Mr. Herzog, an high school English Teacher, has graciously agreed to allow me to post his podcasts (The Fireside Book Chat) here. These podcasts have Mr. Herzog interviewing the students about books they’ve read. I will post selections which I believe would interest my 8th graders. For our first selection, I’ve chosen one which is a review of a perennial favorite, Crispin, The Cross of Lead by, Avi. Here it is.
Launching Writer's Workshop
We launched WW with half of our classes last week, 2 of which were mine. The same three 8th Grade teachers will introduce it to the other half of our sections next week. We used a PowerPoint and then immediately did a Quick Write to see what the students’ thoughts, questions, and impressions were. I followed up the next day with the “Stones in A River” activity to help them generate something personal and to help them pre-load their Writer’s Notebooks with some topics for pieces. I have already given my students a few handouts to paste into their Notebooks:
- What Can I Write About?
- What Should I Be Doing During Independent Writing Time?
- 100 Most Commonly Misspelled Word List.
It’s a little awkward having to divide my energies (half of the classes are having Reading Week while half the classes are having Writing Week) but I think that it’s wonderful to have the chance to tweak and improve my lessons from the first week during the second. I have not launched Writer’s Workshop in the past 12-13 years so I’m not sure I achieved the highest “teaching flow” I would have liked but it fairly well. The kids still seem a little confused about the concept. However, it was only the 4th day of school and all of us are just finding our rhythms, bringing the right supplies, etc. I’m curious to see how it’s going to work having to collect a finished piece every Friday and then not having Workshop again for another week.
I’m learning a great deal about teaching English already in these first two weeks from my (younger) teammates. They are very different from one another yet both are full of great ideas and tips. I can only hope to approach their level of proficiency in the next few months. It will be interesting to see what differences and similarities come up in our workshops because we all have an Advanced Language Arts section, but one teammate is co-teaching in his other sections and has perhaps less proficient students, mostly boys. My other teammate has a huge number of Gifted and Talented students and also teaches History. I seem to have nice, well-rounded, middle-of-the-road kids. It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to work with and grow from exposure to such talented educators in my new building.
I haven’t been able to use my ed tech skills much in the classroom yet as I am busy soaking up so many new facts, routines, curricula, and student names. I have signed up for some lab time and have some plans for the one machine in my classroom, which I’ll discuss later. Some people have come by for quick tips, and I always enjoy coaching other teachers in tech. Rumor has it I’m going to lose my interactive white board before I even learn how to use it, but I hope that won’t happen. We shall see.
My final thoughts are that the 51-minute periods go VERY quickly and it’s obvious that I’ll have to be supremely organized and prepared to make the most of every minute!
Always Grateful for The Weekend.
I caught a bad cold so I’m not operating at a very high level of efficiency, but here’s what I’m trying hard to enter into the gradebook and data systems on Saturday and Sunday:
- Reading and Writing Benchmark scores
- AIMS web fluency scores
- Grades for four different diagnostic and getting-to-know-you activities we did in the past 6 days.
Of course I’m also studying, reading, and planning for/honing next week’s lessons. I’ve signed up for some lab times in the next few weeks so I can’t wait to get started on Study Island, Tween Tribune and some other fun online activities.
Next week will be a READING week for periods 5 and 7. It will be a WRITING week for periods 2 and 4. Mastery class will continue working on reading skills and hopefully study our CSAP scores. We are still on non-fiction, launching Writer’s Workshop, and topic sentences. I will be starting on sentence types, text structures, and expository writing types.
No, I don’t have a life outside of work right now. Does any teacher who has just changed positions and started a new year? My friends give me a hard time about it—but the job simply has to get done and besides, I love my work. Thank you!
Expectations Assembly Today
Day 1 Sea of 8th Graders!
At Jenkins we begin the first day by pumping great music into the parking lot and having students grouped by grade outside. One grade at a time we enter the building for our official kickoff. It was a gorgeous day and the kids looked pretty sharp, too!
Additional Important Dates This Quarter
8/19 and 20 BENCHMARKS IN READING AND WRITING
8/23 and 24 TOWRE tests
8/26 Open House
8/27 No Students – Assessment Day
9/1 and 2 Maps Tests
9/4-6 3-Day Weekend
9/17 No Students - Teachers Go To School
10/7 Deadline for Late, Makeup, Extra Credit, or Absent work
10/14 Quarter Ends
10/15 Teacher Work Day
LATE WORK DEADLINES
Mark Your Calendars. After 4:00 p.m. on each of these days I will no longer accept late, extra credit, absent, or make-up work until a new quarter begins. I will continue to accept current, prompt, and on-time work until the actual end of each quarter. Q1: 10/7/10, Q2: 12/10/10, Q3: 3/4/11, Q4: 5/17/11
Study Hall / Tech Help Labs Available Starting August 24
STUDENTS AND STAFF
•Tuesdays After School 3:40 – 4:40
•Thursdays Before School 7:40 – 8:40
•Sign up the day before so I can plan to be here for you.
•Ask for a pass so you can be in the building outside of normal school hours.
•If I have to cancel a lab I will do my best to get it into the daily intercom Announcements ahead of time.
I Have a New LOCAL Google Voice Number 719.357.5837
I don’t want my students or their families to have to dial long distance. The old number still works, too, for a little while.
It's That Time Of Year Again Already!
So exciting! I’m in the midst of getting my new classroom ready. This is a beautiful building with great people in it from all indications so far.
I am sad that although this side school has gorgeous views of Pikes Peak and the Front Range, no outdoor light can find its way into my room (I’m on the interior). I’m making the best of that by putting up some sunny, calming scenery, bringing in plants, and adding 3 full-spectrum lamps. I have two great rockers from donations and Craig’s List. I definitely don’t have enough bookcases for my classroom library, but I am hoping for some castoff bookshelves from someone on staff once they all start returning. (Hardly anyone’s been around except us new transfers.) I have carpet for the first time in 10 years, so that should make my feet much happier when I’m on them all day and my ears much happier when the room is full of 30+ fourteen-year-olds. I will try to remember to post new pictures of my teaching home once it is finished.
I’m using the board for tracing/enlarging some puzzle pieces for a first-day getting-to-know-you activity. The truth is, I could have done this on any wall. I can’t wait to get started using that beautiful interactive whiteboard for some actual 21st Century lessons (not merely as a high-tech blackboard).
Walking Desk
I bought a used treadmill this summer and made my own version of a walking desk with materials I had around the house. I am determined that I will not continue to get more and more unhealthy just because I have to spend a lot of time working (usually in front of a computer). I am mostly up and about at school or when leading workshops, but my actual desk/screen time spent working outside of the classroom setting tends to be twice as long as that spent in it. It’s critical for me to reduce the number of hours I spend working so my life has a little more balance, yes, and I’m working on it. However, the job still has to be done and grading never ends… This desk is one of my solutions.
I tried a standing desk last year but it just made my legs and feet hurt so I disassembled it. I think this will work much better since it incorporates movement and regular shifting of weight.
This won’t get me in shape but it should slow the effects of too much sitting. It’s not that easy to concentrate, write, or type, even at a very slow walk, but I am getting better at it. For now I work a couple of hours at a stretch and then, when necessary, I put my little bar stool on the treadmill and sit awhile. Then I force myself to walk again. You can see that I am in the middle of several projects and didn’t bother to clean up before I snapped this photo. Sorry about that.
What do you think?
Home Reading Ideas
I’m starting to get my thoughts together about a home reading and response program for this year. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
R4
Read
Relax
Reflect
Respond
You’ll be keeping an R4 Journal to track your home reading. Later in the year I may offer some digital alternatives to the paper journal, too.
Why read at home? My job is to help you learn to read better and increase your enjoyment of reading.
Read & Relax: All year you’ll be reading something at home that you’ve chosen yourself and you really like. You can use the same material you are reading for one of your classes if you also spend time with it outside of class. It doesn’t have to be in book form but it does have to include text, not just pictures. Over the course of a month you should pick a mix of fiction and non-fiction. You should seek out a variety of genres and authors. You can read something like a web site, ebook, graphic novel, short story collection, poetry collection, news article, blog, paper magazine, e-zine, or newsletter. (MySpace- and Facebook-type sites don’t count unless you choose a longer writing piece on these sites—like a real story, poem, or article.) Audio books and podcasts are wonderful choices some of the time. Videos are not a good choice for R4. When you are deciding on a piece, remember that you must have parent permission to read or listen to it and the piece should have over 300 words. If you aren’t choosing a diverse mix of materials I may help by narrowing your options in the future. You will be responding to the pieces you read, so they need to have some meaning. I’d be happy to help you choose materials to read if you need assistance.
Note your time spent reading on the attached chart to track your R4. The chart will stay in your R4 Journal at all times. Your parent or adult guardian should initial each entry. A little reading per day is much better than reading hours all at once, but you can decide when it is best for you and your family — that’s real life. You need to read what amounts to about 20 minutes a day (or AT LEAST 140 minutes a week).
Reflect & Respond: You will use your R4 Journal for thinking and writing about what you read. You don’t need to respond to every single session of your reading but you will be responding to a whole piece or a collection of pieces. Below are a few prompts to get you started. I will give you more later. The R4 Journal activities are designed to get you to think deeply about your reading and the strategies you use when choosing pieces or while reading.
Here’s what I am looking for in R4 Journal responses:
- You should be spending at least 20-30 minutes a week on writing in your R4 Journal.
- You don’t have to respond to every piece; just respond at least once a week to something you read.
- It’s okay not to finish reading an entire piece in a week, especially if you are reading a long book. However, you need to write at least one reflection per week.
- You don’t have to write at the end of the week. If there’s a piece you want to write about in the beginning or middle of the week, go for it.
- You should use a half to a full page when writing a response.
- I expect your Journal responses to be thoughtful and legible yet I am not expecting a formal, super-neat essay.
- I will read your Notebook and respond to you, so leave me a little bit of room to do that (1/4 of a page or so).
- Sometimes I will share strong R4 entries with the class, so if one or your responses is private, mark it clearly.
I will be grading your R4 on whether you are completing your minutes and responses as described above. I will not be grading you on the number of pages you read or the number of words in your reflections.
Reflection Prompts:
Remember that I may not have read the piece you are responding to. Explain yourself completely so that I can understand and so that you definitely have more than one sentence.
1. Find the author’s web site. What can you find that might explain why the author decided to write the piece/book the way he or she did?
2. Describe how one of the characters in the book reminds you of someone you know, have met, seen or read about. How does this connection help you understand the text better?
3. Draw a picture of your favorite character and on the other side of the page list things you like about the character and why he or she is your favorite.
4. Explain something you read that your teacher or parents might find interesting.
5. Write your own prompt and put it in a letter to me.
6. Are the characters realistic (do they seem like they could be read people)? Why or why not?
7. Create a timeline of events from what you have read so far.
8. Create a ‘WANTED’ poster for the antagonist.
9. Describe a character that you would like to meet (which doesn’t mean that you think you would like the character, but that you think the
character would be interesting). List 4 questions that you would ask.
10. Describe something you have read that is similar to this.
11. Describe the major conflict. What side are you on?
12. Importance of an Episode: Select what you consider the most important episode in the book/film. Explain (briefly) what happens, why
you think it is important to the section, your reaction to the episode, and why you react this way.
13. Setting: What effect does the setting (time, place, social and historical background) have on the character’s thoughts, actions, and
choices? What would be your reaction to having to adapt to the character’s environment? Why?
14. Describe the setting’s time and place. Create a new setting that you think would be better for the story and describe it.
15. Describe what was either believable or unbelievable about your reading. Defend your opinion.
16. Describe the similarities and differences between the main character and you.
17. Theme: Explain an idea or theme –either stated outright or implied by events—which is meaningful to you. Explain its importance to
the book/film and why you find it meaningful.
18. Character Comparison #1: Compare yourself to a main character. Point out your similarities and try to account for differences
between you and him/her. Considering what you have discovered, what is your reaction to this character? Why? How do you think the
character would feel about you?
19. Character Comparison #2: Compare a character from your book/film to a character from another work of fiction (novel, play, film,
short story). What are their similarities? What are their differences? Which character do you admire more? Why?
20. Judgment: Examine a character’s actions, values, behavior, etc. with which you disagree. What is happening? Why is the character thinking/acting this way? What do you see wrong with it? Why? What would you suggest as a preferable response/behavior/value?
21. Write a letter to a character or from one character to another.
22. Create a diary entry in the voice of a character.This can be an ongoing diary for several of your responses during a longer piece.
23. Try the Four-Column Strategy for a piece that you and a parent read together. Divide a page in your R4 Journal in half lengthwise. Write a short summary on one half. On that same half, then respond to your summary, explaining how they feel about what you read. On a second page — also divided in half lengthwise — have your parent write his or her summary and add his or her own response on just one half of the paper. On the other half, you write another response to what your parent said. At the same time, your parent writes his or her response to your summary/response.
24. Sketch to Stretch. Draw a sketch or two that illustrates the main ideas and details in the selection you just read. For example, after reading a description of the nesting habits of hummingbirds, draw a sketch that shows the details in the piece: the place a nest would be found, the size of a hummingbird’s nest, materials used to build the nest, the number of eggs in a nest, the color of eggs, and how parent(s) of baby hummingbirds take care of their young. You could draw a series of sketches to reveal the development of baby birds from egg to first flight. In a novel you could draw the action that took place in the section you just read.
25. Finish one or two of these starters and explain so that you definitely have more than one sentence:
-One thing that confused me was when…
-This makes me feel…
-This reminds of…
-I think…will happen next.
-I can imagine what…looked/sounded/felt/tasted like.
-I wonder why…
-I don’t see how…
-I can’t believe…
-It bothered me when…
-I was surprised…
-I can’t really understand…
-I began to think of…
-When I finished reading, I thought…
-The most important (word, phrase, idea) in this book is….because…
-The genre of this book is…..because….
-I agreed/diagreed with the author about…
-If I were the author I would have changed the part of the story when…
-My feelings about (character, book) changed when….
-I am like or different from the character….
-Some important details I noticed were…they were important because…
-What you liked or disliked and why.
-What you wish had happened.
-What you wish the author had included.
-Your opinion of the characters.
-Your opinion of the illustrations, table and figures.
-What you felt as you read.
-Questions you have after reading.
-What it reminded you of.
-What you think will happen next.
-What it reminded you of.
Mad Men Yourself
Need some new avatars for the new school year? Okay, so this isn’t serious intellectual fodder and it isn’t about school — it’s just for fun. There’s a new season of Mad Men coming, so you can now go and use the very musical, complex and creative Mad Men Yourself site to make a new avatar. Great for folks like me who are not photogenic anyway.
How To Make Your Own Posters
It’s that time of year when teachers are preparing the walls of their classrooms. I often make my own posters for convenience. It doesn’t really save money or time—I think I spend more on ink than I would on a poster at the store or at www.allposters.com and www.art.com (both of whom have great sales), but some things are not available to buy and I like to customize size, shape, etc. It’s not hard to print, trim, and laminate your own with these tools.
Tiled printing, sometimes known as rasterbating, is a feature of many computer programs that enables them to print images larger than a standard page. The program overlays a grid on the printed image in which each cell (or tile) is the size of a printed page and then prints each tile. A person can then arrange the tiles to reconstruct the full image.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiled_printing
ONLINE POSTERIZERS
PosterMaker
The Rasterbater
FREE SOFTWARE DOWNLOAD
I have three windows to nowhere in my new subterranean classroom and ZERO natural light viewable from anywhere, so I am posterizing these and mounting them inside the window frames to make fake outdoor scenery. I don’t want to get Seasonal Affective Disorder nor do I want my students to. (I think I’ll buy a full-spectrum lamp or two as well.) I have edited, trimmed, and resized these to make them fit.
(I’ll print the redwoods big enough to fit 2 windows)
Lunch Time!
Kate’s Bag IdeaI already mentioned I’m becoming enamored of the idea of making my lunches bento-style this year. I’m also about to start the eating plan named after that beach near Miami, so we’ll see how the two come together later.
For now let’s talk lunch boxes. I came across the instructions for this cute little make-it-yourself bag called Kate’s Notebook Lunch Bag on Design*Spongethe other day. You could conceivably make this bag for many purposes out of nearly any fabric that has a little body to it. I thought I’d try Kate’s design, though, because it’s so perfect for a teacher. Since the original plans call for a 1-layer bag made of ticking, a very light canvas sort of material, I made a few of my own adaptations. I am an amateur seamstress so some of the details were made up as I went along; I feel certain a real seamstress with more experience could make it look much fancier if they chose to try. I am proud of my bag because it is made of 100% upcycled materials. Here’s what I did:
I wanted some insulation and protection for the fabric against moisture coming off my frozen leftovers, so thought I’d attempt to modify the directions. I dug out a vinyl tablecloth and old quilt I wasn’t using. Then I went to the thrift store and found a pillow case that closely resembled ticking for $1.
I cut all three fabrics with the pattern from Design*Sponge. I had to rip out the seam of the pillowcase so that I could take off the border and press it flat. Even opened the pillowcase was too narrow, so I just cut one of the “flaps” separately with a 1/2” seam allowance and sewed it on. This seam is part of the bottom of the bag so it doesn’t show anyway.
I sewed a red top stitch, drew the “holes” with a fat permanent marker, and wrote the words with a fine-point permanent marker. (I did trace the letters first in light pencil.) I learned later that I should have put my words lower on the bag, maybe about an inch or two above the bottom.
I sewed the quilting to the vinyl. You could skip this step I think, and just pin or baste it, but I was afraid everything would get out of alignment and slip around. Then I pinned my insulation and lining piece to the wrong side of the ticking and sewed all the layers together as directed by Design*Sponge.
I carefully pinned all three layers together with the right side of the ticking and the plastic side of the vinyl facing outward. Then I sewed them with white thread twice: once with a regular stitch and once with a zigzag stick to prevent unravelling. I trimmed the seams.
The last thing to be done was to hem the open edges. I had to trim the lining and fold the ticking to the inside. I used a double top stitch in white thread. The pictures show that in detail.
I am satisfied with the bag but it is both thick and floppy, making it hard to fold and seal. The lining makes it look a bit “fluffy” or pillowy, which I don’t really like. But it will do!
18 oz. water bottle