The First Week

The first week is in the books.  It wasn't even a full week (just four days thanks to Labor Day), and by the end of the week, I was exhausted.

Just wait until next week.  Even after 15 years it takes a bit of time to get back into the swing of things.

So far my classes are excellent.  But there is always a honeymoon period where the kids are happy to be back in school and to see their friends and to have structure to their days (whether they like to admit this or not, I think it's true).  So we'll see if they are still so motivated to work and listen at the mid quarter.

Here is a breakdown of my classes

First block - Lit and Lang 9R.  This is a class focused on boosting reading levels.  We don't cover the same exact curriculum as the traditional Lit & Lang 9 classes.  Instead we focus on reading strategies and skills.  Counting my summer courses and last year, this is now the fourth time I've taught a class focused on boosting reading levels.  And let's really be honest with what that means: boosting reading scores on the MCA test.

So we focus on some core skills: main ideas, facts, context, inferences, conclusions, and sequence.  I have some booklets that I go over with them that mirror the reading test.  However, I try not to just prep them for the test.  So we do plenty of reading and writing.

We have four main parts of the curriculum.  First, I have a set of differentiated booklets with specific books devoted to each skill differentiated by reading level.   Second, I have several anthologies of short stories and articles that also cover those core skills.  Third, I have the regular 9th grade textbook from which I take samples and work to model reading strategies as they pertain to those core skills.  Finally, we have a special 9th grade reading textbooks that includes extra reading strategy help.

So far so good.  I began the class by giving them an assignment to judge their understanding of main idea.  I was pleasantly surprised by the results.  So the second week we'll focus on a new strategy (facts) while still covering main idea.

But I try to always be aware of using the skills of main ideas, facts, context, inferences, conclusions, and sequence when we encounter them, whether in the readings or in the real world.  As I believe that is what successful readers do (even if they are not conscious of it).  So we have some practice on specify.

To help model this, I usually start each class period with some kind of cartoon or video that requires the use of those skills to fully comprehend.

On the second day of class, I have this cartoon stenciled on my board so I asked students to use the skills we cover in class to arrive at the main idea.

Here is the cartoon:

As we looked at it, I tried to model the core skills to help them arrive at the main idea.  For example, What facts are obvious in the cartoon?  What is the sequence of images that is important?   (the title of the shot "Bob's Pets," the fishbowl with the piranha inside, and, of course, the cat with the two wooden, peg legs)  Then I asked them what inferences we could make from the context clues.

Then I asked them what conclusion about the main idea could we draw?  Many, but not all, were able to 'get' the humor: that the cat had its legs chewed off by trying to get at the piranha.  

Now there are some uncertainties here.  If the piranha was always in the bowl on the small table, how did the cat stick its paws in?  Great point.  That's impossible.  The piranha must have been moved there after the cat's misshaps.  Of course, some students didn't know what a piranha was (I will always remember the That's Incredible episode where they lowered a side of beef into a tank full of piranhas and then pulled it out after 60 seconds with all the flesh stripped from it).  Students were also able to make connections to some of the modern horror movies featuring piranhas.

Yesterday, we examined this Farside cartoon, and we tried to do the same thing:

Students used those core skills to get this one almost right away.  I'm sure the dialogue was a great clue to them.  A few even chuckled at this one.  And that's an accomplishment.  I've had teachers in my room who flat out fail to get this Farside!

Next week, I'll put this one up - minus the dialogue - and ask the students to use the core skills to see if they can come up with their own caption.  Then I'll show them Gary Larson's caption, and we'll discuss how their versions compare to his.

From there I'll work in a few of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes comics as well as some famous pictures.  Ultimately, we work up to analyzing videos and commercials.  Here is one of my favorites to show them and then discuss how they get sucked in to it.




In addition to that, we will begin reading short stories.  The students have already started on "The Most Dangerous Game" and we'll discuss that on Monday.

College Comp II

We are two chapters into Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation.  We have had some great discussions.  The students are working at trying to devour the text, which is no simple feat as it's packed with statistics and analysis.  But it's the type of text they'll encounter again and again in college, so it's a good place to start.

I have also assigned their second essay, an exploratory essay, which will be due Monday.  To be honest, they are struggling with this one.  That is due to the fact that I won't tell them what to write about (something else they will encounter in college).  I simply said, "Find something you've always wanted to know more about and explore that subject in a 4-6 page paper."  I'm intrigued by the different ways students do this.  I expected my to just summarize a topic, but most don't.  Most actually really find something interesting to explore and discover something really engaging.  And then they model that in their writing.  That's what I love about this essay.

Next, we'll finish The Dumbest Generation, and I'll give them a choice for their next essay: they can either write a traditional paper on the book or they can create a multi-media project that refutes Bauerlein's claims.

College Comp I

So far we have been discussing what makes effective writing.  Then I had them do some descriptive writing, namely describe their favorite time of the year.  But here is where I tried something new (something I got from Penny Kittle's fabulous Write Beside Them): after their first draft, I asked them to go back and revise the draft by annotating it with observations about what they were trying to accomplish in their writing.  This included what kind of lead did they begin with?  How did they effectively use language to show instead of tell?  What do they want to change after listening to their classmates' examples?  Did they hit as many sense as possible?  What type of specific details did they use?  Could they use more proper nouns to paint a more vivid picture?  Finally, I asked them to search and note any copy editing errors.  Ultimately, I want them to start thinking metacognitively about their writing.  I took the first page of my essay "One of Those Teachers" and modeled the process for them.

Once this happens a couple of times on their descriptive drafts, I'm going to ask them to build a narrative around one of their descriptive drafts.  Then I'm going to have them use tag board to chart their writing process (which we talked about for the first time on Thursday) and cut their rough draft into sections and analyze it's progress toward a final draft on the tag board.

I've never tried this before, but I think it's important.  I want students to think about writing the way real writers do.  I don't want them to just crank out essays.