In the past, my students and I would have read short stories, studied the short story structure (introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution), and written a narrative.  This time is different.  

First, I created a Writer’s Notebook containing a page on each of the above topics on which the students are creating the various parts of their stories as we progress through the mini-lessons, which has resulted in some impatience on the students’ parts, for they much prefer the above method in paragraph two, for that is the method with which they are most comfort.  They just want to write a story without thinking through all the components of a narrative.  Yes, good writing is based on thinking first!  Imagine!

Despite the initial concerns about not just getting to write a story, all was well and progressing until I came to pacing.  Pacing.  Exactly how does one teach pacing?  Well….

1. I googled.  What I discovered was a few resources, mainly written by authors.  Interesting.  Why did this surprise me?  For, after all, authors, at least successful ones, have mastered this skill.  I printed one of these and attached Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and created a teacher-model lesson for the pacing techniques of flashback, vivid detail, dialogue. Then, I came across teacher Denise Leograndis‘ Fluent Writing:  How to Teach the Art of Pacing, ordered, and began reading it when it came in the mail just a few short days later.  She references some of the same sources I discovered…and adds so much more.  Great resource!
2. Then, I consulted my department, desiring their input and the utilization of my professional learning network.  The consensus: none had taught pacing before as a stand-alone skill and more research/learning needed to happen.  My consensus:  I had put too much into this lesson and felt it was too important NOT to teach, so I dove in, and both my students and myself are better for it.
3. With my students, I have learned more about pacing that I never knew I needed to know.  I did use the above text as my teacher-model of this skill, “The Open Window” by Saki for the group text, and Ambroise Pierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” for the individual assessment.  I truly believe all these texts took on a deeper meaning for the students as they began to recognize the repetitive techniques that successful authors implement; thus, techniques  they, too, should deliberately choose to place within their own stories that they are about ready to write. (NOTE:  I would also suggest “I Stand Here Ironing” as a potential text.)  Lesson plans are located here and here.

Today’s Conclusion:  As I told my students, my very lovely guinea pigs for this lesson, this narrative technique should be taught earlier in the unit, for these are ideas on which they should marinate, examples they could identify as we continue to read and dissect texts.

Next Step

On their story boards, the student writers will begin to  move their sequence of events written on sticky notes to various places on the plot line as they determine how to pace their stories.  When would a flashback be most effective?  When might dialogue be utilized to speed up the pace?  Short sentences or long sentences needed?  Should they slow the pace and provide vivid details by showing rather than telling?

The Future

I, too, will take the advice of my PLC…that we learn more about pacing and be better prepared for teaching this skill next fall, for we are moving this unit to the first nine weeks.  I look forward also to completing Fluent Writing and incorporating more of her ideas within this unit.

Please Share

How do you teach pacing?

The Drive

Today, I drove -
More than the speed limit allowed -
To join The Daughter I strove,
When two vehicles did plow.

That time in between
Gave ample time on which to reflect.
Of this road traveled and seen
Leading us to extended stays for man through God to correct her heart defect.

Once for twelve days.
The next six weeks.
Later to recover from surgery three.
Surgery four lastly.

While God gave me peace,
The mom in me was a bit tense
For what could not be seen.
Could there be an internal bleed?
Daily aspirin our friend, now our enemy? 

Picture this if you please:
One thirteen year old,
Clicking away on that phone screen.
My relief unfolds.

God had given me The Drive, the faith,
To believe since first being told
When she was but three months old
That day this journey began to unfold. 

The Drive, the faith.
Today, that drive reminded me…
Of where we’ve been and…
How His Miracle continues to be seen. 

So hold your babies, all miracles, yes.
For no matter what road He has us drive,
We, through Him, are truly blessed. 

I hope this National Poetry Month 2013 has been a time of wonderment and creative juices flowing!  Until next year…

Yes, I did tell them that that they should learn this here, now, today that what the teacher/professor asks is the definitely the correct manner in which to respond…at least for that assignment it is.

All year, I have modeled; they have practiced this method, this terminology:

• Signal Phrase:  Identifies the source, author; may provide justification for that source; uses strong, vivid verb.
• Evidence:  either paraphrased, quoted directly or embedded; the support for the topic sentence or thesis.
• Commentary: explanation of how this evidence best supports that topic sentence/thesis
• Chunk: minimum of two needed in each paragraph.  When asked, this is the number they responded.
• A format similar to the diagram at the right…

As I graded their final essays, while pleased with growth, I was dismayed at the lack of “chunking,” some in every paragraph, but few with at least two chunks per paragraph. (I know…I am a paradox!)

I write nearly every assignment with my students, providing models as they create, hopefully demonstrating my expectations within their own works.  Truly, I do not think they did not learn…they are just succumbing to senioritis too soon.  Give me just one more week of work, seniors!  You are almost there!

So….ah ha!  To their dismay, I requested mastery learning be instilled.  Due next Tuesday is a revised version of their essay, worth another test grade, not one that replaces the grade they received yesterday.  As I told them, I have to be able to sleep at night; I have to know they know how to write to an expectation.

Maybe I am trying to hard?  Hummmm….I did sleep really well last night.  :)

As a final project with our seniors, our department decided that each would write an informational essay on the goals of work, create a digital presentation, and present to a board.  In addition, I had my seniors create a cover letter and a resume to present to the board.

This week has been spent finalizing and prepping for their presentations scheduled for next week, and are they nervous!
Amazing how these confident, even cocky, seniors can transition into a bundle of nerves at the mention of speaking before this board.

This has be to be some of the intent of the Common Core, as in…

•  CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.4 Present information, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.5 Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest. (Source)

Between now and then, they will each place their documents on their page of our class Think Tank (the class wiki to which each is a member) to ensure easy access by myself, the board, and the students.    All of my students chose to utilize PowerPoint Presentation.  If time allowed, I would have each convert his/her presentation to Google, ensuring a more timely prep between each speech.  Yes, next year, I will make this modification.  Having all their documents accessible, though, on one page should safeguard the transition between presenters.

Each has planned to dress professional manner, discuss for 2-4 minutes the goal of education and how his/her chosen career will fulfill the goal(s), and answer a question or two initiated by the Senior Seminar Board.  The Board will complete a critique sheet, and I will complete their assessment before that class is completed so that each will receive immediate feedback from all the stakeholders.

This project excites me for the extra work that we are receiving from these students, proving that it is not over until the last assignment is submitted!  I have, also, enjoyed working with them to produce documents just are just a bit better than they even imagined they could formulate.  Yes, this has been a good thing, for we truly are preparing them to be college and career ready.

What do you assign at the end to push your students to be better than they even know they want to be?

Here’s how we got to this point:

1. I introduced this topic with a few examples.  Then, I gave each student an Oreo cookie.  Telling Statement:  (Insert Name) enjoyed the Oreo cookie.  After eating the cookie, each student “showed” me via writing the enjoyment. Food works every time!
2. We studied John Updike’s short story “A&P,” an outstanding resource, line after line of “showing.”  Following the analysis of this text (teacher model, group analysis, and an individual model), the students then created an example using a photo that I displayed via the LCD projector of a running dog.
3. Yes, more examples….this time we worked backwards.  I gave them the “showing” statement and asked them to write in one sentence what the author was  hoping to convey.  This time, I asked the students to “tell” me something about their protagonist of the narrative we are writing in class and then to show me that statement.
4. Then, today, as a summative, I gave them multiple pics from which to choose and asked each to write a 500-750 word narrative that “showed” their selected picture.  Before handing

I so enjoyed the quiet of keyboards clicking, total absorption in the worlds, the characters, the plots being developed, created, and shown through vivid verbs, multiple adjectives, similes, metaphors as the students utilized dialogue, point of view, action, and characterization to explicitly portray their new creations.

Good day in Cafe 16!

Nature’s first green is gold.  What am I?

Here’s Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay”:

Nature's first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf's a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay.

Love this poem!

Once I shared the riddle, I divided the class into small groups, sent them off in different directions, to all find the answer to the riddle, to return in and be in their seats in five minutes.  All returned.  Each group had an answer…even had some bring back what they thought was the answer…daffodils, grass.  None, though, to their dismay had the answer I wanted.

Then, I sent them out again (happy faces back on now!), in different directions, this time for four minutes, and suggested they look a bit higher.  Each class then returned with an answer that almost was right…a leaf or pollen.  Hummm…..

Together, we read the poem displayed via the LCD projector.  Oh!  They got it, so one more time, we all go as a group to view the tree tops and see what Frost was “showing” the reader.  Standing outside on this 70+ degree day, with pollen falling on cars for us to proudly see, we brainstormed the theme of this poem.  Yes, so many beautiful things in life are short, granted to us for just a mere moment, hour, day, or week.  Of course, they loved it when I suggested they read this poem to their girl/boyfriends as a reminder that they should be treated as gold for they could be gone in an hour!  :)

To further solidify their always remembering  this poem, I then had each class “teach” this poem and its theme to any teacher we happened to pass.  Some teachers knew the answer.  Some never got it.  All learned something today.

This lesson took about 25 minutes and served as an excellent transition into today’s lesson on showing v. telling in writing…isn’t this poem a great example of showing instead of telling?

What’s your favorite poem to share?  Happy National Poetry Month!

Here they are:  my new creations! (This must be how Dr. Frankenstein felt!  Surely!)

• Hollywood, named for my daughter Holly and a character I created several years ago for a sci-fi assignment that my then Pre-AP students were writing, takes on the task  of repelling unwanted advances from boys.  Yes, those males who stalk unmercifully those poor innocent females with their aggressive advances….now, remember, as the author, I have the power to create whatever situation I most desire; I do not necessarily have to be a realist!
• Olivia Noel‘s story continues to develop within the creative juices of my brain. No special powers on board, Olivia Noel, also named after my daughter (the name I once thought I would have liked to name her), will tell the tale of an average, just-normal adolescent.  As I am living with one, my research center for this one is close at hand, what with Holly now a very normal 13-year-old!  I may focus on the meaning of her name and introduce her to those people for whom she is named…in a fictional setting, of course.
• Big John I created based on characteristics of my husband, a man born out of time…oh, that might be a good story line: time travel.  John would have been most happy living off the land, working the animals, and maintaining a more reclusive life-style.  Hummm…should he meet his one true love?  (Yes, that character would have to be based on myself…of course!)  Maybe HeroMachine and I should create myself…oh, the power!
• Liberty Lee was created to save the day…yes, from those who steal one’s identity.  I created her yesterday after I determined that a lady that I was chatting with on Facebook was a fake (whom I quickly reported to Facebook by copy/pasting our conversation and sending it along with the Facebook URL’s to both of my friend’s supposed accounts.)  Thus, Liberty Lee will have special powers and will be a modern day heroine, in a geeky, nerd-like sort of way.  I actually had Garcia from Criminal Minds in mind when I created Liberty Lee, so very smart and trendy in her own unique way.

Isn’t this fun? I look forward to introducing these characters next week to my students and enlivening their own creative juices.  Won’t they love HeroMachine…which reminds me:  I need to request that technology department unblock this site, as it is viewed as a game, which, I suppose it is, for creating these characters has been fun!

I am also creating a Writer’s Notebook to give to each of my students with pages for free-writes and story line builders and pages for drafting their ideas as we also work with theme, dialogue, character, plot archetype, point of view, genre choice, and so on.  I will print it half-page size in hopes of actually creating a journal-size document.  I do hope that some take advantage of the models I will show them on this site created by Corbitt Harrison.  Aren’t these grand?  This, I need to create examples of my own; this I will do as I again write beside them.  (By the way, Penny Kittle‘s Write Beside Them is a powerful book I wish you would read…if you have not already.)

As you may have noted, my protagonists are all positive role models.  Maybe one day, I will write about a villain from the protagonist point of view.  Maybe I chose positive role models because it has been Spring Break week or because already too much negativity exits in people’s lives…or maybe I just like positive protagonists?

Why this unit? As part of PARCC’s assessment of students’ display of skill application, each student will be asked to “convey experiences or events, real or imaginary. In this task, students may be asked to write a story,  detail a scientific process, write a historical account of important figures, or to describe an account of events, scenes or objects, for example” so the student may display his/her utilization of the narrative techniques in this performance-based assessment. (Please click here for more information on other literacy assessment types.)

Why this unit?  As 2014-15 draws nearer, our department continues to prepare units of study to better prepare ourselves to prepare our students of the future for these assessments (yes, of course, many would argue that it is “all about the test”…and these units are for the future students, for my students of this and next year will not partake of these assessments).  One cannot and certainly should not wait until the assessments arrive and then begin preparing.  This immersing ourselves in the Common Core is a significant move on our part.  The drawback to our method, though, is that we learn only from ourselves….we have not attended any meetings for further professional development.  This, I wish our district would decide is important, for just as in the past, I fear the heavy (yes, I have heard, seen, and read the argument that these skills are more cross-curricular)…yet I still fear the responsibility of the test scores will fall primarily on the English Language Arts (ELA) and the math departments.  Click here for evidence to prove this.

Why this unit?  We just finished our state assessment, the pressure is off, and the time for a less data-driven assessment is here. (Well, they do plan to start next year’s 11th grade with this unit…) This unit, then, will also give the teachers time to perfect and work out the kinks in preparation for Take Two next fall.

One more comment…on the power of reflection.  Should you decide to re-read this post, you might note that I made several decision throughout this post.  Reflection is such a perk of writing.  Please share…how does writing empower you?

And, yes, I encourage you to use your creative juices also…whether via blogging, writing short stories….OR creating poems for National Poetry Month, which is just a week from now!

Enjoy!

__________________________

This unit models the Understanding by Design (UbD) model based on Grant Wiggin’s and Jay Mctigue’s  book The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High Quality Units…we began with essential question, then developed the summative assessment and rubric (still is progress).  Then, as noted, in the chunk on Writer’s Notebook, therein lies the mini-lessons to achieve this summative.

1. The 11th grade unit, one that  focuses on narrative, will hopefully emphasize much the  pre-writing process (see the previous post for more of my thoughts on this writing step).  I have been working/developing my ideas for the narratives that I hope to write as my students each create their own narratives.  More about this later, also.
2. The 12th grade unit will better prepare to be “college and career ready,” as they write a research paper on the thematic topic of work and then present that paper to a Senior Seminar Board.  Beginning this unit with Robert Frost’s poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time” also makes me smile, for I love the words avocation and vocation, and this poem does an excellent job of creating an example of and differentiating between both terms.

Heads began to shake back and forth.  No.

What about writers of series?  J.K. Rowling?  Veronica Roth? Richard Paul Evans?  James Patterson?

No.

Really?

So I had them pause and think about a series, a novel. (Yes, this is prewriting…in thinking format!)  Think about about the the intertwined characters, the intricate conflicts, the immense setting creations. I want them to understand, just glimpse into the means to a successful end.  Prewriting is SO important.  For some, this stage is the difference between their novels’ success.  For my students, prewriting could mean the difference between scoring basic and proficient.

Then, this morning I picked up one of  local bookstores’ book club’s read-of-the-month…East of Eden.  601 pages.  Yes, even Steinbeck utilized prewriting.  Surely, he did.

I did find this Steinbeck quote:  ”Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.” (Source)

Sounds like prewriting to me!

Next week, our English department will meet by grade-level to develop and finalize quarter four units of study.  For English 11, we are creating a unit on writing.  This unit is another teacher’s idea, and I do not quite have her vision yet, so I am hoping that the unit does stress the importance of this vital step.

When I began our discussion of the writing stages, I noted that most students have mastered steps two and five:  drafting and publishing.  I paused.  Then, I even got a few nods.  Too many times, our students take the assignment, respond, and hand the paper in….even if it is just an in-class quiz.

We can blame lack of prewriting on several reasons:  kids do not like to write, this generation is used to everything being accomplished quickly (Facebook, Twitter, texting, cell phones).  Could it simply be that we, at the secondary level, do not model this stage enough?  Maybe?

What are your thoughts on prewriting?

The more I write, the more I appreciate it.

1. Divergent Series
2. The Heritage of Lancaster County Series
3. Lockdown Series
4. Beautiful Creatures Series

First, do I plan to continue reading the books in these series?  Yes.   Yes. Maybe? Yes.

Would I recommend these novels/series.  Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

The Divergent Series

My students love this series, and our faculty book club read Veronica Roth’s Divergent as its January read, AND I have already purchased the second novel in this series Insurgent.  Novel three is scheduled to be released on October 22 and will finalize the story of Tris in her dystopic setting of a future Chicago.

The Heritage of Lancaster County  Series

Why are we so interested in groups that unique? Relating stories of the Amish way does sell and is quite captivating to read.  I read Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning because one of the town bookstores chose it as the read for January; then I liked it so much that I purchased the remaining two in the series (click here and then scroll down).

The Lockdown Series

This series just bothers me.  Maybe I fear it could be realistic?  Alex Sawyer is given life in prison, an underground purgatory named The Furnace.  Upon completing this first novel, I actually went to Amazon and the descriptors for the next four novels, for I am just not sure that I want to read all the abuse this young man must endure.  As I told the young man who hooked mo on this series, a student in one of my English 11 classes, I plan to skip books two thru four and go straight to five, which is what I did.  Yesterday.  I checked out the fifth novel in this series.  Now, though, I am feeling a bit guilty.  Maybe I should go with Alex through his many harsh adventures.  He needs his readers there for support. (Yes, I read the end of book five…the part where he attributes his success to his readers. Alexander Gordon Smith is just that good of a writer.

Beautiful Creatures Series

I appreciate this series like I did the Harry Potter series.  Really.  Yes, that is a huge compliment.  Main character Ethan brings out the mother in me.  He, like Harry, for the most part is parentless, involved in mystical circumstances, and loyally loves those who are his.  Thanks to our high school book fairs, I have already purchased the next in this series and will not be able to wait until next year to complete this series, so I will be on the lookout for the the next two novels in this series.  Yes, these authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, too, are just that good.

As I finish writing this, I realize that three of these four are young adult series.  That’s okay, for I do love talking books with my students.

Yes, I am serious about series.  If you, too, love a good series, please consider signing up for this challenge here.  Which ones are your favorites?

Enjoy!

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REMINDER:  I post my book reviews here at Mrs. G’s Book Reviews…as time allows.