Treasure Chest of Thoughts

Click here for my latest book review on Mary Alice Monroe’s Time Is a River.

Want to borrow the novel?

This year I am teaching an eight-grade literacy lab class, a one-time opportunity.  As I progress, I am chastising myself for not utilizing the teaching method I daily incorporate into this class:  I read aloud as the students complete a graphic organizer on the literacy term of the day.

I know….duh!  Right?

So why do I not read-aloud to my high school students more?  The answer?  Yes, time.  Or so I thought.

There just does not seem to be enough time in a class period to get everything discussed, analyzed, completed, quizzed, tested…and the list goes on, as every teacher knows.

Let me share with you, though, what I have discovered in this literacy lab…a class that provides the time, a class designed with this very component in mind.  Those kids love for me to read aloud!  They do not want me to stop.  “Read just a little more.”  Or if I switch novels on them?  Oh, my!  They want more!

Another good thing?  They always want to check out whatever book I have that day.  Have got to start taking additional copies with me! (I travel to the nearby junior high to teach this class.)

Last semester, I used the above Scholastic Read-Aloud Anthology, and they enjoyed that also, but then I began to take in books from my library or the young adult novel I might be reading at the time (Maximum Ride, Touching Spirit Bear, The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, Call of the Wild).

Thus what I have discovered?  Another way to “hook” my students on books!

Now I am selecting more classics to read…think I might introduce them…or read-aloud excerpts… to my high school students.  Already (after letting my Pre-AP students read the first installment of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) two have told me they, too, have subscribed to this novelette.  A good thing.  Yes?  Why, just today I received an email from a student requesting the site for the novels via email (Remember?  DailyLit).

One more epiphany:  only one or two of my eighth graders had read Call of the Wild.  This just affirmed a concern of mine that 1) we are not teaching the classics as we should and 2) because of this, our students are not being challenged to read the various author styles.  What scenario do we then see being created for themas they one day enter college?  They are adept at reading current young adult fiction, but what about the classics to which their professors will assume they have been exposed?  Ah, yes, another blog post…right?

So much work to do; so little time.  So many good reads; must find the time.

I shall now read Persuasion…yes, via email.

Just how effective for a student working on an assignment is a rubric a teacher creates once the assignment is completed?

Very little.  Not much.

Then consider the emotion the said teacher experiences as she sits mentally scolding herself!

Have to do better about creating these jewels when the most benefit can be obtained from them.  In a renewed effort, here goes…

So having created two following the assignment (two essays) and two prior to (third nine-week blogs), I should just go ahead and create the rubric for next week’s English 11 letter-writing project for The Great Gatsby.

Yes.  Effectiveness.  A good thing.

A time to reflect…that is what I will give my Pre-AP English 10 students as I ask them to study this Wordle of President Barak Obama’s speech and then to read his speech and gather evidence of the following persuasive techniques:

1. Claim: State your argument.
2. Big Names: Important people or experts can make your argument seem more convincing. 
3. Appeal to Logos: Facts, numbers, and information can be very convincing.
4. Appeal to Pathos: Getting people to feel happy, sad, or angry can help your argument.
5. Appeal to Ethos: If people believe and trust in you, you are more likely to persuade them.
6. Kairos: Try to convince your audience that this issue is so important they must act now.
7. Research: Using reliable research can help your argument seem convincing. Yes, Antigone would be considered research in this essay.

Just wish I had thought to create this assignment for Martin Luther King’s speech as a prelude to Obama’s speech.  Another example of hindsight being 20/20!  Will have this lesson ready in four years, though!

Partial credit for the Wordle also goes to the following two blogs:

1. Daniel H. Pink, author of a A Whole New Mind
2. Mrs. Huff’s English Classes, English teacher from Georgia and author of A Question of Honor

Thanks!

My dream:  A Conference for English Teachers.

Running on my computer is a draft of an agenda for a two-day conference.  That is my dream for the region of my state.

If you were to attend a Conference for English Teachers within your area, what sessions/topics would you like to attend?

Maybe before this day/evening is over…I, too, can share my dream with those at our educational cooperative who will, hopefully, help me liberate this idea.

In ASCD’s Smart Brief published today, an article pertaining to the censorship of student blogs appeared, an article that further illustrates the continued support by the courts of our democratic land in protecting teachers from verbal and written abuse by a very minuscule number of the minors with whom they encounter daily.

This article hit home as it advocates my concerns about, again, just a very few blogs that I have read this past semester.  Then the question arises: how far is too far?

As an avid supporter of blogs within the classroom, I do not want to hamper, hinder, or in any way discourage the free-flow of thoughts (as free as these thoughts can be when the topic is assigned!).  What a grand venue for learning to write for an audience, even if that audience is initially just peers and teacher.

One wishes that maturity would simply just kick in and overtake such inconsideration and insubordination, but, unfortunately, some just cannot resist the little digs and innuendos.

Thus, the rules continue to apply within my classroom concerning blogs:

1. Write only positive comments about teachers and peers. 
2. Utilize appropriate language…keep it “G” rated!
3. Oh, yes…the famous “No-No” list (the one disallowing “it,” among other “things” and “stuff”)

Yes, #3 is, by far, the most challenging!  Thank goodness! 

In reflection, maybe an “it” and a “thing” or two is just not so bad after all!  Well, let’s not tell my students that just yet…okay?  Shhhh….

About a year ago, I plugged in my external hard drive…and nothing happened.  It had crashed, and I had no backups.  None.  Zelch.  Zero.  Only by the grace of God did I not cry…although I still tear-up and get that stressed feeling in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it!

This weekend I have spent several hours re-creating my Materialism unit…again.  Only because I did not backup my files.

Oh, yes, I have backups…as in plural…in several places.

Backed-up lately?  Please do!  Now.  Right now. 

Please learn from my lesson!

Thinking about reading The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?  Please check out my book review at Mrs. Gillmore’s Book Reviews.

A novel about hope, The City of Ember held my attention until the very last page. When I completed the novel (during my lunch today!), I asked several students if they had read the first in this series, and several of them had, and all said they, too, had enjoyed reading this now-being-portrayed-on-the-big-screen hit, except they had read it several years ago, when they read it on grade-level, as this is a young adult novel for grades 4-7…let me comment on this little later.

Hope Springs Eternal?
Lina and Doon, each twelve-year-old graduates (and the main characters), assume their new assigned jobs of messenger and pipeworker and begin to learn that hope exists through a bean seed and a worm. Strange places for hope to spring, but spring hope does. Through these two forms of life, Lina and Doon also realize that life begins some other place than the city of Ember; something exists within. As a Christian, I will be interested to see where author Jeanne DuPrau goes with these interesting perceptions in the following three novels in this series.

Allegorical Move?

I also wonder if DuPrau might be establishing this novel as an allegory of sorts.

• City of Ember = a country under attack
• Unannounced light outages = bombing attacks
• Mayor and the guards = oppressive forces
• Lina and Doon = Savior-figures

Published in 2003, I wonder what thoughts DuPrau might have had about the war in which our country was/is fighting. Just a thought. (Not sure that fourth to seventh grader would analyze this novel quite like I did…so maybe Amazon might include English teachers with nearly 18 years of experience within their descriptor? Maybe?)

A DuPrau Insight

As an English teacher…and sometimes writer…I appreciate the following borrowed from DuPrau’s website:

Jeanne DuPrau spends several hours of every day at her computer, thinking up sentences. She has this quote taped to her wall:”A writer is one for whom writing is harder than for other people.” ~ Thomas Mann

This gives her courage, because she finds writing very hard. So many words to choose from! So many different things that could happen in a story at any moment! Writing is one tough decision after another.

But it’s also the most satisfying thing she knows how to do. So she keeps doing it. So far, she has written four novels, six books of non-fiction, and quite a few essays and stories.

Need a good dose of hope? Sit down with a cup of coffee and enjoy this quick read. Take that journey down the river with Lina and Doon and Poppy.

 

 

Just learned about this site: Daily Lit.  Novels delivered to my email…for free!  That speaks to a teacher’s heart…and purse-strings!

First, thanks go to Ms. Carla The English Teacher Blog. for writing about this new find.

On this website, all sorts of literature may be discovered…593 classics alone, which are sent to the reader in installment format…meaning you receive a portion each day…via your email…free!

I chose The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald for three reasons:

1. This novel is now one of the newly released movies, and I like to have read the novel before seeing the movie.
2. Written by Fitzgerald, this novel may give insights to the author as English 11 studies another of Fitzgerald’s novels The Great Gatsby.
3. A goal of mine is to read more classical literature.

In eleven installments…or in eleven days, I will have read this novel. Not bad!

Posted, in part, previously on one of my student blogs at Writing Right.