my own experience

One of the English professors on campus conducts his assessments in a way similar to what Gallagher is talking about. He issues a mid-term and a final exam, both of which are essays. The assignment is for us as students to look at each novel we have read in that half of the semester and create our own thesis statement that emcompasses ideas from each book. So not only are we looking at the novel holistically, we are looking at the entire half-semester holistically and drawing out themes that are evident in all of the books. We then have to craft an entire essay proving the thesis statement that we created.

This approach scared the crap out of me the first time I encountered it, but once I became a little more confident and mulled my way through that first essay, I realized how much I gained from the assignment - because I had to utilize some deeper reading and comprehension in order to do it. I had to know each book well and how each book tied into the others.

I think our students at the middle/high school level may not be ready for that deep of reading or that much freedom in even creating their own thesis, but I think some of the principles are the same. Using some of those essential questions as essay exam questions will help our students learn how to walk through the unit/book always thinking more deeply than surface level stuff.

Field-Experience Lesson

Well since it has been over a week since I did my lesson at Nixa and I wrote a paper about it and was mad that I did this before realizing that all we had to do was post - I finally motivated myself to post on here.

My lesson was over the subject of satire so I wanted to give my students a variety examples of what satire is. I started my lesson with having them write down their ideas of what a typical fairy tale entails, and I introduced them to the movie Shrek to show them how it challenges the ideas of what consists of a fairy tale. Then I moved into political cartoons and we answered the questions: What does it say? What does it mean? What does it matter? and we explored how we could see satire in the cartoon. My final aspect of the lesson was introducing a piece of writing that contained satire.

I really enjoyed this lesson and I felt really good about it. My students were really well behaved and they seemed interested in most everything that we were discussing. There are, of course, things that I could change to improve my lesson. I think that using Shrek was a great idea because it got them into the lesson but when we reached the political cartoon they were just answering my questions and they didn't seem as interested in it as I thought they would be. I don't know if it was the topic of the cartoon (which was school shootings) or something else, but I definitely feel that I could have gotten more out of them. However, the piece of writing that contained satire and that we read aloud was really exciting. Basically the woman was using satire and saying that all the races should be segregated to end racism (obviously, her message was that to end racism we should all be integrated and embrace multi-culturalism). During the reading of the article and directly after the reading, there was so much good tension! Everybody had something to say about it and it really got them talking. I would have loved to incorporate the Socratic Seminar so that they could be able to discuss the article. Some were having difficultly seeing how the writer was being satirical so I was quick to point out some language that she used to reveal to us that she was using satire to get a greater message across.

I could really go on forever about this lesson. I was pleased with how it went but I definitely see ways that I could have improved. I have to say, though, that at the end of the lesson I was still uneasy if they really understood satire. I had them fill out exit passes (asking them for their own definition of satire and something they learned abou it) and those really confirmed for me that they did grasp what I wanted them to get from my lesson. I think that this teaching experience gave me so much more confidence in who I want to be as a teacher and just in my lesson planning - I really gained a lot of lessons from it and I wish that I could have just taken over that class for the rest of the unit. We were going somewhere that day.

Chapter 10...The Adventure Begins...

I liked his introduction of the final exam topic at the beginning of the unit. Why should we spring this tid-bit on them at the end? Why not let them know what they will be working on the whole time. They will be able to draw inferences, relations and correlations between information presented in class and the final exam topic. I like this idea.

We are giving them general focus, to be explorers in their knowledge. After all, Indiana Jones doesn't go exploring through ruins having no idea what he's there for! Why should our students trudge through books and lessons and have no idea what their goal is? Goals and focus provide a road-map for our students learning. Asking a billion questions along the way is how they learn. Asking a billion questions along the way is how we become effective, productive teachers.

~Stan

Witty-wig

"If I measure my student's thinking through shallow assessments, I will receive shallow thinking from them; if I measure their thinking through assessments that require deeper thinking, I will recieve deeper thinking from them" (211).

I think that backwards design is something that will only benefit me as a teacher. It makes our lives so much easier! I think that by understanding what we want the final product to be from what we teach will make us more likely to create better lessons that lead students to a particular and speicific area that we want them to reach. By having an ultimate goal in mind, we as teachers will be more focused and I feel like it would help us stay on track and be reminded of where we want to lead our students. One of the things that I enjoyed most when beginning to create my Conceptual Unit was choosing culminating activities. It makes me excited to see the kinds of products that my students would be able to create and know that each lesson will lead them to that point where they can show me what they have learned. I don't want my assessment to just be tests - I want them to be able to express themselves and what they've learned through so many different avenues, and in return, I am able to gain a greater idea if they have reached the place that I've wanted them to reach.

My Practicum

I had my practicum lesson on April 9th at Nixa HS. I felt like the teacher pretty much planned everything for me, so it wasn't really my lesson. What she basically had me do was talk to the students about what we would be doing in class, refer them were they could find the answers, and then walk around and answer questions the whole period. They were doing beginning work on research papers- learning how to cite, paraphrase, properly introduce a quote, etc. The source they were given was about multitasking. They had a packet of information that they were to refer to for the answers. There were only about 10 students that asked me questions. The rest were either too scared to ask me, or knew, or pretended they knew the answers. I didn't feel like I got to interact with my students a lot. I tried to incorporate my own ideas into the lesson, but the teacher pretty much had a set way that she wanted it done. I look forward to my student teaching where I can make the lesson mine.

A bit intimidating...

Okay, as if I wasn't intimidated enough by the thought of teaching, Gallagher's words on page 198 completely freaked me out. All of this talk about effective and ineffective teachers has led me to wonder...if you're an ineffective teacher, do you know it? Or are you just walking around in a haze thinking you're genuinely helping your students? I mean, I can think of some incredibly ineffective teachers right off hand, but the effective teachers are harder for me to come up with. Are effective teachers elusive creatures? Is effective just a relative term? Can you ever be effective for every one of your students? Is there enough time in the day to accomplish that??

Useful links - Bookmark These and be like ME!

These are some of the links that I have bookmarked in my search for both resources and information.

http://www.4teachers.org/tools/
This site has many links to other sites that are part of the whole. There is Rubistar for making rubrics (and tracking data), Assign-a-day for planning a class calendar, and others.

http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/general/glossary.htm
This site has is a glossary of English terminology, such as alliteration, allegory, etc.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm
Everyone's favorite, Grammar. this site has everything you ever DIDN"T want to know about Grammar.

http://www.coe.uga.edu/~smago/VirtualLibrary/index.html
Conceptual Units plans from Smagorinsky article.

http://www.literaturecircles.com/article1.htm
Explanation of Literary Circles

http://readwritethink.org/lessons/index.asp?grade=0&strand=0&engagement=0
Teaching Resources - Lesson Plans - from IRA and NCTE

http://citationmachine.net/
Never mess up on citations again. Have your students use this, but they will need to increase the font size to 12pt after formatting.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.geocities.com/mrsjacksonsclass/inspirations.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.geocities.com/mrsjacksonsclass/inspirationsquotes.htm&h=225&w=225&sz=23&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=yB9mny9mTPbMEM:&tbnh=108&tbnw=108&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dteacher%2Bsayings%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den
Poems, thoughts, saying for use in the classroom

http://www.education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+Activities/Notebook+Activities/
Lessons for use with a SmartBoard if you have one in your class, or know how to use it!

http://thereflectiveteacher.wordpress.com/2006/06/07/statement-of-educational-philosophy/
This has a bunch of resources in the side bars. Explore at your own will!

http://bunintheoven2008.blogspot.com/
My blog! Amazing isn't it. I actually have changed this around several times. It was initially set-up for our relatives to journey with my wife and I through our first pregnancy which sadly ended in miscarriage. I arranged it as an explanation so we didn't have to retell everyone the sad story over and over. Didn't really work. You can open this in one screen and listen to the music I have loaded through Finetune. It's handpicked by me!

I'm done procrastinating on my Educational Philosophy now. Back to work!

~Stan

My in-class lesson

I did my in-class lesson last week at Central with one of Alisa Boyd's classes, AP English IV. I've done a few lessons with this class before, so I was a bit familiar with the students and their strengths and weaknesses (Strengths: Some REALLY bright students who say very thought-provoking things in class discussion, some excellent writers. Weaknesses: Reading aloud and turning in their homework).

I started by discovering Springfield Public Schools blocks Youtube, so I couldn't show the movie clip I wanted. Naturally, I tested this before the lesson, so I had time to improvise. I had a song I could play for them on my flash drive (the lesson was on a "Dust in the Wind" theme), but apparently Alisa's sound card on her pc broke months ago and she's waiting for a new one. So I improvised - I just distributed the song lyrics and asked a student to read them aloud.

I think the strengths of my lesson were content and presentation. It was mainly discussion-based, and students really delved into the chosen texts. I had a lot of enthusiasm and no classroom management problems to speak of. The weaknesses were the opening and closing, especially the closing. I ran out of time at the end of my lesson and frantically tried to tack on the assignment as students were headed out the door - big mistake! I should have just asked them to turn in a quick note or something to check comprehension. Only two people in the class turned in the assignment the next day - a few were unaware they even had one. I think Alisa is just going to give extra credit for it. If it were my classroom, the next day I would have revisited the lesson and explained the assignment, and not penalized my students for my mistake. I find that students are pretty forgiving if you correct yourself, but if you hold on to your mistakes and pretend you're always right, they get tired of it.

But on the whole, I think it went well. Not as good as some I've done, but it certainly wasn't a train wreck. You definitely learn by doing, practicing, and I just need a lot of practice.

Chapter 10

So, I do my lesson plan next week and it's on deeper reading. Just so happens that this week we are reading chapter 10. Gallagher gives many great ideas in this chapter, so I am modeling my lesson plan activity after vocabulary predictions, with a little bit of my own twist. At first it started out well, but now I am feeling like it's not really coming together like I thought it would. I know I am probably just making it harder than it really should be, but everyone has done such a great job so far that I feel like it's a hard act to follow. I want my students to become familiar with deeper reading so they can tackle those hard texts that Gallagher talks about on page 197. On page 198, Gallagher talks about what a difference a teacher can/can't make in their students reading. I want to be one of those teachers that can make a difference. I also want to be finished and ready for my lesson on Monday.

I swear, this blog will be the death of me.

I read my reading this week. Honest, I did. And I even read it before Sunday. Wednesday, in fact. That is why I forgot to post this reading reflection on time. In an attempt to not procrastinate, I completely forgot about it. My intentions were good. My execution was poor. *sigh*

Anyway. After reading a few more posts on this blog, I thought I'd make this point clear:

GALLAGHER IS A DUDE.

If you thought he was a girl, don't feel bad. The name Kelly threw me too. But there's a picture of him on the back of the book. So seriously. Stop insulting his manhood. This could be an excellent lesson in researching before you teach, because appearances could be misleading. But I'll let you construct the objectives on that one.

But again, this chapter was fantastic - I loved his ideas for exploring theme. In my practicum, I definitely noticed this was something most high school students have trouble with. Frankly, I have trouble with theme. Sure, it's easy to pick up common motifs in a work, even abstract concepts the author may be communicating. But condensing the intricacies of an argument the author has spent an entire novel trying to create into a sentence? Not an easy task. But probably one of the most essential to true understanding.

The Book Gallagher Should Have Written

Okay, first Gallagher is a great writer and has a lot of great ideas. Chapter 8 in particular starts off with Gallagher explaining that he teaches mini lessons based on statemetns about the importance of reading. These categories like "reading makes you smarter" give Gallagher the opportunity to teach students answers to questions that they may already be asking. "How is this helping me?" would be a big question for me. I am definitely going to rip off this particular idea because it is a great one.

Now that that is out of the way I would like to see a book by Gallagher that gives information regarding culture and language differences between teacher and student. Magnolia High School in Anaheim California is where Gallagher is employed. This school has a 67% hispanic student population. Now, it is obvious to me that Gallagher is a successful teacher but what I really want to know is how he adapted to teaching students who belonged to cultures that he may have been unfamiliar with and who may have learned English as a second language. This is something that It think about because I don't plan on staying in Southwest Missouri, home of the Midwestern Anglos, forever. This is also a subject that has never been thoroughly discussed in my education classes. Can you imagine your first teaching job being at a school where you had no idea how to reach your students because of cultural differences? That is a scary prospect for me and I would like to know how he did it.

The Unfortunate Nature of My field Experience

First I would like to start by saying that overall mt field experience was a good experience. I was able to meet some terrific young adults at the Greenwood Laboratory School on our campus, and I feel like I made a good connection with some of them. My practicum has just come to an end and I feel like I really missed out. While I had a wonderful experience at Greenwood, I am envious that some of you were able to run an entire unit with your students and were able to truly prepare for what is in store for you. I wasn't able to have this experience because my practicum teacher was a student teacher who needed nearly all of the class time to prepare himself for his career.

I don't want to seem bitter because it going to Greenwood was pretty much my only option since the staff at Parkview were not willing to contact Dr. Franklin. I just feel like I'm behind because I wasn't able to use this practicum as anything but an observational experience. It tis a shame that these circumstances were the reality of my practicum but I tried to make the best of them. Since I couldn't do a whole lot of teaching, I tried to interact with as many students as I could while trolling the room during their group work. It was here that I met some of the students and was able to build a rapport with them. I also observed a debate class which was actually one of the more amazing parts of my practicum. In this class I was able to help the students refine their debate points and prepare for competition. This class which was actually taught by a faculty member at the school, was where I felt most comfortable.

When I finally was able to teach my lesson to the 10th graders, I was excited but was trying to recover from a pretty nasty case of food poisoning. The lesson on William Blake began as a complete disaster but evolved into a fairly decent lesson invoving group work and presentations. I wish that I had the opportunity to teach this lesson again for a little self vindication but alas, I will have to wait until I have my own class and can actually see if I'm going to be any good at this teaching thing. I guess when it comes down to it the only way to train for this career is to actually do it.

Emms Chapter 8 Reflection

I started this chapter thinking "oh great, more on 'Why should we read this book?'" I know that being an English teacher and getting your students to read for class is going to be something that we all are going to have to deal with. However I could not help but think of how when I was in H.S. I don't remember asking this question, or hearing one of my classmates ask why we were reading. I guess I never asked because reading the book was something that we were just supposed to do, it was assigned and it was for a grade. I never really stopped to ask what the bigger importance was for reading a particular book. The "questions" that "students think" that Gallagher give his readers on page 157 give more example of questions that I never heard and never thought, at least to my recollection. This lead me to think "Well, did I receive a quality education?" Was my education worth while and reflective like Gallagher was trying to get across?

After getting a couple of pages into the chapter, I started seeing and reading things that I liked.
On page 152, I like his list of key literary questions that he gives when dealing with certain literary aspects. 153 - "If there is real craft involved in the writing and this craft can be made visible to the students, their commitment to reading the work intensifies." I really like this quote. It reminds me of something I see every day walking back and forth to class. I pass through the Phelps Grove School parking lot. There is a classroom that is on that side of the building and in the window there is this block that has something along the lines of "Tell me and will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will always remember." This activity that he gives us here and the ones later on in the chapter are student involvement, meaning that they will always remember what it is that they learned with those activities. Those activities that I liked and will probably use in my classroom are: The Most Valuable Idea, Theme Notebooks, Casting Call (but with the baseball card take), and Anchor Questions (I love the list that he gives us).

Field Experience Lesson Reflection

Like Kendra, I just realized that I have to post a comment to my lesson for my field experience. Unfortunately, i dont have a creative title! While I have basically leading the class the past two weeks with the reading of To Kill a Mockingbird and their summary journals and discussion questions, last Friday was my actual evaluation lesson. It wasn’t a lesson that I created since we are already behind, but I was able to put a twist on it. The activity was called Mapping Maycomb and it was really neat. The students had to do some research in the book using their close-reading skills to find the 10 most common places in the book so that they could create a map of Maycomb County, the setting for the novel. We were able to get through the first part of the activity and I am going back tomorrow morning to do the drawing part. Friday was originally supposed to be my last day, but I want to finish this activity with the kids.

The lesson actually went over very well. I didn’t get anything thrown at me and my kids were surprisingly well-behaved. Dr. Franklin couldn’t believe this was the class that I had been talking about all semester! I completed the lesson for my first block class and it didn’t go over nearly as well as it did for my third block. I had a lot more rejection, but they still got the work done. In third block, my students were wonderful. They discussed as a class and with their partners and really got involved in the activity. Then, as a class, we went through the page numbers and descriptions of the places so that they had all the information to begin drawing tomorrow. All of the sudden the bell rang and they were off. I was able to keep the students engaged the entire time and this really surprised me.

The only downfall in my lesson was trying to get some of the students to work. While most of them worked well with their partners to get the work done, some of the students waited until we went over the information as a class and just “hitchhiked” the answers. This made me a little angry, but I didn’t exactly know how to fix it. It was only fair to give the answers to the students that were working the whole time, but didn’t have time to complete it, but then those “hitchhikers” just got the work given to them. Other than that, I thought that the rest of my lesson flowed well. I incorporated a PowerPoint, writing on the dry erase board, group work, partner work, discussion, and candy into one lesson…I think it was a success!

Overall, I feel like I did well with my lesson. I expected the worst, but it came out positive. My experience in this classroom has taught me so much about the diversity in a classroom and I am really appreciative of it. I went into my practicum thinking about how terrible it was going to be…and it was for the first couple weeks, but I eventually gained respect from my students and now I am having a hard time leaving. One of my students even told me they were going to miss me! I put that in my Sunshine Box!!

8

Gallagher teaches us to combat the infamous "why" by providing substantial ideas for classroom discussion, activities, and exercises. Combining several of her activities work together to prove the importance of a book. Most of the activities completed with the reading relate the book to the student's present life: society, family, environment. I am excited to bring these ideas into my classroom so that my students will understand the importance of the material after asking "why".

Gallagher does not address--
-teachers who pick dumb books with no relevance to society or the students' lives
-teachers who do not talk about the students' revelations about the reading especially if the student makes a wrong correlation
-what makes a book good enough to choose for classroom reading?

Chapter 8

I really liked this chapter, and I found some ideas that I can incorporate into my unit plan. One of the best ideas that I found in this chapter was the Theme Notebook, which I'm going to use for one of my culminating activities. Although the unit plans center around a central theme, it would also be beneficial to the students if they found other themes that exist in the book. Or, if you wanted to stick with just the theme of the unit plan, you could tell them that's the theme they need to find evidence of in other sources.

Another idea that I really enjoyed from this chapter wa the Hunt for the Author's Purpose. I like the idea of giving them a final assignment before beginning work on the book and then allowing them to work on that as the book progresses. It gives them more to think about as they're reading, which will help keep them focused.

I'm very glad to hear everyone seems to be having very good experiences with their practicum teaching. I am actually starting to feel a lot more prepared for teaching all thanks to the things I am learning from this class and my field experience. This weeks reading seems to have had the same affect on everyone. I think it is so important to be prepared to answer questions that students might ask about "why" they are reading certain things. I was impressed that Joseph said he was able to incorporate this in his lesson by showing the students the social class implications that The Great Gatsby had. Unfortunately I dont feel like I did very good at this in my lesson. Students should be able to begin reading a text with an idea of what they are going to get out of it before they even begin. This motivates the students to continue reading, even when they might get frustrated. I don't want to just force my students to read, I want to inspire them to like to read. I think this is the point of teaching English!

the mystery of the kitchen shears

My syllabus tells me that I have to post a reflection on my field experience teaching, so here it goes:

I taught last Wednesday for the last time at Springfield Catholic. The class recently started a unit on modernism and on Monday, she introduced them to the idea of imagism in poetry. Their culminating activity for this portion of the unit was to write a poem about a concrete object using imagery. So immediately my mind went to the think-aloud that we did as a class using "The Kitchen Shears Speak" poem.

So on Wednesday, I conducted a think-aloud with the class. I set up a powerpoint that fed in two lines at a time and asked them to evaluate it at each point. Sometimes they talked as a class, sometimes they talked with a partner, sometimes they wrote their thoughts and sometimes they just sat there and thought about it.

I remember our class coming up with some insanely far-fetched ideas about what this poem meant and high schoolers are no different. They had thoughts of an atom bomb, an abortion doctor, a slave, a hitman, etc. About two-thirds of the way through, someone suggested that maybe this wasn't about a person and so their scope of thought expanded greatly. There was a moment when a student suggested kitchen scissors but he didn't hold fast to it and abandoned the idea after a few more lines.

It was a lot of fun watching them explore the options as they were fed more and more lines. As soon as they thought they had figured it out, the next two lines didn't support it and they had to start all over. By the end, they said they were having fun with it but wanted to know the "dang title." They had some great discussions, they struggled over parts of the poem that didn't fit with their idea and they felt freedom to think out loud, even if they knew it wasn't correct - it was actually a lot more fun than I anticipated it being.

The one thing that I would do differently is a better wrap-up discussion. We talked about the poem in light of the title, with the given imagery and then I connected it to their assignment and transitioned them into a time to work on it. However, I should have conducted a better discussion about what they learned about analyzing poetry and thinking critically and supporting their opinions, etc. They all said they had a lot of fun, but a discussion like this might have helped them learn some literary techniques a little more solidly.

Overall, it was a great experience and definitely something that I would want to repeat in the future.

What I want my students to take with them!

I have my observed teaching coming up in my practicum and am preparing for that this week, so I'm thinking a lot about Gallagher's reflections regarding a teacher's focus on what we want our students to take from our teaching a specific novel. In the class I'm working with, we are starting Shakespeare's, "Julius Ceaser," so my mentor teacher asked me to do a quiz with the class that day. They will be prepared to take it from a movie they will watch the day before in class. So, I'm going to give them the quiz, then grade it with them in the class. I needed more activity to last through the class time, so I suggested to her that I do another activity, also, something that draws them into a discussion with me and also gives them group sharing. I'm finding things on line to share with them (a text) that will tell them about this time period, also, providing them with historical information about the era. I want them to see the similarities and differences between this time period and ours, but also am going to set up the discussion so they share their answers to three "Anchor" questions with each other that they answered about the text. As Gallagher says in the chapter eight, by asking these questions to set up the novel, it prompts them to look at the big ideas found in the work as they read.

My Anchor questions will be:
What I already knew?
What surprised me?
What questions do I have?

Hopefully this will prompt them to go into "Julius Ceaser" with an interest of meaningful reflection. What do you guys think?

The Real World Isn't That Real Anymore.

Reading chapter 8 of Deeper Reading makes me think of my lesson at Central on monday of last week, introducing The Great Gatsby. When I began to introduce the text, the first thing I did was ask them if they knew why we were going to read it. The answers I got are most of the ones listed on page 148, which shows how much those answers have been beaten into the students (all of the answers given were spoken like answers they were reciting, not answers they were excited about). I actually told them that those were all at least partially valid, but I introduced Gatsby as a text that dealt with social classes, upper and lower ends, and then we had a class discussion about social classes (which I felt like worked pretty well with that group). Point being, I tried to give them something they could relate to and get interested in, that was in the text. Not sure if this was the best approach or not, but I felt like it worked ok.

The Levels of Reflection part of the text is amazing (157). Of course we want students to be able to relate to text, to reflect on what the author's message means to them. The idea of gradually moving the reflection from self absorbtion to humankind is a great idea because then we are asking students to step outside themselves and think critically about the author's message in relation to the world.

Another thing I like about chapter 8 is the "Most Valuable Idea" section (159). Any time students are asked to read and find the most important idea in the text something important is happening, but especially when they are asked to relate it to the "real world" (such an over-used phrase). Seriously though, can we all agree as English teachers to stop saying "the real world" all the time? "Our society," "every-day life," or "modern times" seem much more applicable anyway.

Why do I have to read this?

I really like Gallagher's comment on page 151, "Though not every student will like every book, I want every student to see the value in what they are reading." I think it is important for every student to understand the value of what they are reading. Because in a student's mind just because it was a great literary work or because the author wrote a lot of good books isn't going to be of value to most students. That's why I like the chart that he made on pg 157. It is important that we help students relate the text that we have them read to themselves and to the outside world. Yeah it is good that students learn how to write and read and do arithmetic, but essentially don't we want our students to have a bigger picture of who they are and what they can do in regards to the world. I think that is a reason that I become a teacher because yes I want students to be educated, but I want them to understand that they can change the world. I also liked what he said about how we must create lessons that lead students to discover greatness. It is our job to help change school from being mundane and boring into an experience for the learners.