Treasure Chest of Thoughts

I simply love Google Docs, and I have barely even tapped into its potential. 

This is all thanks to Google Docs‘ and the National Writing Project’s co-sponsoring the Letters to the Next President, which required our utlizing a template and sharing/collaborating (student and teacher)…this part has inspired me!  Online lit circles.  A new way to conduct ”group work.”  Unnamed, unthought of potential.  I really like it.  Yes, I love it!

Here’s my plan:

1. Discuss the “Ladders of Questioning.”
2. “Write beside them” and model this format of question layers.
3. Assign groups, log in to Google Docs, and “share” a worksheet where the groups will develop questions online for a text that supports our current theme.  For example, in Pre-AP English 10’s theme of Who Am I?, they will study John Keat’s poem “A Song About Myself” and in English 11’s theme The Bullying Mentality,  Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess.”
4. During the next class, students will share answers online to self-selected questions.
5. Then?  Not sure…yet!

Know of another interesting feature to Google Docs?  Please share!

This past week, peer teacher Carla James and I hosted our first meeting with seven potential candidates for National Board Certification.  Prior to this meeting, Carla inspired our theme for the year when she suggested we use “Candidate Support Investigators”…of course, a play off one of our mutual favorite TV shows Crime Scene Investigators.

The inspiration for this theme, though, truly lies within the fact that a candidate only passes because he or she provides the “evidence” to sufficiently support each of the four portfolio and six online assessments.

I did not achieve National Aboard Certification until year two.  Why not?  Because I did not provide adequate evidence.  Because I was arrogant, to quote both myself and my friend Carla!  I assumed that because I was an English teacher that I could write, and I write I did.  I just did not provide sufficient evidence as I did not study the “Standards” as one should.

My friend Mrs. James?  Yes, she passed year one, due in part to an impromptu Candidate Support Provider often asking the question we so dislike to hear or see:  “Why?”

Thus, our goal this year, as now official “Candidate Support Providers,” is to question “why” and to inquire continually about the evidence.

Now, I just need to continue taking this proven process into my classroom: that of encouraging my students to think, to answer the question “why,” to provide the evidence: the concrete details and commentary.

I wonder….what if my students received the monetary rewards that National Board Certified Teachers do?  Would they, too, then provide ample evidence? 

True enough, the personal professional development that a teacher receives from this process should be enough. 

True enough, though, the rewards (all of them) are, oh, so nice!

Both Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in Understanding by Design and Sean Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens present the same suggestion using, of course, different terminology:  “backward design” and “begin with the end in mind.”  (Wiggins and McTighe begin the introduction to their book with Covey’s quote from habit two.)

Thus, as the second nine weeks begins, I think, yes, I shall start backwards…or at the end…with an essential question:  WHERETO?  This question (p. 197) comes from Understanding by Design and causes me some stress with the last letter to this acronym.  Please read on to see why…

• W – Where is the unit headed, and why
• H – Hook and hold the students’ attention
• E – Equip the students
• R – Rethink, Reflect, and Revise
• E – Evaluate
• T – Tailor to individual needs
• O – Organize…so as to optimize deep understanding

Here’s my problem:  my hard drive crashed last year, and I lost almost everything that I had created up to that point (HINT:  have you backed up your files lately?  I am still paying for that mistake!)  Then to compound this, I need to create two units.  Finally, I have too many ideas for each, so I find myself scrambling from thought to thought, from unit to unit, and not getting anywhere fast. 

To begin with the end in mind, I should have my assessments created.  I should know right now where I want my students to go, what I want them to learn, what I want them to experience.  This I do not have completed. 

Good news, though!  I do have my essential questions:

1. Who am I?  to be explored utilizing Julius Caesar and Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens.
2. What is a bullying mentality? to be studied in conjuction with The Crucible and either The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, or Three Cups of Tea (student choice of novel).

The ultimate source of my stress is the time factor, though.  How does one cover the literature in a multi-genre format, the vocabulary, the writing skills, the grammar skills…all in one class period…while preparing for state-mandated tests, working with pacing guides that do not allow for teacher individuality, handling the many interruptions that make up a school day (clubs, intercoms, sports), and staying organized throughout the process?

So WHERETO?  Back to planning with the end in mind with a not-so-quite backwards design.  I think I will simply have to begin in the middle.  Yes, in medias res…that is the answer for me.  At least, until I get more organized!

Tell me:  how do you organize this “thing” we call teaching?

Yesterday, I filled my car up for less than $30.  Wow!

For weeks, I have debated writing a letter to editor, for in my travels around the state and nation in the past year, I have discovered in a painful financial manner that the owners of the gas stations in our lovely town are not caring, compassionate persons.  How could they be when they have continually overcharged the residents for gas?  100% of the time. 

Until yesterday, when during Customer Appreciation Day, one began the atonement process.  Maybe?  I hope so.  Such a small price to pay.

Over the last few days as I read some of my students’ blog posts,  I noted a theme:  several now know the definition of genre….this thanks to our sci-fi unit and their completing a multi-genre sci-fi project.

Oh, the taste of sweet success…at such unexpected times. 

This occurs at a most opportune time:  I had just admitted to a teacher-friend that I had not done a very good job with vocabulary this nine weeks.  Now, I am feeling better!  In addition, I have already created my PowerPoints for the next sixty words for two classes, one utilizing The Crucible, the other Julius Caesar. 

“Research suggests that the best way to teach vocabulary is to pull unfamiliar words from student reading.”  
                          ~Ms. Carla, from The English Teacher Blog

Thanks, Ms. Carla, for this reminder and for your inspiring blog and website at Web English Teacher.  I just shared this site yesterday with the students in my Secondary English Methods class (who I am also proud to say are blogging for the first time…please check out Connecting the Dots!)

More taste of success!

“The reflection upon my situation and that of this army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep.  Few people know the predicament we are in.”
                                     ~ George Washington
                                        January 14, 1776

Interesting.

Was this man also prophetic?

In a recent discussion with my students concerning our current economic crisis, one student commented that she had heard this situation could be worse than the Great Depression.

My response:  “Not for a while, for so many do not even realize what is happening today here in our country.”

Then as I began reading David McCullough’s 1776, I discovered George Washington’s quote (page 1) that so eerily echoed our current “predicament.”  Yes, go back and read it again!

I will be interested to read more about  President George Washington’s part  in the dramatic unfolding of the year of our Declaration of Independence.

Why am I reading 1776?  My goal:  to read a biography of each of the US Presidents.  A goal that initiated this summer as I strolled around Mt. Vernon, a place steeped in history and motivation.

Please share any suggestions for other biographies.  I have also purchased David McCullough’s John Adams and Mornings on Horseback and John McCain’s Faith of Our Fathers.

Why this sudden interest?  One, I had really hoped to read 1776 before teaching my “A Pioneer Never Quits” unit for all the background information I might obtain (well…we are completing the unit this week, so that is a one sub-goal that I will not meet). Two?  History was my weakest subject area in high school and college, so since I love to read, why not use this activity to overcome a huge hole in my education?

Never fear, though, I have discovered another means to use this novel:  1776 will be one of my mentor texts when teaching my students how to embedd quotes.  McCullough’s extensive use of research is clearly reflected throughout and will provide this teacher with another novel on which to do a book talk.