Friday sort of sneaked up on me. I am still trying to find my groove at school, trying to get into a routine. Thursday afternoon, I looked at my day planner for the first time since Monday and thought, "Wow! Tomorrow's already Friday! I still have so much to do...." Oh, dear me.
Class on Friday was a great day. I passed out the overview sheet and daily schedule of events for the students' research project. They were not as scared of the fact that this project would take them five weeks to complete as I thought they'd be. I guess seeing it all laid out and knowing what to expect was a great comfort to them. Mostly, they just wanted to know what the topics were so they could sign up for their top pick.
The research topics were all related to the summer reading books, but they are also real-world issues that affect teenagers in our schools; things like: teen pregnancy, teen smoking, homelessness, drug addiction, domestic violence, bullying, eating disorders, alcoholism, etc. The students were really excited about signing up for their topic of choice! There were some fights about who would get what (I had a lot of students interested in domestic violence and eating disorders), but it was all resolved by one or two students gracefully choosing one of the other topics to research.
After they chose their topics and read the overview sheet, I asked the students to do a KWL organizer to start brainstorming ideas on which to focus their research. In a KWL organizer, there are 3 columns into which the students categorize what they KNOW about the topic, what they WANT to know about the topic, and what they've LEARNED about the topic. Thus, the last column would be filled out only after they've done their research. This is a great way to get their brains to start churning up ideas!
These few activities took up the whole class period. The students really put a lot of thought into their KWL's, so I told them to hang on to them over the weekend, and if they thought of anything else to add, add it. Then, I'd take them up on Monday. A lot of them were excited to continue thinking about their topics over the weekend!
On Monday and Tuesday, I plan on sharing an example article with the students, and practicing brainstorming and outlining with the students on a topic like teen dropouts. That way, they have a model on how to start organizing their original ideas with information from their sources.
For this weekend, however, I need to grade their summer reading essays, create and plan handouts and activities for next week, and figure out what to do with my LDC IV class, since I have absolutely no resources or materials for it.
Quote of the Day:
"Miss, how do you spell 'kindda'? It's k-i-n-d-d-a, right?"
"No.... First of all, it's two words. Secondly, you spell it k-i-n-d space o-f."
"REALLY?!"
"...yes."
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