Piles, Piles and Piles

We are in the 5th week of the school year, and my desk perpetually has 5-6 piles of papers covering it.  Of course, I know what is in each pile.  But when my department chair came into my classroom this morning, I felt momentarily embarrassed by my "lack of organization."  To make matters worse: continuously repeating in my mind are the words of one of my colleagues who dropped a nugget of advice on me at the Literacy Institute this summer: "To teach as long as I have (40 years!), you have to be organized.  If you look disorganized, the kids see it, and it affects their respect for you and what you do."  ...Yikes.

I am generally a very thorough grader, but I often do hand back papers long after I should have.  Sometimes, when a stack has been sitting on my desk for way too long (a week and a half to two weeks), I know I'm never going to take the time to grade it with care, so I just slap a check or check minus at the top of it and hand it back to the kids, or I give up and toss it in the recycle box.  For sanity's sake, though, it's ok that the students sometimes get the practice without a grade.  The really important papers are graded promptly and carefully, but those keep multiplying faster than I can keep up!

Here's what's going on in my classes this week:

SOPH WORLD LIT
We finished our study of Gilgamesh and Noah, and the students worked on their compare/contrast essays on "the flood story."  I haven't graded these yet, but this will be the first sample of these students' essay writing ability.  As I grade them, I will have a better idea about what we need to focus on in our writing practice.  The students have also been working on an open book/note test review that is provided by the textbook publisher.  These are higher-level thinking questions, and require the students to answer a multiple choice question about the text and then provide evidence to support the answer they've chosen.  I really like these.  The students sometimes get frustrated because the questions are harder than the questions in the book, but I offer as much assistance as I can and even let them work in pairs.  Furthermore, the students had to (as I mentioned in my previous post) use the key words of our "word wall" in a paragraph explaining what they learned in this unit, and they had to come up with 10 questions that would make good test questions for this material.  To help them prepare even more, I put a list of materials they should study over the weekend.  Monday is their test (I guess I should finish making that, huh?!) and Tuesday we'll start the next unit.

LA 2
This class received a new seating chart this week.  On an Activity Workbook assignment, most of the class scored 40's-low 60's.  They are constantly off task, talking in their native languages, and disruptive of each others' learning.  So, I moved them to seats that I felt would separate the talkers, combine those who wanted to practice their English with speakers of other languages, and isolate those who constantly disrupt others.  They've been in these seats for about 3 days now, and it is working wonderfully!  There are 2 girls in particular (one from the Ivory Coast and one from Peru) who have the highest grades and are the most motivated to learn English.  I placed them next to each other, and my heart just about burst when I saw how well they were working together today! :)  I will continue to work with this class on their behavior and patience with the language.

LDC 3
This week, we read a chapter in the Visions C book called "The Mystery of the Cliff Dwellers," and informative text about an ancient Native American culture.  The students completed all required work for the chapter (adding to the piles on my desk! LOL), and I wanted something fun that they could do to practice their essay writing skills.  So, I went to the Media Center and picked up 8 books on ancient cultures (Aztecs, Amazons, Romans...).  Then, at the beginning of class, I walked them through the basic organization for an essay (components of an Intro, Body, and Conclusion) and told them, "You are going to pretend that you and your small group of 3-4 people are researchers who have to write a professional report on an ancient culture that you'd been studying.  So, flip through your book, find a few things about the culture that you think are interesting, and follow the essay format to write your report."  The students liked that they got to choose which culture they wanted (though, there were some fights over who got Ancient Egypt!), and they worked really well, explaining to each other and talking about the different parts of an essay.  They'll finish the assignment on Monday, and we'll see how this introduction to essay writing went for them. :)

JR AMERICAN LIT
As we enter our study of the earliest explorers and settlers in American history, I showed the students and introductory slide show presentation about the 3 forms of travel books we'll study in this unit: journal, narrative account, and slave narrative.  As I talked about Christopher Columbus, John Smith, Jamestown, Plymouth, and early slave trade, the students were happy to chime in with facts they'd already learned in their American History classes.  They asked some interesting questions, too!: "If Columbus thought he was in Asia, how could he have named his book 'Journal of the First Voyage to AMERICA'?"  I'd honestly never even thought about that before.  LOL  Whenever the students ask questions and I don't know the answer, I tell them: "You find out, report back to me, and I'll give you 5 points extra credit."  So far, at least 4 students have earned extra credit, and the students are interested in asking questions!  They know the question has to stump me, though (and I know almost everything! haha!), so it has become a little competative.  We'll move through this unit in a couple of weeks' time and lay the foundations for the next unit on Puritanism.

This Week's The Bad/The Good:
The Bad: I had to deal with the rare occasion when my personal strife began to affect my attitude in the classroom.  Because I was dealing with personal unhappiness and frustration (which I'm blessed to say doesn't happen very ofen in my life), I felt myself being short with the students, being frustrated with my performance, and being negative toward everyone around me.  It was a struggle to bury that the best I could and try to be nice, supportive, and keep a smile on my face.  What performers we sometimes have to be.  It was exhausting!
The Good: I am really please with how the new seating chart is working out for my LA 2 students.  I hope they continue to stay focused and pratice patience when learning something new.  They are so quick to feel frustrated and give in to distraction at this level of English ability.  I'll continue to encourage them and assist them so they'll feel more motivated to do better.

Floods and Travel Narratives

Last Friday, my Soph LA classes read a selection from the Bible (included in their textbooks) to compare to the "Story of the Flood" from The Epic of Gilgamesh. Many of them had already made the connection between Utnapishtim's story and Noah's story. So, as they read, they took notes on their graphic organizer table about the details of differences between these two ancient tales. Then, on Monday, I handed out a graphic organizer to help them organize their ideas for a compare and contrast essay. They used the table from the previous week to consider similarities and differences and also rewrote 3-4 particular details for each story that they thought they'd like to focus on in their body paragraphs.

On Tuesday, I told them exactly how to organize their essay and what to include in each paragraph: Intro - Hook, Background (Similarities), Thesis (3-part w/ differences); 3 Body Paragraphs - Topic Sentence (one difference each), Concrete Details from text, Commentary/Analysis, Transition sentence; Conclusion - Thesis Restatement, Summary of Main Points, and Final Thoughts. Then, I showed them an example of what a good compare-contrast essay looks like. Afterward, they had about 35 minutes to get started on their own essays. Many of them wrote at least an introduction, and some had one or two body paragraphs written. Most of them struggled to get started. I think this is normal for many students, so I don't mind if they take a while to think things through. Sometimes, if they can't get started right away, they get distracted from their task and start talking to their neighbors (thereby distracting THEM from their assignment), so I am always careful to circulate around the desks to keep a constant check of each student's progress. At the end of class, I told them to have their rough drafts done by the time they get to class the next day.

One cool moment: one of my lowest performing students stared at the assignment for a few minutes, and then said, "Miss, you should give us that paper that you gave us before to organize our essay."
"Which one, C_____?"
"You know, the one with the boxes and lines for each paragraph?"
"Oh yes! Would you like one of those?"
"Yeah. It helps me."
:)

Today, most students had their rough drafts on their desks when class began. Before I spend my time reading their work, though, I wanted to give them plenty of opportunity to self-correct. So, I put another example up on the overhead projector so they could see an "A" paper and compare their own to the example. I told them point blank: "If your paper does not look this good, you probably need to work on it a lot more." In addition to this, I also passed out a handout on a revision technique called ARMS: Add (what information should you add to benefit your reader?), Remove (what should you remove to improve the flow of your essay?), Move (can you improve the organization of your essay by moving words, sentences, or paragraphs?), Substitute (are there words, phrases, or sentences that could be improved by substituting better versions?). Each student had to read through his or her own essay and consider the ARMS, then pass it to a neighbor so they could consider the ARMS. Whatever they found that needed improvement, they had to work on it in class or as homework. They must turn in their rough drafts tomorrow for me to edit. I'll give these back to the students on Friday so they can work on their final drafts and bring them to me on Monday.

With my Jr LA classes, I've been teaching early colonization and travel narratives. We're a little behind the other classes (big surprise!), so I put together a slide show to present the 3 main types of travel narratives in the unit. First, there is the slave narrative: an excerpt from Equiano's narrative. Then, there is the journal: an excerpt from Columbus's notes on what he saw during his first voyage to America. Finally, there are narrative accounts: one excerpt from John Smith's stories of what happened at Jamestown, and the other by William Bradford about what happened at Plymouth in their first years. To get the students more interested in these people, I used photos and interesting facts about their lives to which the students could relate. It was great! They were asking questions, making comments, and telling what they already learned about the people or places in their World History class. It was a lot of fun, and it only took me a couple of hours to put together!

We started reading William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantations afterwards, and I gave them a handout of comprehension questions to answer as we read. We've only read about half of it, and I'm already questioning whether this is the best selection for them to read. The language is pretty complicated, so they get frustrated quickly. I might do Columbus's and John Smith's excerpts next year instead....

After we finish with the travel narratives, we'll being Puritan poetry and The Crucible, which is always very exciting for me. :)

Quote of the Day:

"Miss, what are those living-skin thingies that Utnapishtim and Noah took in their boats?"
"Living-skin thingies?"
"Yeah, they took their families and..."
"Animals?"
"Yeah! Animals! ...I'm sorry, Miss. I don't know what I was thinking. Living-skin thingies! What does that mean???"
"I don't know, but it sounds pretty scary to me."