November 10-14, 17-21

No post last week because I simply couldn't find a minute. Sorry about that!

Core 1 and 3 are almost finished with The Outsiders sequels, and I can't wait to read them. When all classes are finished, I plan to print the ones for which students give me permission so I can put together binders of them in hard copy for Mrs. Voigt's classes and other students to easily read them during SSR time.

Core 2 almost reached the end of Hamlet on Friday. I told them they would preread less at the end because I wanted them to experience the thrill of Shakespeare's plot twists as all the story lines came together. We got all the way to Hamlet's pouring the poisoned wine down Claudius's throat and the king's eyes closing in death before it was time to leave for lunch. We were watching Branagh's film version; they all burst into applause as I stopped the video. All the pieces will be tied up on Monday. While I had time to start the play with my other classes, I'm afraid they won't be have time to experience it as thoroughly as this class before our December 3 field trip to Blackfriars.

All core classes are also working on an essay and a current events research topic for which they had to gather articles on scoop.it. The objective is to continue honing research, note-taking, and MLA skills. We began working on those skills with the WeVideo project. When I scored those, I leaned more heavily on the side of learning the video-making skills than the writing, research, and MLA. I knew they were just learning those. Now, I'm going to push them a little harder with this project to learn good note-taking and synthesizing information. They already grasp that an MLA Works Cited page is merely following a formula, and I walked them through it the first time. This time they will work on it more independently. I provided a PowerPoint with all of the steps that I took them through for guidance--and told them not to delete it from their Drive!

I'd like to say something about due dates since students worry quite a bit about them (and they should--that's being responsible). I don't set a deadline at the start of projects and papers, especially when it's a new skill for this grade. (The exception is the advanced class; I do set deadlines for them because the expectation is more independent work at the advanced level.) Some students don't have access to technology at home, so I assume all work will be completed in class. What I'm looking for as they work is how long they will need to acquire the skills and complete the project. Some students take longer. That's why I have several projects, like an essay and a research project, going at the same time. When a student finishes, he moves to the next thing. If a student isn't staying on task, he needs to take that into account when giving himself the weekly grade. I also am as diligent as possible at monitoring them while working to make sure they stay on task. Several times, I've asked a student to repeat the process to master the skill before allowing her to be "finished." There's no purpose in assigning a failing grade and letting the student move on without skill mastery.

Our county is moving from bubble assessments that mimic the SOL to real-world performance assessments, like writing a sequel to a novel rather than taking a bubble test. The learning is more authentic and more enjoyable. I've been reading a book titled Deeper Learning that discusses eight schools following this model. The author discusses the benefit of thinking of the learning process as a learning loop. We traditionally assign a project, the student completes it, we move on. Maybe the student mastered the material, maybe they didn't, or maybe it was just in the short-term memory long enough to pass the test. Because authentic learning is ongoing, a student should enter the process of learning new material, then be moved back into the learning in a variety of ways that show the learning, reinforce it, and strengthen it. I'm "looping" them back into the research process with the current events project. I'll look for ways to loop them back into learning throughout the year.< A mini-lesson in writing was practice in eliminating the word "thing" from papers; another was adding appropriate transition words. We had another vocabulary quiz, which is not just knowing the word, but being able to use it in writing with context clues. A huge project we've completed in the last two weeks was inspired by the Deeper Learning book, and it's probably been one of the best experiences I've seen in school in years. The book said that schools with deeper learning have older students teaching younger students. Those schools have fewer behavior problems like bullying because students get to know each other better. I also knew it helps to have all the help we can get because budget cuts have meant less staff in the building to help out. Additionally, I've read research that students are more likely to listen to a peer tutor than an adult teacher.

Ms. Phillips in sixth grade agreed to be our guinea pig for this grand experiment. I wrote a lesson plan for writing a persuasive letter to President Obama to pardon the presidential turkey's life. I taught my students what they would be working on and how to teach the students. I gave them a hand-out on the assignment and three persuasive techniques they could use drawn from our eighth grade SOL (appealing to justice, love of family, or pity). I gave them a persuasion map graphic organizer and explained what they would do with their students to complete it.

On the second day, my students met their students. I debriefed when we returned through discussion and filling out an exit ticket. Many said, "I wished I'd paid more attention to what I was supposed to do!" Ms. Phillips's students rewrote the letter the next day, and we returned on the following to work on peer conferencing. I had adapted our school's scoring rubric so my students could circle yes or no for each writing domain, then give the student pointers on how to improve the "no." My students were much more focused and prepared this time. When we returned to class, we had a very rich discussion about their teaching experiences. I was gratified at how much learning took place for them while they were teaching a younger student. On Friday, my students prepared for scoring the finished letters by scoring three DEAW's from last week chosen from Mrs. Scotallero's students. They were very invested as they worked in their groups because they know they have to accurately score their student's paper on Monday. Their discussions about how to decide what was adequate and what was not was very detailed--and will hopefully show them in the future what they need to do in their own papers.

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I mentioned the DEAW: Drop Everything and Write. We use a two-hour delay schedule so can use those first two hours to go into testing mode that mimics the real writing SOL that eighth graders will take in March. The following day, all English teachers worked at scoring the papers. Our conversations help us English instructors to know where our school is in writing ability and teaches newer teachers to understand the SOL writing expectations. Most teachers choose to put the DEAW in as a grade. I put mine in as a formative grade since I chose to look at it as a learning experience, not a final summative evidence of learning. I will put their last DEAW before the real SOL in as a summative score. One thing I discovered from our scoring is that our eighth grade is the weakest in writing ability, so they have a lot of work before March.

On the day of the DEAW, I left an exercise choosing the correct word in context, synonyms, and antonyms. This exercise showed that many students need a LOT of practice in this area. They also wrote a persuasive letter which they will be revising later.

On student birthdays, I put the birthday hat on them, we sing "Happy Birthday," and I give them a choice of "birthday candy." On Matt's recent birthday, the students wanted to preserve the moment for posterity, so the picture below is one of our less academic moments:

ECO has been a time to learn about study skills, as well as talking briefly about interviewing. Mrs. Zimmon and I were concerned after we saw the quarter grades report come out, so we spent time talking about success at their current job as students. Encore finished Babe and Me and a vocabulary worksheet. We're going to have a Thanksgiving Read-In this Tuesday at their request, then start a new class novel after the holiday break.

Have a blessed holiday break with your families!