Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Opening the Lines



The "Questions/Comments Box" is a great way to give students the opportunity to communicate with me privately, anonymously or through the safe distance of note writing. With each of my classes at 32 students, it can be quite difficult to carve out the time to talk to individual students about their problems or answer their individual questions.

Usually the requests are pragmatic: "Can you move me away from Sandie? She talks too much" or "Can I be the pencil keeper next grading period?"

Sometimes, though, students write down more serious problems they're having with other students or questions they had about the lesson. The Questions/Comments Box frees me from dealing with difficult situations in the heat of the moment, and frees the students by giving them the feeling they're taking action without throwing a punch. When a student starts to complain in front of the whole class about another student, I simply say, "Write it down and put it in the Questions/Comments Box." This also helps with documentation if the situation is serious.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Circle Share

"Circle Share" is a great way for my students to build community within my classroom, take pride in the work they've done and honor the work of other students. The way it works is the students move their desks out of the way (we have to discuss this before hand, of course) and gather in a circle on the floor. If they're taking too long to circle up, I count backwards from five or ten and if anyone is still standing or talking after I get to one, they lose a participation point.

Once we're in the circle, the students share a single line of their writing. I tell them it doesn't have to be their "best" line to make them feel safe. We also discuss my expectations, which are that no one will comment, either positively or negatively, after each person reads. I'll just say "Thank you, -----" and we'll go on to the next person.

As we get more comfortable - and this never happens in some classes - we'll be able to comment both positively and with kind suggestions. That can't happen, though, until everyone feels safe and secure in the classroom.

Here are some of the lines that were read on Friday:

"My place in the family is second youngest child."

"I heard my mom screaming for me, and then I ran."

"I have a lot of dogs."

"I got baptised on September 13, 2009 in the chapel at Landmark Independent Baptist."

"It always smelled like fresh baked cookies, too."

"About six or seven years ago we had a dog named J.R., but we just called him Jay."

"It smelled really good in there until the dog came in from outside."

"And then he was being really bad about it all."

"One day his face will fade away into nothing."

"I moved and milk got all over me."

"My favorite thing to do after school is play football."

"I couldn't wait to move into our first, real house."

"I was so scared, my hands were shaking."


After everyone shared around the circle we did an "acknowledgement" - a special, funny clap for the whole group. I told the students how excited I was to read these pieces as they turned from freewrites or brainstorming to actual drafts. They seemed excited, too, and that's the idea, after all.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Obama Addresses School Children

Critical Conventions

Why Do We Have to Use Punctuation?

Tomorrow I plan to teach my introductory lesson to English mechanics' conventions (punctuation, capitalization, spelling, etc.) from a critical, historical perspective - the why of conventions, rather than just the "the rule is _______; accept it" approach. I hit the "why" from two angles: one, why do conventions improve communication, and two, where (historically) did these conventions come from. My source of information is the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss - a fabulous resource I use throughout the year.

I created the PowerPoint presentation above last year. Tomorrow I'm planning to open the lesson by handing out a completely punctuation-free document to the students. I'll pretend all's well and ask them to read out loud. My prediction is that they'll try, find they can't decipher its meaning well, and buy in to the lesson. I'll couple the PowerPoint presentation with references to the Context Timeline to help students grasp the historic significance of punctuation. Understanding from where the somewhat arbitrary rules come will (hopefully) help the students become more conscious of their use of punctuation, and thereby more conscious writers and editors as we learn these rules throughout the year.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Help Yourself




As the year goes on, I get tired. The more systems I have to ensure the kids' self-sufficiency, the better.


This bulletin board, for example, allows the kids to pick up any of the regular hand-outs we use throughout the year. I stapled file folders to the wall and put copies inside for the kids to take as needed. There's a list of sensory words, synonyms for color words, transitions, reading logs to chart their reading, and sponge/exit slips. (The sponge/exit slips are papers with five blocks for each day of the week on either side of the paper. The students do entering and exiting activities each day on these sheets and turn them in on Friday.)


The "Help Yourself" bulletin board minimizes the housekeeping I'm responsible for and puts the responsibility on the students for keeping up with what's expected of them. It also keeps me organized and minimizes the files (or piles) I need to keep on hand.


Because I think it's important to put as much responsibility on the kids as possible, in order to allow them to be self-sufficient, I also have a reference bookshelf in the back of the room. Several dictionaries, thesauri and writing resource books are shelved there for the students to borrow as needed. Of course we have to rehearse how to take the books off the shelf and how to return them; this is middle school, after all.