Week Fifteen Journal Entry

I suppose I'll make a comment on each of my major units. One unit is Our Town. The challenge I am having in this unit right now relates to the fact that we have a classroom set of the script. In each of my Advanced English 8 classes, we are reading this play in class. The students don't (and can't) take the books home. And yet I've assigned a unit project. I've had to think about how the students can do their projects without a book in front of them. I also need to think about how they will prepare for their unit test. We'll need to do some good review work in class this week.

My other major unit is a memoir unit, which involves reading and writing memoirs. I've been thinking about how to assess creative writing. With my students, I've been stressing the idea that, with creative writing, reader response is critical--it's the measuring stick against which we evaluate our work. Thus far, here is what I've come up with:

Have you written a one-page memoir (due Monday Apr. 20)? worth 25 points
Have you responded to the writing samples of all your group members? worth 25 points
Have you edited your memoir, based on the comments of your group? 25 points
Have you posted your memoir to the Scholastic website? 25 points
TOTAL 100 points

This is a process, as opposed to a product, rubric. It will count for a test grade. At the moment, I'm happy with this plan, but it will be interesting to see how well it works in practice. My cooperating teacher has asked me whether I'm grading anything critically in this unit, or whether I'm simply giving participation grades. I'm giving her question/concern a lot of thought. I think that, with creative writing, I'm on the right track, but I'm not sure she would agree.

I'll keep you posted, gentle readers, on how this memoir unit turns out.

Week Fourteen Journal Entry

As I have started teaching my own material to Ms. B's classes this week, I've had to be very careful about the level of my vocabulary and the level of my material. I've started editing my materials, especially in my English 8 classes, with my students in mind. I've kept a mark-up of one particular document, Dr. O'Brien, and I'll be glad to show it to you. I feel like I'm adjusting to my audience. It's a cool feeling to now have my particular students in mind as I create my materials.

My fifth and sixth periods are both Advanced English classes, but the personalities of the classes are very different. Fifth period is active and conversational, sometimes difficult to control. Sixth period is generally subdued; sometimes it's even difficult to get class discussions rolling. I find myself lowering my volume and slowing down my presentation speed with sixth period. As with the vocabulary issue I discussed in the paragraph above, this is an issue of adjusting my manner and presentation style to my students.

I am ready to have my own students and get to know them and keep them all year instead of changing classrooms and adjusting to new students every eight weeks.

Week Thirteen Journal Entry

It's been interesting, in a bang-my-head-against-the-wall kind of way, to be in the school during standardized testing. Every teacher I've been around struggles with the issue of what to do with the students after morning testing. Administration discourages the teachers from covering new material or giving homework. So the teachers review basic material that is likely to be on the tests. This practice--testing in the morning, followed by an afternoon review in preparation for more testing--actually makes the monotony of standardized testing worse than it has to be. And this goes on for two weeks! Unbelievable.

Of course I am trying to form my own opinions as to what I will do when I am in charge of a classroom. Here are a few ideas--

• I think it would be a good time to play word games, like Scrabble.
• I'm collecting funny grammar bloopers that could be developed into mini language or grammar lessons (making grammar FUN is the eternal dilemma).
• The post-testing afternoons would also be a great time to let the students do sustained silent reading. I realize this might not work in every class. One of Mrs. B.'s honors classes has 28 students, with a high concentration of boys. They come into the classroom with pent-up energy, and I really can't imagine them settling down with a good book. But SSR would work in some classes.
• Maybe we could learn some jump-rope rhymes and go outside to jump rope. It's a poetry lesson in disguise, right? (This is beginning to sound like a multi-disciplinary P.E. unit in the making.)

So those are a few ideas. I hope to add more.

Contrary to our agreed-upon schedule, I told Mrs. B. that I would start teaching on Monday. When I initially agreed to this, I thought I would go ahead and begin teaching my 10-day units, but then I realized that I would see 5th period every day (the lunch period stays constant), but I might not see 6th period for two days in a row. The classes would get really out of synch. So I'm developing a fall-back plan. I think we'll study onomatopoeia on Monday; write haikus on Tuesday; and I'll start my 10-day units on Wednesday. These are self-contained lessons, and it won't matter if 6th period misses one of them.

If nothing else, I'm learning to roll with the punches.