October 20-24, 2014

Network overload issues impacted this week greatly. The plan was that everyone would be finished with the 1965 videos by Friday, as well as MLA citations, but we struggled to get online and access the Google Drive. After speaking to our technology people, I found that our network had reached capacity. We were scheduled for a network update this summer, but, because of budget cuts, the other two campuses got their updates, and we didn't. I chide the students when they are frustrated and want to throw their computers through the wall, but, by the end of the week, I actually felt the same way.

Incredibly, they were still able to get something done. The majority have finished the projects and are focusing on the first major essay on what's important in their lives. We spent one class talking about revising vs. editing, and then we looked at a model opening and closing from a National Geographic article and wrote an opening based on the model. I shared Betty Flowers's model of the writer as madman, architect, carpenter, and judge, and I was surprised and pleased when they began talking about themselves that way as they worked on their writing: "Mrs. Shrum, I think I need to be the madman for awhile because I have to create some more writing in this paragraph."

Everyone is officially finished reading and watching The Outsiders, and Core 1 and 3 are working on their sequel assignment. Not only are they showing their comprehension of the novel and the author's style, but they are wanting to know how to punctuate quotes and how to create a first-person narrative. They are touching on many of our eighth grade English SOLs without knowing it. I am asking students to allow me to print a hard copy of their sequel when they're finished so we can share them with Mrs. Voigt's students and between classes. All three classes also learned the word "plaintive" Friday as we began our next round of vocabulary study.

Core 2 is almost at the end of act II of Hamlet. Their comprehension of the play and Shakespeare's language has grown, and many said they no longer need to rely as much on reading online commentaries to understand their assignments. I've been assigning short passages with questions to reflect on, then we watch the various interpretations on film. On Friday, I showed them Ethan Hawke's for the first time, and they really disliked it. They didn't feel it translated well to the modern age.

Encore is still reading Babe and Me, and ECO read and discussed the job of fiber technician that's currently open at Shentel and watched some videos on becoming one. They are also working on creating career board games, but that's been difficult because of a number of absent students this week. We read a skit about a job interview, discussed what a resume is, and then read some terrible answers given during actual job interviews.

October 13-17, 2014

Sorry I'm a little late with the post this week--I was at the Cedar Creek Sesquicentennial all day on Saturday.

We're still tying up the videos and MLA citations, which was complicated this week by network/computer issues; we lost a full day on the computers. Everyone is now finished reading The Outsiders, and Core 1 and 3 are working on the five-page sequel as their performance assessment. We're also sneaking in the movie in bits and pieces; it's one of the few I show because students love the novel so much, and they enjoy comparing the two. They enjoyed seeing the author S. E. Hinton's cameo appearance; she's the nurse when Dally is lying in bed, and he's giving her a hard time, then he says, "You make me sick to my stomach."

All classes continued to review using participial phrases for writing, and I gave them some mentor paragraphs. When we use a mentor text, we use the basic structure of the original to create a new work. Their new pieces are awesome, and I'm hoping to pull some "golden lines" from them to post around the room. I've explained to them that studying parts of speech and grammar has to be joint with writing, or the grammar study is pointless, and they are beginning to understand as they are creating sophisticated pieces of writing with their new knowledge. They also had the option of working on their essay about the important things in their lives.

Core 3 read "The Gift of Cochise," which Core 2 has already read, and they began some CRISS exercises to better understand the story. Core 2 has begun Hamlet. I've assigned very brief passages of the play as homework and encouraged them read simplified versions and commentaries online, if they wish. They then write a reflection to show they understand what it says and how it's progressing the story. They are doing a magnificent job with it, and it's been very exciting to work on the play with them. We're going to see it at Blackfriars in Staunton on December 3, and it's much more interesting if you know the story. I'm using four different film versions and showing different scenes based on what I'd like them to see about directors' choices in portraying the story. I want them see that drama is very much an interpretation of the director, not just the playwright's intention. They've been intrigued to see how different some of the directorial choices are.

Encore finished Honus and Me and comparing it to the Twilight Zone episode, "Extra Innings," then began Babe and Me. They quickly devoured a chunk of the book and made predictions about the story and discussed plot possibilities. It's wonderful to see them independently initiating those activities now after being led to do them with the first novel. They're already asking what the next book will be, but I'm keeping it a secret.

ECO finished the article on LFCC's grant to help the local workforce and began looking at the local businesses who would be hiring through the grant. We looked at Valley Healthlink first because I wanted them to see that there are non-health worker jobs at hospitals, like cooking and housekeeping. We next watched videos about jobs at Shentel and focused on a current job opening in Edinburg for fiber optic technician. It's a job requiring only a high school education that keeps the worker busy and outdoors, pays well, and has good benefits. Some of the guys were excited to see that they could qualify and apply for such a local job. Credit belongs where credit is due--Kobe asked if they could create a game based on job searching, and Mrs. Zimmon and I thought it was a marvelous idea, so they are now planning how to create such a board game. They've split into three teams. When the games are finished, Mrs. Brinkley and Mrs. Voigt said the CSYW would give them a test-play to see if they work and to judge how much fun they are and how educational.

October 6-10, 2014

More and more students are finished with the 1965 video project, including the MLA citations page. On Friday Core 2 turned in their Outsiders sequels. It was a good day to see some short clips of music from 1965 mentioned in the novel and learn two very easy, very popular dances from 1965, the Twist and the Monkey. Those blurry pics are them in action (I found my new phone isn't good at capturing movement).

Monday began with our first test on their first group of vocabulary words. This was a summative grade (80%), so the handful that didn't study discovered what an impact one poor summative grade makes in the middle of all those formative grades (20%). We read a poem called "Loving Red" by the award-winning poet Amaul Amaud Johnson. They had some questions only the poet could answer. I located him, e-mailed, and had a response by lunch! The poem was rich in symbolism.

We learned what participial phrases are and how they can enrich writing. They are working on their first essay on what's important in life. Core 3 finished The Outsiders on Friday and Core 1 is almost there. Core 2 began watching the movie; many kept their computers on and worked on their sequels at the same time. Some students were so far ahead that they were able to begin planning their next project. They're required to use reading and writing and choose a product to deliver their research. I've given them a planning sheet, which they have to complete, that helps them narrow the topic and plan the steps to complete it. A few so far: creating a portfolio to becoming a certified teacher, improving a volleyball serve through video, coaching, and researching professional advice, a duo researching Vladimir Putin's Ukraine activities, writing a skit, and acting it for the class (including learning some basic Russian phrases), reading selected novels by an author and comparing and contrasting them, researching the deer population of Shenandoah County. We've only started on project planning, so I'm looking forward to hearing more proposals.

Core 2 had a very quick introduction to Hamlet on Friday, a play I haven't taught since I had seniors at SJ. We're going to see in December at Blackfriars Playhouse, so I wanted them to have a background in it. The Lion King is based on Hamlet, so it should seem familiar.

ECO only met once this week because of Aimsweb screening. We began reading an article from The Northern Virginia Daily about a grant they received to improve Valley job skills. Encore finished reading Honus and Me, completed a ten question SOL-style quiz on it, then watched a Twilight Zone episode that was remarkably similar called "Extra Innings." Next week, they'll complete a Venn diagram comparing the two works. (Since The Twilight Zone episode aired in 1988 and Honus and Me was published in 1997, the author clearly took some major inspiration from the episode.)

September 29-October 3, 2014

This week, I showed students how to play Kahoot. I create a game and project it on the front screen. They log in on their computers or phones and click the correct color and shape associated with the correct answer. Kahoot shows who answered first and got the most points and the class rank in answering correct answers. They didn't just like it; they went a little insane over it. I told them I wanted to give it a try with a 10 question "quiz" on keyword searches as an introduction and that I would also give them opportunities later to create Kahoots for the class to play.

They began working on their first formal essay this week: What are the things that matter most in your life right now? I talked about how to preplan and outline essays and why they need to get into that habit. They told me about what they had learned about writing in seventh grade. I told them one of our big objectives this year is to build the stamina to write an essay in one sitting since they will need to do it on the writing SOL in March. We will be working on the essay more this week. They also completed a fifth vocabulary word, succulent, so they are now ready for a vocab quiz on Monday (I generally have them on Fridays, but we had the field trip to JMU, and students chose Monday as the alternate day). There are three sections on the quiz: fill in the blank, write a sentence for the word with strong context clues that show meaning, and match the word to the correct picture. For the second section they can study the exercises we did in class and memorize the sentence for the text because it must not only be correct usage, but also punctuated correctly with all words spelled correctly.

Core 1 and 3 continued reading The Outsiders in class, while Core 2 worked on writing the first five pages of the sequel, which is due this Friday, October 10.

The most exciting activity has been the 1965 research projects, which are drawing to a close. Many students have completed the research, the movie, and the MLA citation page for sources. I won't accept them unless they are A or B quality, so I'm spending a lot of time looking at their work by way of Google, then e-mailing with what needs to be fixed. The video and research will be their first 80% summative grade, so they are important. The pictures I'm showing this week are of students helping and teaching other students how to do different required tasks associated with the project. Teaching reinforces their knowledge, and being taught by a peer is sometimes more effective than getting the information from the teacher. It gives me goosebumps when I see students reach that point in learning. I've sent all students information to plan their next topic: they must use reading and writing to learn a topic or skill and decide a final product, such as a video, skit, e-portfolio, etc.

ECO did an activity from Sir Kenneth Robinson's Finding Your Element to see how their time is currently spent to consider how the want to spend time in future jobs. They also completed a short job predictor and read about jobs.

Encore is almost finished with Honus and Me. Their discussions of the book have become very targeted. It's not unusual for someone to raise a hand and say, I'd like to make a prediction. . ."

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.