Week 8 is here (and gone)

It was early in week 8 when I started this blog entry.  Now it's Friday, and it's gone.

It's hard to believe that most of first quarter is in the books.  Where did the nine weeks go?  It feels like we've hardly even started.

Here's a quick update of what we're up to in my classes.

Lit & Lang 9R

This is my remedial reading class.  Students are placed in here based on their NWEA test scores.  This class is designed to intervene with students who struggle with reading and, hopefully, to equip them with the strategies to get them to pass the state reading test next year.

A few weeks ag] we finished up our independent reading book and blog.  I had the students select one book that seemed interesting to them.  I gave them total autonomy here.  I told them they had to pick a book that they could read in two weeks.  Since they'd be reading it for the next two weeks, I told them to be sure to pick a book that they were really interested in.

When possible, I offered suggestions: They Thirst (by Robert R. McCammon for one of my budding horror aficionados), The Vampire Tapestries (one of my favorite YA series), Ender's Game, The Hunger Games (of course), and Memory Boy (from one of my former professors at BSU) to name a few.  The rest the students selected on their own.

In addition to reading the novels, they were charged with creating a blog devoted to the book.  For their blog, they had to create pages for chapter summaries, outside connections, characters, and creative assignments.

The blogs were okay.  They weren't awesome.  They did - for the most part - what I had asked of them.  Some got a little carried away and went over the top.  But most stayed well between the lines and a few did barely enough to pass.

Here are a few of the blogs

Thirteen Reasons Why

Cracked

The Prisoner of Azkaban

Such is life with remedial reading.

What did blow me away, though, was how well the students read independently.  The books were always with those kids and they were reading them.  And most of them, finished the books.  For struggling readers, I'm happy with that.

Beginning last week we have returned to basic critical reading skills.  We read several of Poe's tales in honor of Halloween.  In addition we have been working on workbooks honing their critical reading skills.

To change things up, yesterday I read Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter" to the class, and we stopped at key points in the story to discuss main idea, context, inference, sequence, facts, and conclusion.  All in all, it was a great day.  I think we'll end the week doing the same thing with "Beware of the Dog."

College Comp II

They presented their Sticky-Note Book Report book talks last week and this week.  I think this has become on of the best units I've ever done.

I stole the idea originally from Judy Sheridan from EGF and the RRVWP.  Instead of having her students do the boring old book report, she had her students read books and then past a specific number of Sticky-Notes in them.  Then they turned in their entire book, replete with Sticky-Notes in to her.  She paged through each book and read the notes instead of reading a traditional report.

I loved that idea and wanted to use it.

But it sat dormant until one day when I had my College Comp II students working in the media center in lab 106.  On my way there I thought, wouldn't it be great if I randomly pulled books from the shelves and handed one out to each student and said, "Read this.  Then in a week turn in a six page research paper based on the book."

Well, that's not exactly what happened, but that idea planted a seed in my mind.  I eventually decided to have students write down three things they're very interested in and one thing they absolutely don't want to read about.  From that list I assign them one of the books from my classroom library (usually.  Though our media center helps me out greatly here too).

As students read their book, I had them do the Sticky-Note Book Report.  But I wanted to have them present their books too, so I had them give a 10 minute 'book talk' about it.

Then after a year or so, I felt like it needed something.  I decided to have them write a 'traditional' book report on their book, but I found a way to work in one thing I've always wanted students to write: a hyper-text essay.  So I had students each create blogs for their books and write a hyper-text book review.

Initially, most groan and complain, but once they get into their books (and some include Night, The World is Flat, Freakenomics, Lies My Teacher Told Me, The Last Lecture, Imagine, The Invention of Air, The Devil in the White City, Pirates on the Prairie, Into Thin Air . . . just to name a few), they are usually fully engaged.  Better yet, often I have former students text me and tell me that they are reading some of these in college.  Or they send me recommendations of books that they're reading that I should include in my classroom library.

Here are some of the hyper-tex blogs from this year -

The Ghost Map

The Devil in the White City

Mind Wide Open

Now we have turned out attention to one of the best and most meaningful assignments of the year: the multi-genre research paper.

This is an extension of the braided essay which they wrote last year.  Interestingly enough, I've had two students mention that they have had to write braided essays recently in college.  That's awesome.

So far the topics for the papers have been quite interesting (as they always are): Harry Potter, Horoscopes, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Walt Disney, the double life of a student's grandfather (he was a lead engineer at Arctic for work but he was a cowboy on his spare time), football, the history and evolution of film, Tim Burton . . .

I can't wait for the finished products.  As always, they will be powerful.

College Comp I

This class is a machine.  It's not yet the end of first quarter, and we are already onto our film review (the fourth theme).  We usually don't get to that until second quarter.  So that means we might actually get to write and extra theme or two!

Not only have we written four themes, but we have already read two novels (Fahrenheit 451 and the first novel for their research paper).  Next quarter will bring The Element and the braided essay.  So by the time the semester ends, they will have read four books and written at least 8 themes (which if you count the various drafts I have them do for the early themes, they will have written more like 18 pieces).