I give them most of 10 days in class to read it, as well as annotate it and set up their blogs.

As they read their books, they must use 25 Sticky-Notes to annotate it.  Even my College Comp students struggle with this, yet it's a vital skill for all college students and active readers in general.

Also, as they read their books, they begin to set up blogs.  Each blog has a page where students summarize chapters, map characters, create creative assignments based on events in the book, and write a 75-100 word final review of their book.

When our principal observed us as part of one of my teacher evaluation walkthroughs, he came in when I was trying to get the class to set up a one of their creative assignments.  I wanted them to type in key words, names of characters, the title of the book, and the author's full name into wordle and then generate a world cloud.  Then I was going to have them take a screen capture of it and put it into the "Creative Assignments" page.

However, as so often happen with technology, Wordle needed students to update their java download.  This was not easy.  And it only worked with Safari or Firefox, not Chrome.  What a mess!  And when Mr. Zutz was there to see it all.

However, it gave me a chance to problem solve in front of the kids and work individually with them.

Then I gave them extra time to generate a second Wordle a upload that to their blogs as well.

As Mr. Zutz walked around and asked students what they thought of their books and the overall process, he posed an interesting question to me - how does the level of engagement differ from this approach to a more traditional reading of a novel in class.

That is what we will do second quarter when we read Kaffir Boy as a class.  I find the Sticky-Note book report appealing because it allows students, and usually my Lit & Lang 9R students struggle with reading, to select their own text, which I encourage them to make one that is interesting to them.   And while I won't say that all kids enjoyed their books, many told Mr. Zutz that they did.  Sometimes that's all you can ask for before dissecting and studying a novel in the more traditional approach of high school English classrooms, which often, or so I think, kills the love for reading in students.

College Comp

Students finished their first novel and took a test on it.  This week they will write a formal research paper on it.  They are also finishing their rough draft of their theme #4 (a braided essay on a passion or expertise).

Their braided essay is comprised of four essays: a personal history narrative related to their passion/expertise, a how to essay related to an aspect of their passion/expertise, a best moment narrative related to their passion/expertise, and finally a epiphany moment personal analysis related to their passion/expertise.

The trick will be getting students to braid it all together.  But that's also the best part.


College Comp 2

Students spent last week watching two films (Inception and Crash).  Both of these films illustrate what Steven Johnson writes about in his book Everything Bad is Good For You.  The theory in particular that we analyze is Johnson's argument that today's TV shows and movies are more complex than any previous films; thus, audiences today are more savvy (and intelligent) in that they are able to follow multiple plot threads (as in Crash) or make sense of a story without "flashing arrows" (as in Inception).  Johnson defines "flashing arrows" as the clues directors give audiences (such as George Lucas playing the "Imperial March" when Vadar appears or Steven Spielberg foreshadowing the shark attacks in Jaws with John Williams' classic score).

Then I just introduced students to the last set of theories from Johnson that we will analyze: "probing" and "telescoping."  Students will choose one topic and then analyze how it works in their lives.

Probing - according to Johnson - is really just the scientific method.  And we all use it every day of our lives, especially when playing games.  Probing includes four levels: probing (simply testing out an activity or theory); hypothesis (after testing out an activity, you inevitably get feedback from it.  This feedback causes you to rethink your initial testing out of an activity.  Then you form a hypothesis - when I do this, X happens.  To avoid X, I now must do this instead); re-probing (here is where you take you hypothesis and apply it and then re-evaluate it yet again); and finally re-thinking (where you come up with a new set of strategies to keep moving forward in an activity or game).

Here is an example -

Think of riding a bike. For probing, you might ride fine with your dad holding on to the seat.  However, as soon as he lets go, you crash.  Thus, you form a hypothesis in which you take off from the curb and bike a short distance to your father.  As you do this, and inevitably crash before reaching him, you begin to reprobe your skills.  If you pedal steady and slowly, you won’t tip so soon. If you concentrate on reaching your father, you won’t panic as easily.  This works great, until your father begins backing up as you bike closer to him.  Now you panic and start to pedal faster and begin to wobble.  Now you must rethink your methods to deal with this new obstacle.

Telescoping - according to Johnson - is mastering an activity that requires dozens of smaller skills that we once had to master.  But now that we have them all mastered, we take them for granted.  This is one way to argue against those who refer to our culture as being "dumbed down."  Here is a great way to see telescoping in action - get a new phone.  You will instantly see all the old skills you had mastered to familiarized yourself with your phone were taken for granted as those old skills don't work quite as well with your new phone.  However, give yourself a month and you'll be using your new phone quite effectively . . . until you have to upgrade  Then the telescoping process repeats itself.

Here is an example -

Task: Sending a Tweet (with a picture) using a hashtag correctly from my iPhone

1. I must know how to turn the iPhone on (believe me, this is not an easy task. Just observe a Baby Boomer).

2.  I must know how to unlock the screen.

3.  I must be able to locate the Twitter app on my phone.  (just try asking a Baby Boomer to download the app!)

4.  I must be able to log in to my Twitter account.  

5.  I must be able to know what icon to click on in order to be able to compose a tweet.

6.  I must then have something interesting to tweet about the picture.

7.  I must be able to click on the icon that allows me to access my pictures.

8.  I must be able to select the picture I want to tweet (again, just watch a Baby Boomer trying to do this).

9.  I must be able to say something interesting about the picture in fewer than 140 characters.

10. I must be able to think of an interesting hashtag that will be informative and funny to others.

11.  Again, I must do all of this in fewer than 140 characters.

12. I must revise the initial context of my Tweet as I have to trim it by 14 characters.  That means using “U” instead of “you” and “&” instead of “and.”  This also takes for granted that I know all of the SMS lingo and abbreviations.

13.  Finally I must click on the Tweet icon so it is added to my timeline.

Now any millennial can do that under 10 seconds.  But when you stop and look at the actually skills necessary to perform that process, it really isn’t as simple as we think.  That’s how we all use the skill of telescoping every single day.

And now second quarter is here.  I can't wait to get started.