fun in threes, sometimes fours
education and teaching
I try to support my students by attending one of their sporting events. Tonight, I watched the girls play a volleyball game.
So very different from the volleyball I've become accustomed to. Beginners are fun to watch, but they can be sadly predictable with the occasional lack of skill. It's all part of the learning curve, no doubt.
We have an epidemic of NHIs in the eighth grade. NHI is the code we enter for a graded assignment the student failed to turn in. Not Handed In.
I had a talk with my classes about the issue. On Thursday, I had students in each class guess the number of NHIs in their class for English. There were three options:
The two English I classes were certain they had between 15 and 25 per class. The two English 8 classes were certain they had fewer than 15.
The results for all classes were the exact opposite of what they expected.
The English 8 students refer to the English I (high school English) classes as "the smart kids' class."
"They're not the smart kids class," I always reply, but Friday, when I revealed the results, I added, "They're simply the do-the-work kids class."
Sometimes, there's a certain relief when we realize we've finished a unit of study.
The first pack meeting today -- the meeting two weeks ago was technically just a get-together, I suppose. The boys, as always, played Gaga ball afterward.
"This game hadn't even been invented when we were kids," one dad laughed as we watched them play.
Class today was excellent again. The main difference: like Tuesday, I tried a long, breathing-based mindfulness activity early in the lesson. Amazing how calm it made a bunch of otherwise-antsy kids.
I was so excited about how well things went with my toughest class yesterday: we did such good and focused work, though, that I should have expected today. Frustrating all around.
During the bell ringer, when we were going over some of their work, trying to get a student to say that the highest value on the Y axis of a graph (we're reading a cross-curricular text about deception in graphing) was 70. Even when I pointed to it. Even when I said, "The first number is seven." Even when I added, "The second number is zero." Even when I said "70." Even when I said, "Say '70.'"
Later in the lesson, when we were going over how to do something, I did the first half of the work for them -- for all intents and purposes -- in the name of modeling, even though we should be past modeling now. Be all that as it may, some of the kids didn't even make use of the modeling -- and really all they had to do is copy what we came up with as a class.
Every class has tough days, I guess. But they're even tougher when the happen on the heels of a great day.
I tried something today, sort of spur of the moment, with one of my more struggling classes. It's filled with impulsive students who are generally very sweet (at least toward me) but can be very chatty. Very focused on other things than the work at hand. So before we started our main part of the day's lesson, I had the kids do a little mindfulness work.
"Close your eyes," I told them.
"Did they trust you enough to close their eyes?" my principal asked when I was telling him about the experience later in the day.
"Yes, they did," I replied, thinking of what his question suggested about the relationship I have with the kids already.
"Close your eyes," I said, a few times. There were some stragglers. Some were still focused on something else. "Just close your eyes and breath slowly for a moment." I led them through some slow breathing, then had them visualize the work we were about to do, seeing themselves working in a focused manner and meeting success instead of frustration.
They opened their eyes, we began the main part of today's lesson, and they had the most successful day we've had so far.
My daily update for today:
Students today worked on clearing up some final confusion over our first analytic Schaffer paragraph before beginning our second cycle. For example, the excerpt below has the problem of a very general topic sentence. Once it begins so generally, a paragraph will only go downhill from there.
Afterward, we began working on our second cycle of stories that we will use for our next analytic Schaffer paragraph. We'll be focusing on the narrator's point of view and the effect that has on the narrative.
We began with some unusual writing to illustrate the simple fact that what we see, figurative and in this case literally, depends on where we stand.
The "where we stand" element has to do with everything from past experience to religious views, from political views to personal food taste, and everything in between.
Then we read an intriguing story, "In the Family" by Maria Elena Llano (on Moodle). We'll be using this tomorrow to examine how we can use the point of view of the narrator as an analytic framework and then plan a Schaffer paragraph around it.
Students in sixth period finished their second Schaffer paragraph, the one that's truly a beast: using quotes from a text as the basis for the concrete details.
We picked up where we left off Friday and worked on our concrete details.
They key to using quotes in concrete details, they discovered, is to mix your words with the writer's words: the student needs to include information about the context of the quote (the who and when in the story) and then try to slide the quote into the sentence naturally so as to avoid saying things like "For example, the text says..."
Some of the excellent examples they created include:
Students in the final period completed their first real Schaffer paragraphs after examining three example paragraphs in various states of disrepair. They had several options to choose from for each paragraph:
Students evaluated the paragraphs first in groups and then alone.
Afterward, we worked on our first Schaffer paragraphs:
Every student had a topic sentence they'd created in groups: "In order to have a great year, students should (1) and (2)." The numbers represented their two best ideas from the list they'd brainstormed. Afterward, on Friday, we made sure that the two ideas from the TS made it to CDs. And today, we worked on completing the two CMs for each CD, thus completing our first Schaffer paragraph.
We're only two full weeks into the school year, and one of my on-level classes is about 1.5 days ahead of the other on-level class. It leaves me wondering what to do: slow down one class to let the other catch up, or skip some things with the slower class to help speed up the pace.
Neither is a good option. Time for enrichment lessons...
It's always seemed to me that shoes are especially important when you're outside and will soon be walking through wet grass. The option of taking one's shoes off and getting one's socks wet doesn't seem incredibly pleasant to me, especially when it's just the second period of the day and the socks would remain wet for hours afterward.
But spotless, white shoes are more important than comfort, I suppose.
The first week is about to enter the books -- one week down, thirty-five to go. Some might view it that way, and some years it's tempting for me: when in the first week of school students are already being disrespectful and incorrigible, it's difficult not to think wistfully about the far-in-the-future summer. "It's going to be a long year," becomes the common thought.
But this year's first week is not like that at all. The Terrences and Teresas haven't appeared, haven't even shown a glimmer of appearing.
Kids staying focused, working together effectively, showing each other respect...
I know it's still the honeymoon period, but I can't help but be hopeful about this year.