The Day Before...

Tomorrow is the big day...Presentation Day! My students are both excited and nervous. They've been working so hard to prepare, but have not practiced enough, and they know it! :)

Today, I gave them one more day in class to practice with each other. They had to time each other as they practiced their speaking and using their PPT slides effectively.

To begin class, I showed a clip from one of Apple's keynote presentations. This way, the students could see what a top-notch presentation should look like and how minimal information on PPT slides is used to help keep the audience up with what the speaker is saying. Many of them still have too much information on their slides, but hopefully they'll improve next time. (I am definitely going to make them do more presentations this year!) As they watched the clip, I pointed out the use of slides, body language, clearly spoken words, speaking rather than reading information, and other successful presentation skills. The students enjoyed watching the clip and were inspired to practice their own presentations!

They all split up into their groups, or went their own way if they are presenting solo. They made notes on what they would each say during their presentations, created note cards, timed each other, ran through their lines, critiqued each other, and asked me and each other questions. If the student was working independently, they practiced their lines and had me or someone else time them as they gave their presentation a test run.

Here are some photos of the day's happenings:
(BTW, in these photos alone, 10 countries are represented: France, Rwanda, Korea, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Nepal, Cuba, India, Mexico, and the USA!)







Quote of the Day:
"Oh, Miss, you need that fixed? Lemme try. I have Asian technology skills."
"Asian technology skills?"
"Yeah, can fix anything. Watch." ... (he skillfully replaces the fabric back piece on my director's chair)
"See, Asian technology."
"What does that have to do with technology?"
"I'm Asian. I fix it. Technology."
"I think you are confused...."

Practice, Practice, Practice!

On Friday, September 11th, I was already in a touchy mood, so I didn't want to do anything that required too much effort on my part. That may sound bad, buy you know that we all have those days. I still wanted to pack my students' brains full of information, though! I was thinking about what I wrote in my previous post...about helping the students understand how to prepare for their presentation, and the difference between a good and bad presentation.

I decided that I should first assess how much they already knew. Some of them have already taken Business Essentials as an elective, and have had to learn about presentation skills. So, I had them do a Think-Pair-Share to brainstorm ideas of what it takes to give a successful presentation. Here's the list that my 6th period came up with:


















After the brainstorming session, I passed out copies of these two articles:


http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2009/sb20090825_379576.htm
http://www.ehow.com/how_2161539_give-presentation-class.html

The first article takes a humorous approach to teaching presentation skills. The author gives instructions on how to give a lousy presentation. So, the students figured that everything the author says to do, they should do the opposite. The students took turns reading the points out loud, and we discussed what would be the correct action to take. This brought up quite a few questions! Sometimes, the students were able to answer their peers' questions. Other times, I answered.

The second article highlights some was to prepare for giving a presentation. This article stresses the importance of practicing. I told the students what my Public Speaking professor told his classes in college: "Practice, practice, practice until you think you've got it. Then, practice once more to be sure." This helped drive the point home that I have high expectations of their performance on Wednesday. Dressing the part (they have to dress business-casual) does not make you automatically successful. You must practice and work to be your best.

Today, Monday, they were all supposed to turn in their PowerPoint presentations. Many of them were ready, but a few students/groups needed more time. I told them they had to get the slide show to be by the end of the day (3PM) or it would be late with points counted off. For those who were ready, I printed a handout of their show, and asked them to make brief notations beside each slide to tell me who would be speaking during that slide and what they would say.

Before all of that, the students had to take their MLA Citations Quiz today. There was a wide range of scores, but only a handful of students failed. This shows me that they just need time to soak in the information, and they need to see it repeatedly. In the past, I've tried to teach MLA at the end of the year within a very limited time frame, and the students just don't get it. This year, as this quiz has shown me, they have understood much better.

I was reminded today that our first Benchmark Exam is on October 7th. By this date (according to the county pacing guide), my JR LA students should have studied Native American Lit, Exploration Narratives (ex: John Smith), Equiano, The Crucible, and Puritan Poetry. My SOPH LA students should have studied Gilgamesh, the Bible, and at least 2 other epics. ...That is not going to happen. I gave as much time as my students needed to feel confident in the research process and essay writing. I know that they can do this. I feel confident in sending them to take the GHSGWT at the end of Sept. (with a little more practice in persuasive writing, of course). Now that I know they can organize their ideas, and write strong paragraphs, we can move on to the literature. What is the point of teaching, if the students don't have time to learn?

I guess I better get planning. We have a lot to do in the next couple of weeks! :)

Creating Presentations

Friday, the students began or continuted working on their PowerPoint presentations or finding and printing pictures for their posters. It was a good day, and everyone was engaged in their assignment. Some of the students chose to work individually on their presentation, and most of them chose to work in pairs or small groups. They understand that their presentation must be 4-5 minutes in length, and that they all have to participate in the production and presentation of the information.

On Monday, there was no school because of Labor Day. So, on Tuesday, we met in the trailer, and I brought brownies to share with everyone. In each class, somone asked, "Miss, why are we getting brownies today?" I told them, "You're getting brownies because I am so proud of each of you for working hard on your research projects." This made them very happy, and it did make them feel good about the work they've done. Before I gave them the brownies (while I still had their attention!), we did a quick review about citations. I wrote 3 citations on the board, leaving 6-8 mistakes in each of them. The students had to copy the citations onto their paper, and correct the mistakes. We worked together to correct them on the board. This was good because I saw that many of the students were still confused about when to used quotations or underline for titles.

Tuesday was a different story... it was a bad day. Many of the students were unfocused, were in a bad mood, or were just plain lazy. Today was their last day in the computer lab to work on their presentations. I was thinking about booking another day for them to be in the lab, but then I had second thoughts. No. If they still aren't finished after I've given them plenty of time to work, they'll need to finish on their own time. Yes! It was so liberating to set my mind on putting the responsibility on the student (where it should be!). I'm not going to give as many chances or be as sympathetic to students who don't get their work done. That just takes up too much of my time and energy, and makes them think it's OK to slack off.

Today was a much better day. For my LA classes, I gave my students an MLA Citations Review of 25 questions. There were different sections where students had to identify the correct citation, answer True/False questions about MLA format, fix incorrect citations, and label the parts of a citation. It was interesting to see how much they've learned from our research project. They had to complete the review quietly and independently first, and then we went over it as a class. I heard one student say to himself, "This is a good review." That made me happy. What I really liked, though, was when most students got a question incorrect, they wanted to know what the right answer was and WHY it was the right answer. I love that! To make sure I called on them randomly, I put all of their names on popsicle sticks, and picked the sticks out of a cup. It's so funny how quiet the room gets right before I pick a stick. Everyone waits to hear their name. :) It was a lot more fun than I planned.

Tomorrow, I want to start giving the students tips on how to give a professional presentations. I want to show them example cue cards, and show them how to used a PowerPoint slide show effectively as PART of the presentation. The focus, they need to understand, should be on the speaker and not the slide show. I'm not sure how best to convey this to them....

In my LDC IV classes, the students worked on a review of 9 sets of questions over Chapters 1-8 of Tuck Everlasting. I could tell which students had been paying attention, and which ones were clueless. One of my students, K____, actually fell asleep with his earphones in his ears during reading time on Monday! When I handed him the review, he just sat there and stared at it for about 15 minutes. When I noticed him, I told him it would be better to go back and read what he missed on Monday. Most of the students did pretty well in refering back to the book to find answers to the questions. I included the page numbers where they could find the answers, but they had to do the rest themselves.

Finishing up the Final Draft

Today was the last day that my LA students had to work on the final drafts of their papers. As they finished, I went around and had a "mini writing conference" with each of them like I used to in the Writing Center at GSU: one of us read the paper out loud, while we stopped to make changes to punctuation or word choice. We also discussed why we made those changes. This was a focus on the lower-order concerns of a paper. The higher-order concerns (organization, thesis statements, transitions and topic sentences, citations...) were already addressed in the students' outlines and rough drafts. So, once I came around and read a student's paper one last time on the computer screen, he or she had to print a final copy to turn in as part of the research packet due tomorrow.

In the research packet, the students must include:

1. KWL (complete the "L" first)
2. All of the articles/websites used in essay
3. Notecards
4. Outline
5. Both rough drafts
6. Final draft
7. Works cited page

From what I've seen, most of them will be ready to turn in everything tomorrow! There will be a few behind, but I am so proud that most of them were able to keep up. I should do something special for them on Tuesday when we get back from Labor Day. I want them to know that they should be proud of themselves for completing such a big assignment, and that they shouldn't just do assignments to make their teachers happy.

Next week, my LA students will be working on their presentations of their research projects. We'll have some extra time, so I really would like to teach them how to present professionally. In other workds, teach them how to prepare note cards, practice their presentation so they don't have to read their note cards, and then present the information to the audience while keeping eye contact. For most students, a presentation is just reading the information from the PPT slides. I want to try to teach them to be better than that.

For my LDC students, today was Speaking Day, and they did some exercises so I could hear each student's pronunciation of different words and letters. I have some lists of minimal pairs (eat-it, neat-knit, beat-bit, etc.) that each pair of students practiced reading out loud to each other. They were able to ask me or each other how a word or words are pronounced. Then, each student stood in front of class and read their list of minimal pairs aloud. As they read, I made notes next to the words that were mispronounced.

After that, we went over the worksheet they completed yesterday on present perfect tense. I have all of their names written on popsicle sticks, and I chose a student at random. That student had to read aloud the next question and answer on the worksheet. If he or she got the answer wrong, I asked for volunteers to help. The students made corrections to their worksheets as we went through each question. Today in LDC IV, the students spoke and heard ONLY English for about 70% of the period. That is a good day. About 1/2 the class is Korean, and the other 1/2 is Hispanic, so as soon as they get the chance, they revert back to their native language (L1) to speak to each other. It's extremely hard to prevent this. I've not yet become as hard as some teachers who write their students up every time they say a word in their L1. Sometimes, teachers will deduct points from students daily grades for speaking in their L1. ...I'm just not that kind of teacher. I think there must be a better way. I think, if I give them activities and assignments that make them use English while they enjoy doing the work, that would be much more effective than punishing them for using their L1.