Yet Another Discovery

I previously wrote about poetry or essay cafe because I was pleasantly surprised at how much harder students worked on their writing pieces when they knew they would be reading to the class. This past Friday, I discovered another reason to have essay read-alouds. It is an amazing tool for teaching editing.

I had several students that stumbled over sentences, words or phrases or even did a stand-up-editing-comedy-routine.
I usually edit their work and students must return their polished copy for a final grade. This time, I gave papers back with instructions to edit their own work--they already knew where changes had to be made from reading out loud.

The Library of Imagination

I wanted to pass on one of my favorite journal prompts.

http://www.walkerdigital.com/video/ The musical accompaniment is splendid.

Questions I ask for the prompt:
How much do you love to learn? Value learning? How important was creativity in the creation of this library and the success that provided the means to build this library? What original manuscripts would you want in your library? What artifacts?

Jay Walker can also be found at ted.com with a personal explanation of his Library of Imagination.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jay_walker_s_library_of_human_imagination.html

Teaching Literature and Reading Wiki

If any of you are interested in materials on literature circles and reading topics covered in Eng 378, feel free to join the wiki for access to materials after you finish at BYU. :) I am adding a lot of fabulous teacher handouts to the site. Also, I am working on getting Novelinks onto a wiki or blog that is accessible off campus as well.

Technology is more than Wordle

A really thoughtful site to follow!

Best Thing I've Ever Done

Just a quick note on teacher blogs: best thing I've ever done. I have two. The first blog communicates assignments due, afterthoughts, a re-cap of the day etc. If a student is absent and asked what he/she missed, I can say, "Check the class blog." This blog also serves as my journal and helps me to self-reflect and see what is needed.
It isn't all business either; students see that I write and reflect too-I do what I ask them to do.
The second blog is for posting student writing. Each student is required to make 5 comments on other writers' work. When I visit the writing blog and see the comments that students are making about each others' writing, I see that something positive is happening. Students have an audience.

Evaluating Blogs?

My colleague, Gideon, talks about how blogs should be evaluated. How does your blog measure up? :)

The Digital Writer: Criteria for Evaluating Research Blogs

thedigitalwriter.blogspot.com

Looking for a wonderful poetry explication group activity?

I found this on English Companion Ning and plan to use it. Let me know if anyone else tries it out.

Are You Done?

For about five years now, I have had to wear reading glasses. It's gotten progressively worse and during my last eye appt., I decided to try contact lenses. Last night was horrendous trying to get the invisible, clear disk out of my eye and I finally had to have my daughter operate. I resolved to never wear contacts again, but this morning with my memory of clear-up-close vision, not having to pull out my glasses to read everything, that simple pleasure will drive me to try contacts again.

Here is the most amusing part and the place where I will try to drive the topic of this post: When I went to school yesterday, (the first time in my up-close contacts) I noticed that my adorable, little ninth graders had acne and facial hair.

I'm glad I spent the year seeing them through my softened lenses. Acne and pubescent hair begging for a razor is not.....................that pleasant.

So the point is, we must look at our students through clear eyes-- we must see their potential, their weaknesses, their need for discipline, love, and appropriate challenges, but is it such a bad thing to see them a little better, sweeter, cuter, than they really are? Isn't that how we want to be seen?

I hope you had a great year and I hope you will post your reflective experiences, both good and bad on this blog so we can all learn from each others' triumphs and mistakes. Please?

Technology Find

A colleague at my school recently introduced our department to a great website called Edmodo. It's very Facebook-esque, but designed for school use. The basics:

1.You create a class group, which your students then join. This is great because they can't really wander to any other pages because you can only see groups you are invited to join (which a teacher is administrator over).

2. You can post assignments, links, polls, etc. to the group page. The students can turn things in via the website (and it notifies you ever so conveniently), or you can have conversations through the note feature.

I've used it with my 10th and 12th grade classes and they have loved it! Other teachers who have used it have also had a lot of success. One immediate perk is that they enjoy the familar layout- the assignment stays the same, but it seems so much cooler now. Also, the turn-in rate went up a lot for assignments that could be handed in via the website.

I'm by no means an expert on the site, but it's been a lot of fun and very helpful. We also created a department page which is a nice place to share ideas or just talk :)

An Accidental, Wonderful Discovery

An elementary teacher/friend told me that she held poetry cafe on Fridays. She read poetry, students read poetry... I decided to incorporate poetry cafe on Fridays and let students bring food. They loved it. Then after two weeks of working on a "This I Believe" essay, I implemented essay cafe. I really had no idea how it was going to pan out. Then the magical consequences took effect. The students worked really hard on their essays because they had an audience that they cared about. Each other. They were attentive, respectful and listened because I expected them to make comments about their peers' work.

We finished up a poetry writing unit today and I have to admit, I was surprised at how they worked on their poems, but then I remembered--poetry cafe on Friday! They will be reading their own poems to each other. Once again, they have an audience that matters. Because they are only allowed to make positive comments, they know the writing environment will be positive, supportive and encouraging. Exactly what a ninth grader needs.

I've been pondering this. We have set up this teacher/audience environment. For several years they've been writing for us and only us. Give them a real audience and the passion to write well is born.

At the beginning of the year, writing assignments were met with phrases you recognize all to well: "Mrs. Martinez, how long does this have to be? Do I have to do this?" I cannot remember one of these questions damaging my ears in the last few months.