Holiday Vacation

The holiday vacation just began and I am enjoying it so much! I am looking forward to three full weeks of family fun, reading, writing, and just lazying around! Of course, a few days will be spent lesson planning, but I enjoy that!

This holiday I decided to read a classic I know little about, Bleak House.  I chose it after reading Dan Simmons' Drood, which was a fascinating horror story based on Dicken's unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. So far, I'm really enjoying it.

Today I also went out to the gym with my husband and road the stationary bike, very slowly, but I road it and I probably worked off about a hundred calories, better than none I guess. Now we are watching movies next to the Christmas tree.  All is good!

Until the Cow's Come Home: Information Writing and Writer's Workshop

Reflecting on Writer's Workshop

My students and I are completing a third-grade Lucy Calkins Writing Workshop information unit. My middle school decided that the whole school would begin with the 3rd-grade unit as a way of laying a foundation for information writing and writing workshop, recommended to us by a Writing Workshop "expert." I was skeptical until a pre-assessment on demand writing piece revealed students' writing ability as being about 3rd to 4th-grade level as defined by the Lucy Calkins’ student anchor papers.

My seventh graders have been working on this information book project for about two months.  FOREVER! It went faster with my three of my classes because I see them daily. However, it is difficult with my sixth period because I see them every other day; the continuity of a unit is constantly at risk. I have to review far more often than I do with my other students.

This project began with developing writing from a list “expertise” lists students  had brainstormed.  They then practiced writing and shared about their topics. Next the kids learned to organize a draft using a table of contents as a structure; revising it several times.  We examined many kids’  information books using  them as “mentor texts.”  The students wrote a rough draft in their notebooks, making small tables of contents for each chapter.  We also discussed using different types of text structures within our information writing books: comparison/contrast, boxes and bullets, pros and cons, and similarities and differences.  We discussed elaboration techniques and adding details.  

We discussed plagiarism etc. previous to collecting research for our books in the lab. However, we did not have the opportunity to discuss how to incorporate the research into the text the way I would have liked. The third grade Calkins unit did not include adding research and as important as I think it is, at this point I have to be satisfied with what we have done so far. Incorporating evidence into the text is an important seventh-grade standard, but we have to move on;  the rest of my classes are beginning narrative writing, and this period is getting further and further behind.

As far as Friday's lesson went, I thought it went well, especially because my student teachers were there to help me conference with pupils.  This way, every child gets an opportunity to discuss their writing. It’s also always important to have students share their writing, especially with each other, but I don’t do that enough. I always seem to run out of time. I need to make time, though, because one of the best ways to become a better writer is to read your writing out loud to someone else. We will have to work on that with the narrative unit.

As a teacher, I find it is hard to decide what to include and what to let go of….like today, I had to forego grammar and vocabulary to make sure we had time to review the overall expectations of the information book, even though I’ve gone over everything before, the lack of continuity required a quick review. It was okay, but really, the kids need a further lesson on adding citations correctly; we’ll see if they can add any and maybe we can individually help some of them.  In fact, everything  I went over I have taught them before, but not all of them have applied the strategies successfully, etc. I expect about half of them to turn their books in on Tuesday, the due date.  The rest I will have to nag, support, tutor, etc. to get these second rough drafts completed. Hopefully, the lab will open up before Christmas so we can get the books published! It’s so important to finish these projects. I will be so glad when we have more technology at this school.

I like the Writer’s Workshop theories and strategies.  I am hoping to get more training so I can implement the units more successfully. Meanwhile, I will continue to write and talk about teaching until the cows come home.

I just earned my 5000-word badge! Wahoo! I'm still behind on my word count for National Novel Writing Month, but I'm thrilled to be participating!  Today I had a wonderful time writing with eleven other NaNo participants at a Southern California Write-In. It's lots of fun writing with others, but I was especially pleased when my daughter, Nikki, showed up to work on her novel.  The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.  Last year I wrote my first book because of my participation!  I was thrilled!  I was also pleased to participate with my 8th-grade students from Thomas. A. Edison Middle School.  They all wrote between 10,000 and 50,000 words! It was a fabulous experience for us all. I encourage everyone who loves to write to engage in NaNO and all English teachers to inspire their students to join them! It's an incredible writing experience. 

Today I was honored to spend some time talking about teaching and learning with two "novice teachers" from UCLA who will be working with my sixth-period students. I am not used to having other teachers in the classroom, so I admit I am nervous and today when they visited me during my conference period, I think I talked way too much.  I am reflective about my teaching, so I talk about it to anyone who will listen. Hopefully, I didn't chase them away.  All of my students are wonderful with their unique characteristics, but I think my sixth-period will be especially receptive to young teachers from UCLA.  One of them already asked the young lady a slew of questions on Tuesday, their first day with us.

Tomorrow the sixth-period students will continue typing their information writing books. These are little expert texts that they have been working on for several weeks.  Since I don't see my sixth-period every day, they are the one group I share with another teacher, they are behind with their writing.  I am a little anxious about this and I hope I can keep them interested in this project. Tomorrow they will be using the internet to research. I've decided to conduct this differently with this class. Instead of letting them print the information, I'm going to give them five index cards and have them record one quote/note per card, one for each chapter of their book. We'll see how this works out.  I decided to try this after I noticed a couple students' books seem a bit too Wikipedia and not enough expert student. More on this tomorrow!

OREO Cookies, Close Reading, Saturday School, and Rakim

I found this activity for utilizing Oreo cookies to teach students about close reading on Pinterest and decided to try it out on my Saturday School classes.  (Here's the link http://www.stuckeyinsecond.com/2014/11/close-reading-with-oreos.html.

You may wonder why I even would try a second-grade activity out on a group of eighth-grade students, and if you are wondering, then I would ask you to consider the idea of Saturday School, and then, perhaps you will understand. Sooooo, the first group of kids, were pretty bewildered, like Stukey's second graders, as to why I was offering them Oreos and telling them to eat them up.  A couple cool ones refused altogether. Possibly, taking cookies from a teacher in the morning on a Saturday seemed suspicious and weird to them, or maybe they just don't like Oreos. The second group was more amenable to the activity, and maybe I was a little better at "teaching" the activity and explaining the metaphor. Even the GATE kids seemed to appreciate the idea when it led to a close reading and response writing of Rakim's "Paid in Full." I was more prepared and relaxed the second session (yes, teaching is a stage art), and as a result, the kids seemed more connected.  One student, who is the bane of his regular English teacher, walked to the gate with

me and filled me in on his favorite rapper lil King g, who he said lived a similar life to Rakim and learned some hard lessons.

All of this led me to a lot of reflection on this lesson.  First, I am going to use the Oreo Close Reading activity with my seventh graders on Monday. I have tried everything, and they refuse to reread, maybe this will help. Secondly, teaching isn't any different on Saturday,  than any other day, you have to be prepared...actually overprepared, which is difficult in someone else's classroom, which is just how it is with Saturday School.   But dang, last week was a tough one with grades due and so much every night and Saturday School was at the bottom of the list at the bottom of the other list.
I'd read the lesson plans, I had the materials, but you never know about the technology, and of course, I left a cable in my classroom that I had to send kids to fetch.  I also didn't feel the first group was connecting, so I decided to play the youtube video because the lyrics seemed positive, and I thought the video must be good and suffice it to say, it wasn't such a great idea. Some editor decided belly dancing and moaning should be added to the beginning of the video. Of course, I turned it off. Still, with the second group, I knew where to stop and start the video so the somewhat inappropriate stuff was cut out.

Good teaching sometimes means taking some risks at the moment. I'm glad I played the video with the second group. I wish I had prepared more and watched it ahead of time.  I know better, but I'm not perfect. I also still think Oreo cookies are good with any age group, even kids who think they're too cool for them. They won't forget the Close Reading Oreo Metaphor anytime soon.   They also learned about an awesome hip hop artist who changed his life for the better. A good lesson for any kids, whether they live in the inner city like my students, or in suburbia like someone else's.  And, the teacher learned something too.

Planning, planning, planning

Yes, we all should be resting and relaxing right now, but I'm one of those weird people who finds writing lesson plans and units invigorating and even entertaining! So this year I purchased a lovely plan book that I saw on Pinterest.  Unfortunately, it is so beautiful I am afraid to write in it. Yes, that's my name on the front with my beautiful sunflowers and one of my favorite quotes! I also ordered two tablets with my name on them because I need them!!! I am always writing notes to other teachers etc t, so it is nice to have some personal stationery.  The planner also came with these awesome fine-point markers for planning in color.

I  also plan using planbook.com, which is an awesome on-line platform that students, parents and whoever can log into and view a teacher's lesson plans. You have to check it out yourself to see how state-of-the-art it is.  You can organize your classes by color, time, just about anything. You can add images, links, resources, documents. For the standards crazy people, you can even add those that coordinate with your lessons. Editing the lessons is easy and can be easily bumped to the next day or week. You can plan daily or long term, all this for just for $12.99 a year.

Here's the thing,  being an oldster, I still need to write things down in a plan book. So I end up using both the online platform and the written version.

The important thing is...a teacher has to plan. You must know what you are going to do from minute to minute with middle school kids. If you think you can walk in and teach from a text book or by the seat of your pants, you are so wrong, those kids will eat you for Breakfast in the Classroom, believe me, you won't make it to lunch. More importantly, the students will have lost significant, irretrievable learning time.