September 22-26, 2014

The predictions for a harsh winter seem to be foreshadowed (an 8th grade SOL word!) by the cold weather that's settling in and all the colds causing sniffling around the school.

We only had the computers for two days this week to continue the 1965 research project and video production. You may wonder why this seems to be taking awhile to complete, but, as I said before, they are learning to research, evaluate sources, and use WeVideo. These are skills they will use all year, but they are very new to some students. It was so exciting this week to see one of the students who at the start said there was NO WAY she would ever learn how use a complicated video production app say on Thursday, "I'm a whiz at this!" and begin to help other students who weren't picking it up as easily.

It's also been revealing to me to see students learning to do research by approaching it hands-on first and then having me point out mistakes and successes. For example, they need to complete an MLA-formatted Works Cited page of their sources after they finish their videos. I shared a sample document to show them how to format and complete it. One of my students said, "But I never actually went to any websites." I was stunned, then asked how she'd gathered her information. She had searched the terms, then collected the information she saw on the search results page and never went to the sites! It would never have crossed my mind that anyone would try that, so we were able to discuss why that was inadequate research. Another student swore only Wikipedia contained the necessary information. I sat down with him and found out his keyword searches weren't very targeted (another SOL that will be tested on the writing SOL in March). He started targeting his keyword searches more and began finding what he needed. I also reminded them of how to use Wikipedia to find other information: the links for the Wikipedia articles are at the bottom, and the student can click on those to go straight to the sources.

In addition to continuing the projects, they were busy in other areas:

All classes were introduced to how to complete analogies, another 8th grade SOL, which is introduced in 7th grade. It's one of the most missed on the exam, so I wanted to make sure we began early on it. I used EDI (explicit direct instruction) to introduce the definition and review the concept, then I put up a Powerpoint with analogies that each student had to complete, and I called randomly on several to answer each one. If they disagreed on the correct answer, I polled the class.

C1 and C3 learned another new word this week, plausible/implausible/plausibility. We continued reading and discussing The Outsiders.

C2 completed a "quiz" on The Outsiders containing ten questions based on the VDOE's format from the Reading Practice SOL Tool. When they finished it, we went over it, and they had to write on any question they missed what they were thinking when they chose the incorrect answer. This was a quick check for me to see how on track they were with our standards, and I discovered nothing surprising: the most missed question was related to vocabulary and the second was identifying theme, two that are weak nationally. I extended their performance assessment on The Outsiders (writing the first five pages of a sequel to the novel) to October 10. They said they wanted to do a marvelous job and some of them want to go beyond five pages, so I thought the extra time would allow them to do a better job.

This class also read "The Gift of Cochise" by Louis L'Amour and discussed it as we read it aloud. Each student randomly was called upon to go to the podium and read a page. I recently discovered this story and was impressed by how the story was put together with changing point of view, symbolism, characterization, etc. We finished it on Friday and next week will begin pulling its elements apart. We did start to discuss the characters and whether there was a gender bias, which was a heated discussion! They said they really enjoyed it and were inspired to write sequels or plot twists to it later! Looking forward to those if they do happen! (You can read the entire story here--click on the book, and it's the first story.) Because they were busy with the story, we didn't do the vocab word, but they'll pick that up next week.

ECO finished the angry customers, read a real Food Lion job application from Timberville and completed the online application on paper. We then introduced our community colleges as sources of job training through two introductory videos and began looking at LFCC's Workforce Solutions website.

Encore continued Honus and Me. We were almost up to the part where Stosh is able to visit the 1909 World Series, so I found a short newspaper article from a 1909 newspaper that talked about the rivalry between Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner. We discussed if it's good or poor readers who re-read, and one student was able to exactly identify that poor readers DON'T re-read and why. We then took turns reading the newspaper article aloud three times, then learned the meaning of two words in it (prowess, supremacy) and wrote a sentence for each using good context clues. Before returning to the novel Friday, we re-read the article one more time. They could see that their comprehension was much better by the fourth time while it was almost nonexistent on the first.

Week of September 15-19, 2014
Cores 1 & 3 learned the word "plausible" this week. Core 2 didn't do that word yet, because they've been reading The Outsiders for homework and writing reflections, and we had a discussion instead of vocabulary. C2 finished The Outsiders by Friday and are now ready to begin the assessment project, the five-page beginning of the sequel to The Outsiders. Core 1 & 3 are reading the book in class.

For three days, all classes had the computer cart, and they jumped into some big learning: they researched topics about culture in 1965, saving notes and sources in a Google Doc. They roughed out storyboards for a video created in WeVideo, a free online movie-maker app through Google. They learned to find and save pictures to use in their projects and started the video in WeVideo, which will teach them how to use the app.

On day one, there were a few yelps of fear and outright screams of fright, but, by day three, everyone was working at their own pace and had reached some level of comfort with searching, saving, and video creation. I kept reminding them that what they were doing is indeed very difficult, but that the best way to learn is hands-on and through their own mistakes. As some picked up faster than others, I encouraged them to help students around them, because they are able to help each other very well--and there's only one of me! They will use all of these skills during the year and will be old pros by June. (The two first pictures above are core 2 working on research.)

We ended on Friday without the cart (all brains, including mine, were feeling a little bruised after three intense days of work learning three tough skills), and I handed out packets that contained a copy of the first page of four websites and a worksheet to evaluate them. I explained that the average reader on the Internet decides within two seconds to keep reading a page or click away. The exercise was to determine what about the website made them decide immediately if it looked genuine and worthwhile or not. I know students want to find good information in one click, save it, and be done. Deciding if the information is true or good isn't something they WANT to do.

I asked them to get into groups of three and in ten minutes go through the sites using the criteria on the worksheet to decide which was the one fake site. The sites were www.flightradar24.com (in the post-9/11 world, do we really show all the airplane flights in the world as they happen?), mulletpassions.com (a dating site based on having a mullet), alexchiu.com (a site selling that products that are too good to be true), and dhmo.org (a site warning of the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide). The last site was the fake one, because dihydrogen monoxide is water. Alex Chiu's products may be a scam, but it's a real site that will be glad to take your money. We had very interesting and informative discussions about what was behind their decisions. (I don't like mentioning SOLs, but evaluating websites for information is part of the writing SOL in March.)

ECO: We focused on angry customers this week. If the students get their employment certificates and find a job, they will definitely encounter unhappy or angry customers. We watched a training video on how to deal with the customers, then role-played being the Walmart employee and being the angry customer using complaints from the Walmart complaint site. We also watched a video someone had captured at a GameStop of an annoyed customer confronting the manager. The manager then escalated the situation through a series of bad choices. The students identified how and why the situation went downhill.

Encore: We continued Honus and Me using discussion and a graphic organizer for cause and effect. The bottom picture is Encore's working in partners to complete the graphic organizer.

REMINDER: SCHOOL PICTURES ON SEPTEMBER 23.

September 8-12, 2004

When you're feeling sad, learn something.~~T. H. White in The Once and Future King

This is the week that all classes were required to give pretests. English is unlike any other class, because we have to give two pretests: one for writing and one for reading. I also had to give the STAR, which is very short and tells me the student's independent reading level, and a 31-word spelling inventory, which also doesn't take very long and tells me how to help a student with spelling. The students and I were all very sad, however, to stop the excitement of learning to collect required data. The next big data collection event is on October 9, when we will spend a large portion of the day prescreening with Aimsweb. For that assessment, students read a one-minute passage and read a three-minute passage and circle the correct word. Most of these assessments were on the computers, so we had to stop the research we began last week, because there were no available computers.

Cores 1 and 3 We briefly read Thomas Hardy's poem "The Convergence of the Twain" about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, because a British poet, Simon Armitage, wrote a poem three months after 9/11 that was inspired by Hardy's poem, "The Convergence of the Twain." (The title means "the coming together of the two," by the way.) Our main focus was alliteration and other sound patterning and seeing how one work of art can inspire another, as well as discussing the main idea. (Summary: while the Titanic was being built, the iceberg was forming, and one day they met, and the world was shaken. While the Twin Towers were being built, the force of hatred that would drive the planes was forming, and one day they met, and the world was changed.)

We read the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost and discussed sound patterning, meaning, and author's purpose for writing a poem that reminds you that all good things disappear. Before they read the poem, I asked them to do a freewrite about things that had changed in their lives and how they dealt with change, and I got to read some fascinating pieces of writing.

We began reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and learned the word "vacillate" in a Wordplay. A Wordplay is a vocabulary exercise I create, which is based on the massive amounts of reading I've done on how students best learn new vocabulary. I find two brief real passages, usually from the news, that use the target word. Next, I give the definition choices, and then I give four sentences, one or two of which use the word incorrectly. After identifying the incorrect ones, we discuss what made the usage incorrect. We next identify the parts of speech for all uses of the word, then they have to write a sentence with strong context clues, which I check, and then they draw a picture to illustrate the word, which visually reinforces the meaning. Whenever I test vocabulary, we cover five words and they are tested three ways: fill in the blank, write a sentence using strong context clues, and match the correct word to the illustration. We also learn words in our readings. I stop and explain the word, use it in a variety of sentences, then ask students for meaning. This year, I've been putting these new vocab words up on the walls of the room as they learn them, so every now and then I stop and ask them what they mean.

The students also added the app WeVideo on their Google accounts and had a brief time to play around with it at the end of last week. They will be using the app to create projects this year. It's similar to Windows Moviemaker and Adobe Premiere.

Core 2 English Unfortunately, they didn't have time to explore the "Convergence of the Twain" poems, although they completed all of the other activities listed above for the other English classes. They are reading The Outsiders independently outside of class, and they are turning in reflective responses, which get better and better every time. Since they were into the novel already, we reviewed conflict in literature, and they then began a creative writing exercise in which they used three pictures of people I found on Flickr to create three characters in conflict at a dinner table. They had to write a brief skit with their dialogue. We have not finished this yet, and the students are impatient to return to it. They were giggling like mad things while they were writing. We also found some time to have an oral discussion of the book up to chapter six.

Encore We are reading Honus and Me aloud and using a graphic organizer to make predictions about events in the book. They seem to really be enjoying this story about a boy who finds a valuable Honus Wagner baseball card in an attic, and we are moving quickly through the book. I've never had a class before that fights about who gets to read next!

ECO Mrs. Zimmon explained how to get an employment certificate (the new name for the worker's permit) to get a job and where to find jobs locally. We also watched brief videos about the careers of small engine repair and auto body mechanic.

September 2-5, 2014

Researching 1965

No one should have as much fun at work as I did this week.

A new crew of students arrived, full of energy and excitement for learning and ready to roll. And they kept rolling right up until 3:10 on Friday when they burst out of the school doors, still full of energy. How can we bottle that and sell it????

English Class: We brainstormed what the culture of 2014 is like in music, technology, television, etc., then what they thought they knew about 1965. It's the start of a PBL unit I designed to introduce the novel The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, which is set in 1965 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It also introduces research techniques. By the end of the week, they were ready to start finding out how correct they were about 1965 and first looked at online--which was when I found out how little they knew about doing effective keyword searches to find good information. That lesson couldn't wait, so we ended the week with it, and they picked up the skill quickly. They also seemed to find it very enjoyable, because who wouldn't want to know the best way to find exactly what they want on the Internet?

Core 2 actually began the book and had some homework assignments. We hit the brakes on Thursday because I could see we needed to hone in on what makes for a quality assignment, so as a class we brainstormed what they needed to do and what they needed from me. I then gave an opportunity to redo the assignments and turn them in Monday. I told them on Monday we'd be reboarding the bullet train and heading quickly down the track.

Among other things we did in the first week was learning new procedures, locating classes and signing up for I/E, and just settling in to being eighth graders. They got a book to read the first day and we managed to find a little time to actually read. I can tell these are students who won't need to be whipped to read--they beg for more time to do it! Yes!!

Encore: We jumped right back into their Google Drives, created a Doc, and I asked them to write about a collection they had or, if they didn't collect anything, some item that was valuable to them. I wanted to see where they were in writing, introduce the book we are going to read, Honus and Me, and also start their using Google Docs with me. I am able to ask them to share the document, then I can open all of them on my computer and watch their progress and make comments within the document to assist them. I discovered last year how much more that increases my ability to help them as they're writing.

Exploring Career Options (ECO) I'll be co-teaching this class with our school guidance counselor Andrea Zimmon. She was tied up the first day, so I took them through Virginia View's checklist of career interests, then asked them to start writing about other ideas they had for careers. On the second day, Mrs. Zimmon led a round table discussion to discover what they wanted from the class. It was exciting to hear all of their ideas and start to think about the possibilities.