Maybe I'll come back here and visit every so often.
This first run was a sort of interesting experiment. The experiment is going to continue at www.millersclassroom.org
Maybe I'll come back here and visit every so often.
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I'm ready to start the last book from the pile I bought in June for summer reading, Iceland's Bell, by Halldor Laxness. Articles about reading fiction frequently talk about the way that readers engage with the world in rich, imaginative ways. I've not read a clear explanation about how, but looking back on this summer and my reading gives me a small bit of insight. When we went to Toronto, I woke up every morning and sat in the Starbucks in the hotel lobby reading The Savage Detectives, by Robert Bolano. On Owen's college visit trip, after he and Suzi went to bed, I worked to struggle forward through Dhalgren, by Samuel Delaney. Waking up in Frankfort before everyone else, I went down to the lake for a swim. At night, I put myself to bed reading The Stockholm Octavo, by Karen Engelmann. Up at our campsite on Au Train Lake, I let Laith fall asleep while I read Epitaph of a Small Winner, by Machado de Assis. The week at home between trips when I ran family members to doctor appointments, I sat in waiting rooms reading The Great Leader, by Jim Harrison. From what I've read about brain research, memory depends on association. Reading creates associations. The experiences I've had with family and friends on -- good times and hard -- are connected to, supported by, and made more vibrant in contrast and conjunction with the lives lived through the books I've read. To be able to associate the times in my life with books helps me remember both better, and to think about both more clearly.
So maybe this is one more reason why reading matters. That, and books are good. Looking forward to the upcoming year, I looked back at some of the first pieces students did at the beginning of last year when I was trying to launch them on blogging.
Prompt: Compose a post for your group's blog. The topic may explore any element of the book you are reading (such as character, plot, images, tone), your thoughts about a theme of a book you are reading, or your reflections on the act of reading itself. Your post should be descriptive, and it should invite the audience to respond with personal reflections and also in a way that will extend the conversation, possibly exploring a wider range of topics and ideas. Sample 1: From reading "The Lovely Bones" its shown that many themes based off of the feelings from the affected families evolve over time in the novel. From denial and anger, to loss and hopelessness, to acceptance and the ability to move forward; the loss of a child effects each family member in very unique ways. For example, Susie's dad wants answers to who the killer is, almost out for a vengeance, while her mom in is a deep state of depression and her younger sister hardens up, not wanting to show how hurt she really is about her sisters death. The book reflects themes from all aspects of Susie's family, while throughout the chapters she switches her views between family members, giving a real life perspective of the struggle real families go through in similar situations, and how each person grieves in the only way that they are capable of. Sample 2: Recently I finished the second book in The Maze Runner Trilogy, The Scorch Trials by James Dashner. In the novel, a boy named Thomas finds himself in a place he has never been before with a large gathering of boys his age and no memories of anything else in his life. He learns that he and the other boys are trapped in a place called The Glade, a small area of land composed mostly of a farm. The kicker is, The Glade is surrounded by a thing called The Maze, a horrible labyrinth filled with creatures that will kill the boys on sight, and they have no way out. Just a day after, a girl arrives, with the same condition as Thomas, and something is different about her. She was sent there to start the destruction of The Glade. Throughout the book Thomas learns that there is only one way the boys are going to make it out of The Maze before The Glade is destroyed. Teamwork. The boys form together and come up with a plan. Will it work? Well, I guess you’ll have to read the book to find out. Sample 3: The book EVE, written by Tony Gonzales, takes a unique perspective on the morals of human nature when they’re put into extremes. In this distant world, and an even more distant future, we’ve developed the technology to escape death. However it this concept brings about the debate of its cost; immortality for morality. This story explores how human nature expands along side both the continuity of human civilization and the advancement of technology. The reason, though, why this book is set apart from others is its boldness, its inability to hold back. This story is unafraid to explore the root causes of evil and its extents in a world where death is no consequence. Overall I highly recommend this book as source of both entertainment and philosophy. I wonder how last year's students would compare these pieces to the work they were doing in the second semester on the class blog pages. One goal for the coming year is to foster more independence and decision making with digital text. I want to learn more about distinctive qualities and elements of digital text, and I want to teach students how to craft effective online texts with an awareness of these qualities and elements. I might also close this site down and start the year with something new. Haven't decided about that yet. Confirming that deliberate inquiry about style in the context of reading and writing poetry gets students writing sentences you can wish you had written, this by Meg G.
Not a single syllable in months But still your name is Perched delicately behind my lips, And dances with my tongue, Daring to be whispered into the night, Like a secret, a wish, a hope. Remember what it was like to feel like you were falling in love with language, discovering something every time you wrote? In my last post I reflected on the difficulties of finding a way to support my students using digital resources for publishing and extending conversations. Each class is now posting to the additional pages here. I suppose this takes away a sort of freedom, but at the same time it simplifies access. I don't know. Thoughts?
I sat with T---- in the classroom and re-read her essay with her. We looked over the rubric together, and then I explained to her score.
“Your claim starts here,” I said, and read the sentence to her. “ And it continues here.” I read the second sentence. “That’s good,” I said, “but your examples only show the first part." I made her listen to me while I read to her the quotes that she provided in the body of her essay, and her explanations of the quotes. When I was done, she turned to me and said, “I didn’t mean to make my claim that second part. All that I need to do is take that out.” “But T-----,” I said, “That second part is what makes your claim a claim. Without the point you make about how loss makes people do things they would not imagine doing otherwise, there’s nothing but an observation that loss happens. Your claim is stronger with that second part because it shows you’ve noticed something about what motivates the characters, and it presents an idea other readers might not have observed.” I hope I said it that clearly. She looked puzzled. “Your essay won’t be stronger just because you say less,” I said. What was I doing giving comments on a final draft of an essay to my students during class? In his address to the secondary section at this year’s opening of the NCTE convention, Jim Burke talked compared the changes digital technology has brought to his teaching to a journey down the rabbit hole as Alice. We tumble into an unfamiliar space and find that they knowledge and experience that guides us through our lives has only partially prepared us for the new challenges we encounter. One of his observations seemed to me to be the irony he identified in the tension between the fact that students working on keyboards and online seem to engage more with the reading and writing tasks we give them, and yet when writing and reading and the transmission of texts take place in digital spaces, we lose the face to face experiences that so many people -- teachers, students, and former students in all walks of life -- consider to be a huge benefit of classrooms. This is the third year I have required students to hand their work in online using Turnitin. I like the program. I can load rubrics, check for plagiarism, and most importantly, use voice comments to give feedback. Having taught for 16 years, I never felt like students paid much attention to the written comments I gave them on their papers. Now I can sit on my couch, or in a coffee shop, or outside in the backyard, read their papers and talk my comments into the microphone of my district provided tablet, believing that students are happier to hear me explain the strengths and weaknesses of their writing, as if I were there in person. The problem is, Turnitin also tells me who reviewed their comments. Most of my students, I noticed, simply wait until the grades for their essays are posted in the online grade book. One purpose of writing is to take part in an extended human conversation. Handing papers in online seems to have removed all human interaction from the process, even the conversation about the writing itself. So I’ve decided we’re going to use class time because if my feedback is how I’m teaching kids to improve their writing, then as time consuming as it may be, face to face feedback matters. As teachers, we may be going down the rabbit hole every time we consider changing our practice. I certainly feel as if I have lost control of who I am and how I understand the world in which I live by choosing to expand the my teaching beyond the walls the the classroom and into digital spaces. The joy for me, as a learner, is realizing that the skills that help me negotiate my way through everyday challenges are skills that help me find myself and my students in this world: Taking risks, examining results, and sharing my understanding of those results with others in face to face conversations, then reflecting on the meanings and ideas those conversations explore, answer, and leave unanswered. What I realize too, from this, is how much company I have down here. T-----’s preferred solution to the understanding that she had said more than she intended in her claim was to imagine that she could, by deleting her insight, make a stronger essay. The move into the digital world for me is similar to the move students make -- that I ask them to make -- in going from thinking to transferring thought into writing. They feel exposed, and that exposure changes them. So we are in this together. Please think about this yearbook problem and respond with a comment about what kinds of stories you would want to read about yourself and people in the school when you open up the yearbook in May.
Angie and Izzy, both seniors, both editors, gaze intently at the screen as they discuss an early draft of one yearbook staff member’s first deadline story. Having been through this before, they can anticipate the way a reader will react. I wonder what kind of feedback they are preparing to give. “No one reads the stories in the yearbook, Miller,” Izzy says repeating a refrain that I have heard for seven years. “They will when we start writing stories worth reading,” I answer. What kinds of stories would those be? I’ve never asked my staff. “If you were not on yearbook, what kinds of stories would you want to read about yourselves?” When I share this with them, they agree. I’ve never asked. In school we teach our students to support each other in their writing using non-judgemental feedback. When the yearbook is delivered at the end of May, the feedback that my staff receives reflects the judgements of about 3,000 people. They hear judgements in their classrooms, in the hallways, from their friends, at home. Judgements fly like lightning through the social network clouds. Unlike the students in my ELA 11 courses, students writing for the yearbook need to understand that they are guaranteed an audience. This audience is broadly diverse and highly opinionated. This audience spends money to own the work the students on the yearbook staff produce. They expect to keep these yearbooks for a long, long time. My students need to understand how they can write in ways that make the readers of the yearbook love the stories. It’s true. Most people do not read the stories in the yearbook. But words give context and add meaning and detail to the pictures. We are expected to provide a record, and as diverse as the buyers of the yearbook are, they all expect that record to reflect their tastes. It’s reasonable, from one perspective. All their lives these students have been learning how to write for teachers. We tell them what we want to see them do. We hardly ever say that we expect to love their writing. “What kinds of stories in this yearbook do you want to read? What can we do with words to make you happy that you own this book?” As yearbook writers, my students need to ask this question, listen to the answers, understand that what they will be given is a starting point, then respond by putting their best efforts into the writing they produce. It will take imagination and hard work. If we begin with the admission people do not really read the yearbook, then we know we need to leave behind dry, boring coverage of activities and events. From there, when we form some idea of what kinds of stories people want to read, the editors and I can figure out what kinds of feedback we can give to help the staff write better. |
AuthorA classroom teacher, rides his bike from home to work no matter what the weather. Writes poetry and stories. Archives
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